Ya-Sin · Makki · ayah 74 of 83

Ya-Sin 36:74

وَٱتَّخَذُوا۟ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ ءَالِهَةً لَّعَلَّهُمْ يُنصَرُونَ

“But they have taken besides Allāh [false] deities that perhaps they would be helped.”

Saheeh International

Essence

After a list of gifts that came from Allah alone, people turn for help to whatever stands nearer to hand, and call it hope.

A reflection

Nobody bows to statues any more

Modern readers tend to file this ayah under ancient history. Idols carved from stone, set up around the Kaʿba, given names and offerings. No one does that now. The ayah describes a world that has gone.

Look at what the ayah actually says the people were doing, and the picture changes. They took, besides Allah, gods, hoping that they would be helped. The commentaries describe the motive plainly. They hoped those gods would help them, rescue them from Allah's punishment, provide for them, and bring them near to Allah. The concise commentaries: hoping for their help, and to be saved by them.

So the heart of idolatry, as the ayah describes it, is not a statue. It is a hope. It is help sought from something other than Allah, as if that thing could deliver what only He can.

One commentator adds the setting that makes it so strange. They did this, he says, while bypassing Allah, from whom they had seen that dazzling power and those manifest blessings. They knew He alone had done these things. Another says simply: they had seen these signs of Our power, then took besides Us gods with no power to do anything.

Read that way, the ayah is not a museum piece. Every age offers its own things to hope in besides Allah. Money, status, a powerful friend, a network, a reputation. None of them is carved. All of them can be taken, in the ayah's word, as the place the heart runs to for rescue.

The question the ayah leaves is not whether you own an idol. It is where your hope goes first when you need help.

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.