As-Sajdah · Makki · ayah 18 of 30

As-Sajdah 32:18

أَفَمَن كَانَ مُؤْمِنًا كَمَن كَانَ فَاسِقًا ۚ لَّا يَسْتَوُۥنَ

“Then is one who was a believer like one who was defiantly disobedient? They are not equal.”

Saheeh International

Essence

A life held inside faith and a life that burst its skin do not weigh the same, here, at death, or after.

A reflection

The fruit that left its skin

A university student walks home from a study circle with one word in her head. The speaker used fāsiq, translated 'sinner'. She has missed the dawn prayer most of this term. By the time she reaches her door, she is sure the word was about her.

Many readers meet this ayah the same way. They hear 'believer' and 'sinner' and picture a line between the good Muslim and the struggling one. Then they place themselves on the wrong side of it.

The commentaries draw the line somewhere else. Here, they point out, fāsiq stands opposite muʾmin, believer. So it means the one who has left faith altogether. One early commentator glosses the same word in the ayat that follow simply: they associated partners with Allah. Another commentary notes that the passage ends with 'what you used to deny'. Denial, not a missed prayer, is the subject.

The word's own history makes the picture vivid. The Arabs said a fresh date fasaqat when it split out of its skin. A mouse was called a little fāsiq, because it slips out of its hole to spoil the food stores. One lexicon adds that nobody had heard the word used of a person in the old poetry. The Quran took the image of a fruit bursting its casing and gave it a moral sense.

That image is the heart of this ayah. Faith is a skin that holds a person together. The fāsiq here is not someone who has bruised the fruit. It is someone who has burst out of the skin entirely, and calls it freedom.

The student has not burst out of anything. She is a fruit with a bruise, still inside its skin, worried about the bruise. That worry is itself a sign of the skin's hold on her. The ayah's warning is for those who have stopped worrying.

None of this makes missed prayers small. But the cure for them is not this ayah's verdict. It is the door the surah has already held open: rise, return, call on your Lord.

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.