Fussilat · Makki · ayah 49 of 54

Fussilat 41:49

لَّا يَسْـَٔمُ ٱلْإِنسَـٰنُ مِن دُعَآءِ ٱلْخَيْرِ وَإِن مَّسَّهُ ٱلشَّرُّ فَيَـُٔوسٌ قَنُوطٌ

“Man is not weary of supplication for good [things], but if evil touches him, he is hopeless and despairing.”

Saheeh International

Essence

People never tire of asking for more good, yet one touch of hardship and they despair inside and shrink outside.

A reflection

Diving at good, darting from harm

The ayah draws a portrait in two strokes. People do not tire of asking for good. And if harm touches them, they are despairing, hopeless.

A classical commentator says the passage shows that human beings are, by nature, always changing state. If they feel some good and strength, they swell with importance. If they feel some trial, they wilt. He quotes an old saying. Such a person is like the qirillā, a small water bird. If it sees something good, it dives. If it sees something bad, it darts away.

The commentators add that the ayah describes, first of all, the person who rejects faith. One cites another ayah: only the disbelieving despair of Allah's relief (12:87). Yet the shape is familiar enough that any honest reader will recognise something of it inside.

Picture a man whose whole week rises and falls with his football team's results. After a win, he is generous, humming in the kitchen, patient with his children's homework. After a loss, he barely speaks. He snaps at small things and goes to bed early. Nothing in his actual life has changed between Saturday and Sunday. His inner weather has simply been handed to eleven men on a pitch.

The ayah is pointing at that dependency. A soul whose state is set entirely by what is happening to it has no keel. Every wave tips it.

The rest of the Quran offers the keel. A believer's state is meant to rest on Allah, not on circumstance: grateful in ease, patient in hardship, steady in both. That steadiness does not come naturally, as this ayah admits. It is built, slowly, by turning to Him in both kinds of weather, so that neither the dive nor the dart decides who you are.

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.