As-Saffat · Makki · ayah 27 of 182

As-Saffat 37:27

وَأَقْبَلَ بَعْضُهُمْ عَلَىٰ بَعْضٍ يَتَسَآءَلُونَ

“And they will approach one another asking [i.e., blaming] each other.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Surrendered and unable to help, they still have one thing left to do with each other: turn round and start the accusations.

A reflection

Do they question each other or not?

A nurse writes on a hospital chart at nine in the morning: patient unable to speak. At four in the afternoon another nurse writes: patient argued at length about his medication. Both are true. They describe different hours.

A careful reader of the Quran meets a similar puzzle here. This ayah says the wrongdoers turn to one another, yatasāʾalūn, questioning each other. Yet another ayah says that when the Trumpet is blown, there are no ties of kinship between them that Day. And they will not question one another (23:101). Is this a contradiction?

One classical commentary records the objection and an early answer to it. The two ayat describe different kinds of asking. In al-Muʾminūn, people do not ask one another by the bond of kinship. Nobody says: by the family tie between us, give me one of your good deeds. Kinship has stopped being currency. Here, the asking is something else entirely. It is questioning as rebuke: you misled us, you opened the door to sin for us.

Another commentary puts the point plainly. This is not the asking of people who want to know. It is the asking of accusation and blame. One side says: you deceived us. The other replies: why did you accept it from us?

So nobody on that Day asks a relative for help. Plenty of people ask an accomplice for an explanation. The first kind of question has no point any more. The second has no answer.

The full entry has 2 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.