Fatir · Makki · ayah 19 of 45

Fatir 35:19

وَمَا يَسْتَوِى ٱلْأَعْمَىٰ وَٱلْبَصِيرُ

“Not equal are the blind and the seeing,”

Saheeh International

Essence

The one who sees the way and the one blind to it are not equal, yet blindness is a state that can lift.

A reflection

Blinded by glare, not only by darkness

A man spends a whole day sailing on a glassy summer sea without sunglasses. He wants to watch the light on the water. The sea throws the sun back at him from every side. That night his eyes burn, and by morning he cannot open them. He spends two days in a darkened cabin, waiting. Then, slowly, his sight comes back.

He was not born blind, and he did not stay blind. One commentary makes exactly this point about the ayah's grammar. In the next two ayat, the Quran repeats 'nor' between each pair: nor the darknesses nor the light, nor the shade nor the heat. Here it does not. The reason given is that darkness and light are true opposites by nature. Blind and seeing are not. The very same person can be seeing one day and blind the next, or the other way round. The difference is a state, not a species.

The Arabs had a striking use of this root. They gave the fiercest noon of summer a name drawn from blindness, because the heat and glare almost blind. The lexicons describe the root as covering: a thick cloud settling over the tracks until no one can find the way.

So blindness of the heart does not only come from darkness. It can come from dazzle: wealth, praise, a career, a screen, anything that floods the eye until it sees nothing else. That is a warning to the seeing. Sight can be lost by staring at the wrong brightness. And it is a hope for the blind. What covered the eye can lift.

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.