Ad-Dukhan · Makki · ayah 14 of 59

Ad-Dukhan 44:14

ثُمَّ تَوَلَّوْا۟ عَنْهُ وَقَالُوا۟ مُعَلَّمٌ مَّجْنُونٌ

“Then they turned away from him and said, "[He was] taught [and is] a madman."”

Saheeh International

Essence

They turned their backs on the clear messenger and pinned two labels on him that cancel each other out: coached by someone, and mad.

A reflection

Two insults that cannot both be true

Look closely at the two words they used. Muʿallam: taught, coached, fed his lines by someone. Majnūn: mad, his mind covered over. The commentaries record both claims. Some said a foreign servant boy was teaching him. Others said he was possessed, and that the words came to him during fits.

The two accusations do not fit together. A man who is being carefully coached is producing something coherent, organised and deliberate. A madman produces the opposite. You cannot sensibly be both the puppet of a clever tutor and a man who has lost his mind.

One commentator notices something about the grammar. The ayah does not say 'taught and mad'. The words are simply set side by side, with no joining word. The point, he explains, is to list their ugly claims one after another. Another notes that they said one thing at one time and the other at another, or that some said this and others that.

Picture an online pile-on against a whistleblower who has exposed something uncomfortable. In the same thread, one account calls her a paid stooge working for a rival company. Another calls her a lonely obsessive who has lost touch with reality. Both posts get thousands of likes. Nobody notices that they contradict each other, because nobody is trying to understand her. Everyone is trying to be rid of her.

That is the tell. When the labels fired at someone contradict each other, the aim is not analysis but dismissal. Any label will do, so long as it ends the conversation.

A reader can use this as a test for their own reactions. When I dismiss a person or an idea, do my reasons fit together? Or am I reaching for whatever label will make it go away?

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.