As-Sajdah · Makki · ayah 22 of 30

As-Sajdah 32:22

وَمَنْ أَظْلَمُ مِمَّن ذُكِّرَ بِـَٔايَـٰتِ رَبِّهِۦ ثُمَّ أَعْرَضَ عَنْهَآ ۚ إِنَّا مِنَ ٱلْمُجْرِمِينَ مُنتَقِمُونَ

“And who is more unjust than one who is reminded of the verses of his Lord; then he turns away from them? Indeed We, from the criminals, will take retribution.”

Saheeh International

Essence

No one wrongs himself more than the person who is reminded of his Lord's signs, sees them plainly, and then turns his shoulder.

A reflection

Ignored, and not wounded

A man sends a long message to an old friend. Two blue ticks appear, and then nothing, for three days. He rereads it twenty times. He drafts replies in his head, each colder than the last. By Friday he has decided to say nothing to the friend at the wedding.

That is what being ignored does to a human ego. It stings because we need to be noticed. Silence feels like a verdict on our worth, and the urge to get even is the wound talking.

Now read the end of the ayah. Innā mina al-mujrimīna muntaqimūn: 'We will surely exact retribution from the criminals'. English hears 'vengeance', and pictures the man with his phone. The root says something else. Naqama began in the eye and the tongue: looking at a deed, rejecting it, finding fault with it. The Arabs could praise a man with a twist: 'I found nothing to hold against him except his kindness'. Push that rejection to its end, and it becomes repayment. Niqma is consequence born of rejecting a deed, not of injury to the one who rejects it.

Nothing in Allah is injured when a person turns away. In a hadith qudsi in Sahih Muslim, He tells His servants that they will never reach the point of harming Him. The one who turns his shoulder does not make Him smaller. The ayah's own word for that person says whom he harms: aẓlam, the greatest wrongdoer, which the commentaries gloss as 'more wrong to himself'.

So the retribution is not a wounded God getting even. It is the deed being given its true weight. A world where turning from every sign cost nothing would be a world where nothing mattered.

There is a humbling mirror here. We demand attention from people who owe us none, and punish them for withholding it. He is owed every attention by everything that exists, and He waits. The ayah before this one sent a taste first, 'so that perhaps they return'. Retribution comes only after the reminders, and after the turned shoulder.

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.