Luqman · Makki · ayah 32 of 34

Luqman 31:32

وَإِذَا غَشِيَهُم مَّوْجٌ كَٱلظُّلَلِ دَعَوُا۟ ٱللَّهَ مُخْلِصِينَ لَهُ ٱلدِّينَ فَلَمَّا نَجَّىٰهُمْ إِلَى ٱلْبَرِّ فَمِنْهُم مُّقْتَصِدٌ ۚ وَمَا يَجْحَدُ بِـَٔايَـٰتِنَآ إِلَّا كُلُّ خَتَّارٍ كَفُورٍ

“And when waves come over them like canopies, they supplicate Allāh, sincere to Him in religion [i.e., faith]. But when He delivers them to the land, there are [some] of them who are moderate [in faith]. And none rejects Our signs except everyone treacherous and ungrateful.”

Saheeh International

Essence

When the waves tower people call on Allah alone; on land few keep the promise, and only the treacherous and thankless deny it.

A reflection

The man who kept his sea-promise

On the day Makkah was opened, ʿIkrima, son of Abū Jahl, fled to the coast and took a boat. He was one of four men the Prophet ﷺ had excluded from the general amnesty. Now he was running.

A storm caught them at sea. Sunan al-Nasāʾī preserves what happened next, in a report graded ṣaḥīḥ. The crew said to the passengers: be sincere, your gods cannot help you here. Every idol on board had become useless at once.

ʿIkrima drew a conclusion that changed his life. By Allah, he said, if nothing saves me at sea but sincerity, nothing else will save me on land. Then he made a vow. O Allah, I promise You: if You bring me safe from this, I will go to Muhammad and put my hand in his. I will surely find him forgiving and generous. He came, and he became Muslim.

This ayah describes the storm he lived through. Waves like canopies, people calling on Allah alone, a rescue to land. Some commentaries link the ayah to him by name. The surah is Makkan and his voyage came later, so others simply count him among those it describes. Either way, he is its clearest example of the muqtaṣid in one early sense. He kept on land the promise he made at sea.

What makes his reasoning remarkable is its logic, not its emotion. Fear makes almost everyone sincere for a moment. ʿIkrima asked whether the moment had told him something true. If the idols failed under a wave, they had been failing all along; the calm had only hidden it.

That is the question this ayah leaves for every rescued person. When the storm stripped your life down to one call, what did that call reveal? And will you treat it as a fact, as ʿIkrima did, or as a mood that has now passed?

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.