An-Nisa · Madani · ayah 72 of 176

An-Nisa 4:72

وَإِنَّ مِنكُمْ لَمَن لَّيُبَطِّئَنَّ فَإِنْ أَصَـٰبَتْكُم مُّصِيبَةٌ قَالَ قَدْ أَنْعَمَ ٱللَّهُ عَلَىَّ إِذْ لَمْ أَكُن مَّعَهُمْ شَهِيدًا

“And indeed, there is among you he who lingers behind; and if disaster strikes you, he says, "Allāh has favored me in that I was not present with them."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Some hang back and slow others, then thank Allah for their own absence when those who went are hurt.

A reflection

Calling an escape a blessing

Listen to the words the ayah puts in his mouth. Qad anʿama Allāhu ʿalayya: Allah has truly blessed me. They sound pious. They use the name of Allah. They even use the language of gratitude.

But look at what he is thanking Allah for. His friends went out and were hurt. He stayed at home. And he calls his absence a niʿma.

A niʿma, in the classical definition, is a benefit done to another as pure kindness, for his true good. A gift given for the giver's own profit is not a niʿma at all. It is like a sweet laced with poison. The man in this ayah has the definition upside down. He calls the very thing that cost him most a gift.

Commentators are blunt about what lies beneath the pious words. One explains that his staying behind pleased him, out of gloating at the believers' loss. He doubted Allah's promise of reward for those who suffer in His way. So he neither hoped for reward nor feared punishment. An early authority calls these 'the words of a gloater'. Another calls them 'the words of one who denies'.

Picture an engineer who refused to give up a weekend to help his colleagues rescue a failing project. They worked through Saturday and Sunday. The project was cancelled anyway, and their names were on it. On Monday, in the lift, he smiles. 'Someone up there was looking after me.'

He has used God's name to decorate his own self-protection. That is the subtle danger here. Religious language can be borrowed to bless almost anything, including the choice to abandon others.

Before you next say 'Allah saved me from that', pause. Was it Allah's protection? Or was it simply your own reluctance, dressed in His name?

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.