Adh-Dhariyat · Makki · ayah 46 of 60

Adh-Dhariyat 51:46

وَقَوْمَ نُوحٍ مِّن قَبْلُ ۖ إِنَّهُمْ كَانُوا۟ قَوْمًا فَـٰسِقِينَ

“And [We destroyed] the people of Noah before; indeed, they were a people defiantly disobedient.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The list of ruined peoples ends with the oldest, Nuh's people, named by a word for stepping outside: a whole society that slipped its bounds.

A reflection

The date that bursts its skin

Fāsiq is usually translated 'defiantly disobedient', 'rebellious' or 'immoral'. Those are all fair. But the first hearers heard something more physical in it, and the lexicons record the picture as established.

The Arabs said that a fresh date fasaqat when it burst out of its skin. The flesh that should have stayed inside its covering split through and came out. They also called the mouse fuwaysiqa, 'little fāsiq', because it slips out of its hole to spoil the food and stores. One lexicon adds a striking note: nobody had heard fāsiq used of a person in pre-Islamic poetry. The Quran took an old picture of 'coming out' and gave it its moral meaning.

So a fāsiq is someone who has come out of where they belong. Out of the boundary, out of obedience, out of the covering that kept them whole. The commentaries explain this ayah in just those terms: Nuh's people were 'outside the obedience of Allah', 'going against His command'.

Imagine a mouse in an old house. All day the pantry is quiet. Then at night it slips through a gap behind the skirting board, crosses the floor, and nibbles a corner of the flour sack. Then it goes back. The next night, it comes a little further. Nobody notices for weeks. Then one morning the whole sack is spoiled.

That is the shape of fisq in a life. It is rarely one dramatic leap. It is slipping out, a little at a time, and each time going a little further from the hole.

The good news hidden in the image is that slipping out implies a place to slip back to. The boundary is still there. The covering still exists. A person who has stepped outside can still turn round. That is what Nuh called his people to, for a very long time.

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.