Luqman · Makki · ayah 30 of 34

Luqman 31:30

ذَٰلِكَ بِأَنَّ ٱللَّهَ هُوَ ٱلْحَقُّ وَأَنَّ مَا يَدْعُونَ مِن دُونِهِ ٱلْبَـٰطِلُ وَأَنَّ ٱللَّهَ هُوَ ٱلْعَلِىُّ ٱلْكَبِيرُ

“That is because Allāh is the True Reality, and that what they call upon[1167] other than Him is falsehood, and because Allāh is the Most High, the Grand.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Every sign points here: Allah alone is real in Himself, all else only borrows its standing, and He is the Most High, the Great.

A reflection

Real in Himself, and everything else on loan

The ayah opens with dhālika, that. It points back at everything the surah has just shown: night folding into day, the sun and moon each running to a set term. All of it, the ayah says, is because Allah is al-Ḥaqq.

Ḥaqq is usually translated 'the Truth'. The lexicons give it more weight. It is what is firm and established, the opposite of what drifts away. One classical commentator draws the line sharply. Allah is the One who is firm absolutely, with no passing away in Him. Everything else, looked at in itself, has passing away written into it. Its existence is real, but lent.

Then the ayah adds two more names. Al-ʿAlī: the Most High. Al-Kabīr: the Great. One early commentary explains the pair simply. Everything beneath Him is humbled before Him and led by Him. Everything beside Him is small.

This is where the ego meets its measure. We talk about my time, my health, my career, as if we were the fixed point and the world turned round us. The ayah moves the fixed point. Your breath tonight is borrowed. So is the steadiness of your hand and the memory you are proud of. Another commentary puts it bluntly: if everyone on earth joined together to create a single fly, they would fail.

A fair question follows. Is it not arrogant for anyone to call himself the Great? The lexicons answer with a distinction worth keeping. In a human being, kibr is raising the self above its real size, because our real size is small. For Allah, greatness is simply His true state. Arrogance is a false claim to size. A true one is only a description.

So the names here are not boasting. They are information, given for your sake. A person who knows what is firm stops leaning on what is not. And a self that knows it is on loan can finally put down the exhausting work of pretending to be its own foundation.

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.