Al-Ahqaf · Makki · ayah 5 of 35

Al-Ahqaf 46:5

وَمَنْ أَضَلُّ مِمَّن يَدْعُوا۟ مِن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ مَن لَّا يَسْتَجِيبُ لَهُۥٓ إِلَىٰ يَوْمِ ٱلْقِيَـٰمَةِ وَهُمْ عَن دُعَآئِهِمْ غَـٰفِلُونَ

“And who is more astray than he who invokes besides Allāh those who will not respond to him until the Day of Resurrection [i.e., never], and they, of their invocation, are unaware.”

Saheeh International

Essence

No one is more lost than a person who calls out to what cannot answer and does not even know it is being called.

A reflection

A voice sent into an empty house

The root of yadʿū, he calls, is a voice drawing something towards you. The lexicons give homely pictures. When milking, Arabs left a little milk in the udder, called the dāʿiya, to call the next milk down. An empty house was said to have no dāʿī: nobody in it to call out. The picture is established. Duʿāʾ is not a list of wants. It is reaching out with your voice to bring someone near.

Now hear the ayah with that picture. A person reaches out with his voice, again and again, towards something that will never come near. The commentaries put it bluntly: no one is more lost. One explains why. He has abandoned the One who hears, answers, and can bring about every wish. He calls instead on what cannot answer at all.

Picture a widower in a quiet flat who talks every evening to the small speaker on his kitchen counter. He asks it the weather. He asks it to play the songs his wife liked. He says goodnight to it, half joking. It answers in a pleasant voice, and it has no idea he exists. Some nights that is enough. Most nights it makes the flat feel emptier.

The ayah is not mocking his loneliness. It is naming a larger version of it. Whole lives can be spent calling out to things that cannot turn towards us. Money, status, the approval of strangers, an idea of the perfect future. Each gives a pleasant echo. None of them knows our name.

The alternative is close. 'When My servants ask you about Me, I am near. I answer the call of the caller when he calls on Me' (2:186). That is a house with someone in it. Tonight, say one sentence to Him that you have only ever said to an empty room.

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.