As-Saffat · Makki · ayah 151 of 182

As-Saffat 37:151

أَلَآ إِنَّهُم مِّنْ إِفْكِهِمْ لَيَقُولُونَ

“Unquestionably, it is out of their [invented] falsehood that they say,”

Saheeh International

Essence

'Listen: out of their inversion they speak.' Their claim about God is no slip of the tongue, but the fruit of an upside-down world.

A reflection

A lie that turns the world upside down

The Quran had many words for lying. Kadhib is the ordinary one, and it appears in the very next ayah. Here it chooses ifk, and the choice is deliberate.

The lexicons give the root an established, physical image. Ifk is turning a thing over and away from the direction it should face. Winds that shift from their proper quarter are muʾtafikāt. The towns of Lut, flipped upside down on their people, are called al-muʾtafika, the overturned (53:53). A lexicon of near-synonyms draws a sharp line. Saying a man is at home when he is at the market is kadhib. Ifk is a monstrous lie: lying about Allah, or slandering the innocent.

Notice the echo inside this surah. Only a few ayat earlier, the story of Lut ended with the others destroyed (37:136). Now the surah uses a word from the same root for the Quraysh's claim about Allah. Their lie is a kind of overturning: it takes the truth about Allah and stands it on its head.

What does inverted truth look like? The Creator is made to need offspring. The servants who obey Him, the angels, are turned into His family and then into objects of worship. The order of everything is flipped.

Think of a picture hung upside down in a gallery for weeks before anyone notices. Every visitor sees it. Some admire it. A few find it strange but assume the curators know better. Then a child points and says, 'It's the wrong way up', and suddenly everyone can see it.

Ifk works like that. Once a falsehood has hung on the wall long enough, people stop noticing it is upside down. The Quran's word is the child's finger: it names the inversion so it can be seen.

The question for us is what we have hung upside down. Where have we turned the order of things over: putting ourselves where Allah belongs, or treating His gifts as ours?

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.