Ar-Rum · Makki · ayah 41 of 60

Ar-Rum 30:41

ظَهَرَ ٱلْفَسَادُ فِى ٱلْبَرِّ وَٱلْبَحْرِ بِمَا كَسَبَتْ أَيْدِى ٱلنَّاسِ لِيُذِيقَهُم بَعْضَ ٱلَّذِى عَمِلُوا۟ لَعَلَّهُمْ يَرْجِعُونَ

“Corruption has appeared throughout the land and sea by [reason of] what the hands of people have earned so He [i.e., Allāh] may let them taste part of [the consequence of] what they have done that perhaps they will return [to righteousness].”

Saheeh International

Essence

Corruption on land and sea was carried there by human hands, and Allah lets us taste part of it so that we turn back.

A reflection

Not only a slogan, not only a sermon

Most people who know this ayah met it in one of two places. Some saw it on a banner about plastic in the oceans or a warming planet. Others heard it in a sermon about sin, with no mention of the earth at all. Each group tends to think the other has misread it.

The word at the centre settles more than either expects. Fasād is a thing leaving its sound, balanced state. The lexicons give homely examples: an apple that has turned in the bowl, milk that has soured. Its opposite is ṣalāḥ, a thing standing sound and doing the good it was made for. So fasād is anything that has stopped doing its good.

Now listen to the classical commentators, writing many centuries before any modern headline. Some said the corruption is drought and failing crops. Some said it is fishermen and pearl divers coming home empty. Some named epidemics among people and animals, fires and drownings, and blessing drained from things. Others said it is sin itself: murder, highway robbery, oppression and the association of partners with Allah. One commentator surveyed the list and concluded that the meanings are all close to one another.

That is the point the two camps miss. The ayah does not separate the moral from the physical. Injustice, greed and drought sit in one list because they are one fabric. A wrong done by hands shows up in the soil and the sea.

So the environmental reading is fair, and so is the moral one. What is not fair is to say the ayah 'predicted' modern pollution, as if it were a forecast awaiting confirmation. It is wider than any one era's crisis. Every generation finds its own corruption on land and sea, and the same ayah fits each one.

The full entry has 7 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.