Az-Zukhruf · Makki · ayah 20 of 89

Az-Zukhruf 43:20

وَقَالُوا۟ لَوْ شَآءَ ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنُ مَا عَبَدْنَـٰهُم ۗ مَّا لَهُم بِذَٰلِكَ مِنْ عِلْمٍ ۖ إِنْ هُمْ إِلَّا يَخْرُصُونَ

“And they said, "If the Most Merciful had willed, we would not have worshipped them." They have of that no knowledge. They are not but misjudging.”

Saheeh International

Essence

They turned Allah's will into an alibi for their worship of others; the ayah calls it what it is: a guess dressed up as knowledge.

A reflection

Guessing the harvest from the ground

In hum illā yakhruṣūn: they are only guessing. The verb has a picture from the date groves. Kharṣ was estimating the fruit on a palm before harvest. You looked up at the clusters and reckoned how many dried dates these fresh ones would make. It was a reckoning by eye, not by full knowledge. So any speech built on guesswork became kharṣ, and the word came to mean lying. One lexicon adds that such speech is called lying even when it happens to turn out right. The lexicons give this plainly, and the image is established.

One commentary notes the same. Kharṣ was used for estimating, and some held that this is the original sense. Either way, it is speech from supposition and conjecture.

That last lexical point is sharp. A guess that happens to be correct is still a guess. The fault is in claiming to know.

Picture a roofer called to quote for a leaking roof. He stands on the pavement, looks up for thirty seconds, and names a price for replacing the whole thing. He does not go up the ladder. The homeowner, impressed by his confidence, nearly agrees. Her neighbour suggests a second quote. The second roofer climbs up and finds three cracked slates.

The first roofer was khāriṣ. He reckoned the harvest from the ground.

The Makkans did the same with Allah. They looked at the fact that they worshipped the angels, and that no punishment had yet fallen, and reckoned from that what Allah must want. They never climbed the ladder: no revelation, no proof.

The ayah's verdict is a warning for every confident statement about what Allah wants. Have you been up the ladder, or are you estimating from the ground?

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.