Fatir · Makki · ayah 16 of 45

Fatir 35:16

إِن يَشَأْ يُذْهِبْكُمْ وَيَأْتِ بِخَلْقٍ جَدِيدٍ

“If He wills, He can do away with you and bring forth a new creation.”

Saheeh International

Essence

If He wills, He removes you and brings a new creation; that you are still here is His choice, renewed every day.

A reflection

The human gallery is not the last room

Walk through a great natural history museum. Room after room of creatures that once filled the earth. Giant reptiles, vanished birds, forests turned to stone. Most visitors move through it with a quiet assumption. The last gallery, the one about us, is the point of the whole building. Everything else was leading here.

This ayah gently removes that assumption. If He wills, He removes you and brings a new creation. Not a new government or a new fashion. A new khalq: a new creation.

The commentaries read it two ways, depending on who is addressed. If it speaks to all people, one says, the new creation could be a world other than humankind, one you do not know. If it speaks to those who rejected the message, it means another people, unlike them, who keep to His obedience. Another reports a Companion's reading: He would create, after you, those who worship Him and associate nothing with Him.

Either way, the ego has to step back. Our species is used to seeing itself as the summit. Our generation is used to seeing itself as the most advanced. The ayah says the gallery could have more rooms, and we would not be consulted about them.

Is this Allah boasting of His power to frighten us? No. The ayah follows straight on from the declaration that He is the Rich, free of need (35:15). It is the proof of that freedom. He did not create us because He lacked us, so He would not be diminished without us.

That is humbling. It is also clarifying. If our place is not owed, it can only be given. And what is given can be received with thanks.

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.