Az-Zukhruf · Makki · ayah 67 of 89

Az-Zukhruf 43:67

ٱلْأَخِلَّآءُ يَوْمَئِذٍۭ بَعْضُهُمْ لِبَعْضٍ عَدُوٌّ إِلَّا ٱلْمُتَّقِينَ

“Close friends, that Day, will be enemies to each other, except for the righteous”

Saheeh International

Essence

On that Day the closest friendships turn to enmity, except those built on mindfulness of Allah, which alone survive the change of worlds.

A reflection

Love that rests on what cannot change

Al-akhillāʾu yawmaʾidhin baʿḍuhum li-baʿḍin ʿaduwwun illā al-muttaqīn. Close friends, on that Day, will be enemies to one another, except the mindful.

Why would close friends turn into enemies? One classical theologian records what he calls a fine explanation from the philosophers. Love, they say, arises when we believe that someone brings us good or keeps harm away. While that belief holds, love holds. When the belief changes, and we see that the bond brought us harm, the love turns into aversion. Change the cause, and the effect changes with it.

So everything depends on what the love rested on. Perhaps it rested on goods that can change: pleasure, advantage, a shared hobby or a shared sin. Then on the Day those goods are gone. Worse, they are revealed as harm. The friend who shared them now looks like the one who led you there.

If the love rested on something that cannot change, it survives. One commentator explains the mindful as those who loved each other for Allah. On the Day they see the reward of that love. Their friendship does not merely survive; it grows stronger.

Picture two colleagues who become inseparable over two years, bonded by a shared contempt for their manager. Every lunch is spent dissecting her. Then she leaves for another job. Within a month the two of them have almost nothing to say to each other. Their friendship had a single pillar, and the pillar was removed.

The ayah describes the same collapse on a cosmic scale. Every bond is tested by the removal of whatever held it up. Only love for Allah's sake has a pillar that cannot be removed.

The question is practical, not abstract. What holds up my closest friendships? If the shared thing disappeared tomorrow, what would be left between us?

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.