An-Nisa · Madani · ayah 117 of 176

An-Nisa 4:117

إِن يَدْعُونَ مِن دُونِهِۦٓ إِلَّآ إِنَـٰثًا وَإِن يَدْعُونَ إِلَّا شَيْطَـٰنًا مَّرِيدًا

“They call upon instead of Him none but female [deities], and they [actually] call upon none but a rebellious Satan,”

Saheeh International

Essence

Whatever people call on besides Allah turns out to be either lifeless things that cannot act, or the rebel voice of Satan working behind them.

A reflection

Calling on what cannot move

The ayah opens with a negation and an exception: in yadʿūna … illā. They call on nothing but this. It is a sentence built to empty a room.

Commentators read ināth in several ways. The most widely held: idols given female names, such as al-Lāt, al-ʿUzzā and Manāt. Another early reading is simply 'dead things'. One early teacher explained it as anything lifeless with no soul in it: a dry piece of wood, or a dry stone.

One classical commentator joins the readings through grammar. Arabic often speaks of lifeless things in the feminine: 'these stones please me'. Such things, he notes, only receive action; they never act. So the word carries a verdict. They call on what is acted upon, and leave the One who does whatever He wills.

That is the tragedy of false worship in a phrase. A person in need turns to something that itself needs moving.

Picture a father at midnight with a feverish five-year-old. He takes her temperature every ten minutes. Thirty-nine point four. Thirty-nine point six. He finds himself almost pleading with the little screen, willing the number lower. The thermometer can report. It cannot heal. At last he puts it down, lays his hand on her forehead, and calls on the One who can.

Our idols are rarely stone now. But we still pin our hopes on things that are acted upon. Markets that are moved. People who are moved. Numbers that are moved. Then we wonder why our calling feels like shouting down a well.

The ayah does not mock the need to call. It redirects it. Call, yes. But call on the One who acts.

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.