Az-Zumar · Makki · ayah 61 of 75

Az-Zumar 39:61

وَيُنَجِّى ٱللَّهُ ٱلَّذِينَ ٱتَّقَوْا۟ بِمَفَازَتِهِمْ لَا يَمَسُّهُمُ ٱلسُّوٓءُ وَلَا هُمْ يَحْزَنُونَ

“And Allāh will save those who feared Him by their attainment;[1357] no evil will touch them, nor will they grieve.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Allah lifts the God-conscious clear of that Day: no harm touches them ahead, and no grief roughens them for what is behind.

A reflection

A desert named in hope

The word for the success of the God-conscious is mafāza. Its first hearers knew it as a place, not an abstraction.

The lexicons say a mafāza was a desert with no water for two nights or more. Many said it was named in hope: whoever crossed it had fāza, come through safely. Others said the opposite, that it was named for the dying it caused. In a game of lots, the arrow that came out first had fāza, won. So the root joins two things: escape from what you fear, and arrival at what you love.

That makes the word unusually honest. The place of success is named after the stretch of country that had to be crossed to reach it. Nobody arrives at fawz without first passing through the mafāza.

The commentaries read this ayah in several ways. Some explain bi-mafāzatihim as 'by their success': their attainment of the Garden. One early commentator glossed it as their virtues; another as their deeds. One commentary takes it as the place of success itself, the Garden into which they are brought.

Hold the desert image beside those readings. Life, for the God-conscious, is often a dry crossing: patience without visible reward, prayer without immediate answer, choices that cost something. The ayah names where that crossing ends. The desert itself, crossed in faith, becomes the name of the success.

For anyone in a dry stretch now, that is a quiet comfort. The waterless miles are not evidence that you are lost. They may be exactly the ground that, once crossed, will be called by the name of your arrival.

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.