Qaf · Makki · ayah 22 of 45

Qaf 50:22

لَّقَدْ كُنتَ فِى غَفْلَةٍ مِّنْ هَـٰذَا فَكَشَفْنَا عَنكَ غِطَآءَكَ فَبَصَرُكَ ٱلْيَوْمَ حَدِيدٌ

“[It will be said], "You were certainly in unmindfulness of this, and We have removed from you your cover,[1531] so your sight, this Day, is sharp."”

Saheeh International

Essence

What you lived inside without noticing is uncovered in an instant, and an eye dull for a lifetime turns sharp as iron.

A reflection

Crossing a desert with no waymarks

A man has driven the same route to work for nine years, sat-nav always on. One morning the screen freezes at a roundabout. He realises he cannot name a single road on his own commute. He has passed them all thousands of times. He has never once looked.

The ayah's word for that state is ghafla. The lexicons give it a desert picture. Open land with no waymarks was ghufl. So was a camel that bore no brand, and a man not yet marked by experience. Anything left unmarked was ghufl, as though no one had noticed it. One lexicon defines ghafla as a lapse that comes from too little watchfulness.

Notice the shape of the phrase. Not 'you were heedless', but fī ghaflatin: you were in heedlessness. One commentary points out that the person is placed inside it, and the word is left open-ended. A total heedlessness, like a garment wrapped round you.

Another commentator sets this beside an earlier ayah of the surah. There the deniers were in labs, a tangle of confusion about the new creation (50:15). Heedlessness, he says, goes further. The confused person at least has the question tangled in front of him. The heedless person has it screened from his heart altogether.

That is a sobering ranking. Doubt is not the worst state. Not noticing is. A life can pass with Allah's signs all around it, unmarked, like a desert crossed with no waymarks.

So set up some waymarks of your own. Something that interrupts the sat-nav of habit. A pause before eating to say whose food it is. A moment at sunset to notice the day has ended. Small brands on the camel, so the days stop blurring into one.

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.