Ya-Sin · Makki · ayah 18 of 83

Ya-Sin 36:18

قَالُوٓا۟ إِنَّا تَطَيَّرْنَا بِكُمْ ۖ لَئِن لَّمْ تَنتَهُوا۟ لَنَرْجُمَنَّكُمْ وَلَيَمَسَّنَّكُم مِّنَّا عَذَابٌ أَلِيمٌ

“They said, "Indeed, we consider you a bad omen. If you do not desist, we will surely stone you, and there will surely touch you, from us, a painful punishment."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Out of arguments, the town reads a bird's flight: you have brought us bad luck, so be silent or be stoned.

A reflection

'Everything was fine until she started asking questions'

A junior accountant notices that the same supplier is being paid twice. She reports it. An investigation follows, then resignations, then a bad quarter. Within a year, people in the office say it quietly over coffee. Things were fine until she arrived. She has become the bad luck.

Most of us read taṭayyarnā bikum, we see an evil omen in you, and think of something primitive. Birds, lucky charms, cracked mirrors. We do not read omens. We would never blame a person for bad luck.

The commentaries describe the mechanism more broadly, and it is uncomfortably familiar. One explains that the ignorant treat as lucky whatever they are drawn to and like. They treat as unlucky whatever they shrink from and dislike. If good or harm then befalls them, they say: this came from the blessing of that, or from the bad luck of this. Another says the town took the messengers as an omen once their arguments had run out.

An early authority puts their thought into words: if harm comes to us, it is because of you. One reported detail has the rain held back from them at the time, and the town blaming the messengers for the drought.

That is not an ancient superstition. It is a human reflex. When someone brings a truth we did not want, and trouble follows, we tie the two together. The person who named the problem becomes the cause of it. The doctor who gave the diagnosis is remembered as the start of the illness.

So before reading on, ask where you have done this. Who in your life has become 'bad luck' because they told you something true at a hard time? The ayah suggests the bad luck was already there. They only pointed at it.

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.