Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 189 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:189

وَلِلَّهِ مُلْكُ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىْءٍ قَدِيرٌ

“And to Allāh belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth, and Allāh is over all things competent.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Everything in the heavens and the earth is held by Him, and His power reaches each thing in exactly its own measure.

A reflection

The answer to a very arrogant sentence

Earlier in this surah someone said something astonishing. Allah is poor, and we are rich (3:181). The commentaries read this ayah as the reply, and notice how the reply is made. There is no argument. There is a statement of who holds what.

To Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth. One commentary asks the obvious question back. How could the One who holds everything the heavens and the earth contain be in need of anything from you.

The word for that holding is mulk, and its root means having a thing in your grip. Arabic separates two branches of it, and the lexicons agree on both. Milk is ownership: the thing is yours to keep, to use, to give away. Mulk is rule: people and places under your command. Every king owns something, but not every owner is a king. Here both are His, and the sentence puts His name first, which in Arabic narrows it: His, and not another's.

The same lexicons add the thing that should shrink any swelling in us. Every human hold is partial and lent. It was given after it was not there, and it will be taken out of the hand.

A woman lives twenty-two years in a cottage that comes with her husband's job. She plants the hedge, tiles the bathroom, buries two cats under the apple tree. When he retires they are given ninety days. For twenty-two years she said my kitchen, my hedge, my gate. Every word of it was true, and none of it was ownership.

That is the position every one of us occupies, and it is why pride is such a strange posture for a human being. We are not owners boasting about our holdings. We are tenants who have forgotten the arrangement.

And it answers the uneasy question some people carry: why would God announce His own greatness, as an insecure ruler might. Look at what was said first. A claim had been made in public that He was the needy one. A statement of fact from the One who actually holds everything is not vanity. It is the record being set straight, and the ayah does it in nine words without raising its voice.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.