Ar-Rum · Makki · ayah 22 of 60

Ar-Rum 30:22

وَمِنْ ءَايَـٰتِهِۦ خَلْقُ ٱلسَّمَـٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ وَٱخْتِلَـٰفُ أَلْسِنَتِكُمْ وَأَلْوَٰنِكُمْ ۚ إِنَّ فِى ذَٰلِكَ لَـَٔايَـٰتٍ لِّلْعَـٰلِمِينَ

“And of His signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your languages and your colors. Indeed in that are signs for those of knowledge.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Allah puts your tongue and your skin on the same list as the heavens and the earth: every difference is His signature, never a ranking.

A reflection

The sky, and then the voice in your mouth

The ayah makes one list. First comes the creation of the heavens and the earth. Then, in the same breath, the difference of your tongues and your colours. The largest thing a person can picture sits beside the smallest things they carry. One is the sound of their voice, the other the shade of their skin.

One classical commentator noticed a reversal hidden in that pairing. The heavens are vast and few, and they look alike. Human faces are small and beyond counting, and no two are confused. He added that two brothers speaking one dialect can still be told apart from behind a screen. The ear knows each voice, as the eye knows each face.

Picture a grandfather who lost his sight ten years ago. On Eid morning his grandchildren crowd through the door, eleven of them, aged four to twenty-two. Each says one word of greeting. He names every one before they reach his chair. Nobody arranged eleven voices so that one ageing ear could sort them. Yet each is distinct enough to be known in a syllable.

That is the scale of the sign. Languages number in thousands; voices and faces number in billions. Each is a fresh design and none is a copy. Another commentary insists that none of this is the work of the parents. The colour of your skin was not your achievement. Neither was your mother tongue.

This is where the ego meets the ayah. Pride in a complexion, or contempt for an accent, is pride in something you did not make. It is a pebble boasting about the river that shaped it. The heavens were named first so that you would measure your face against them, and grow quiet.

Does Allah need us to notice? He calls these His signs, and a sign exists for the one who reads it. The sky loses nothing if you never look up. You lose a great deal. A person who sees the Maker's hand in every face finds it very hard to despise one.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.