Ad-Dukhan · Makki · ayah 2 of 59

Ad-Dukhan 44:2

وَٱلْكِتَـٰبِ ٱلْمُبِينِ

“By the clear Book,”

Saheeh International

Essence

Allah swears by the Book itself, and the one quality He names is that it is mubīn: plain, and making plain whatever it touches.

A reflection

Clear, and making clear

In English, 'clear' usually describes a thing: clear water, a clear sky. The Arabic mubīn does more. It is an active form, a word that does something to whatever stands near it. It means plain in itself, and also making plain.

The root behind it, the lexicons agree, begins with distance. Bayn is parting, the space between two things. Once something stands apart from what surrounds it, it can be seen. The lexicons also describe a well so wide that the rope hangs free of its walls as bayūn. Nothing snags on the way down. Bāna is to become clear, and bayān is speech that brings what is inside out into the open.

The short commentaries take up both sides. One says the Book makes the lawful stand apart from the forbidden. Another says it is plain in both wording and meaning. A third calls it the Book that makes clear the road of guidance to the truth.

Picture someone at the optician. She sits behind a heavy metal frame while lenses click into place in front of each eye. 'Better like this, or like this?' Slowly the letters on the far wall stop swimming. The letters were never blurred. Her eyes were. The lens did not change the wall. It changed what she could see.

That is the difference between clear and mubīn. A clear thing waits to be looked at. A mubīn thing works on the one looking. One commentator notes that the Book is called mubīn even though the true making-plain is from Allah, because the clarity reaches people through it. It is described almost as if it speaks.

So the first thing this surah tells you about the Book is not that it is mysterious. It is that it will make things stand apart, so that you can see them. Including, sometimes, things about yourself.

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.