Muhammad · Madani · ayah 24 of 38

Muhammad 47:24

أَفَلَا يَتَدَبَّرُونَ ٱلْقُرْءَانَ أَمْ عَلَىٰ قُلُوبٍ أَقْفَالُهَآ

“Then do they not reflect upon the Qur’ān, or are there locks upon [their] hearts?”

Saheeh International

Essence

The Qur'an stops mid-verdict to ask why you are not thinking about it, and then names the only other explanation there is.

A reflection

The question you have read past

Almost everyone who knows this ayah has heard it aimed at someone else. It arrives inside a sermon about people who will not listen, and it lands on the row behind. Read in place, it does not work that way. The verdict has already been passed, in the ayah before. This one turns and puts a question to whoever is still reading.

There is a second assumption underneath the first. Tadabbur is often taken to mean volume, pages covered, a juz a day. Or else expertise: the Arabic, the commentaries, the right vocabulary. Neither is what the word says. The question is not how much of the Book has passed in front of you. It is whether any of it was turned over.

Notice what the sentence does not offer. It gives two possibilities and no third. Either there is pondering, or there is something fastened across the heart. No allowance is made for being busy, or tired, or meaning to get to it later. That is uncomfortable by design, and the discomfort is the first honest sign that the question has been read rather than recited.

The easiest thing available to any of us is to meet this ayah, agree with it warmly, and not do it. That is precisely the condition it describes, performed on itself.

The full entry has 7 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.