Ad-Dukhan · Makki · ayah 34 of 59

Ad-Dukhan 44:34

إِنَّ هَـٰٓؤُلَآءِ لَيَقُولُونَ

“Indeed, these [disbelievers] are saying,”

Saheeh International

Essence

Straight after Pharaoh's story, the Quran turns to its own listeners with three words: indeed, these people are saying.

A reflection

The story was about you

Inna hāʾulāʾi la-yaqūlūn: indeed, these people are saying.

For seventeen ayat the surah has told a story from long ago. A messenger came to Pharaoh's people. They called him a liar. The sea closed over them. Gardens, springs and fine houses were left behind. The heavens and the earth did not weep for them.

Then, without warning, the camera swings round. Hāʾulāʾi: these. The commentaries are unanimous about who is meant. The deniers of Quraysh, the first audience in Makkah.

One linguistic commentary explains the move. The story of Pharaoh and his people was a digression, it says. It was told to show that these listeners were like them in clinging to error, and to warn them of what befell them. The real subject of the surah was always the people hearing it.

A teacher reads her class a short story about a boy who copied a friend's homework and was found out. The pupils enjoy it. They laugh at the boy's clumsy excuses. Then she closes the book, looks up, and says nothing for a moment. Three pupils at the back go very still. They know whose homework she marked last night.

That silence after the story is what this ayah creates. Every reader of the Quran has felt it. We read of Pharaoh, of the people of Lot, of the owners of the garden, and we feel safely distant. Then the text turns and says these.

The lesson is not to read the Quran's stories as history about other people. Each one ends, sooner or later, with the book closed and the teacher looking up. The honest question is always: where am I in this story, and what am I saying?

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.