Adh-Dhariyat · Makki · ayah 9 of 60

Adh-Dhariyat 51:9

يُؤْفَكُ عَنْهُ مَنْ أُفِكَ

“Deluded away from it [i.e., the Qur’ān] is he who is deluded.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Only the one truly turned is turned away: a message this clear loses only those who have flipped themselves to face away.

A reflection

The signpost turned round

On a country road one night, someone twists a wooden signpost so that it points the wrong way. The next morning a driver who does not know the area reaches the junction and reads the sign. She turns confidently towards a village twenty miles off course. She is not careless. She is following a sign that has been flipped.

The verb in this ayah, yuʾfaku, carries that picture. One lexicon gives the root a single origin: turning a thing over and away from its proper direction. Another says ifk is anything turned from the face it ought to have. The overturned towns of Lut are called al-muʾtafika, the upturned. Winds that change their quarter were muʾtafikāt. This picture is established in the classical sources.

So ifk is not simply a lie. A near-synonym lexicon notes that it is not any falsehood but a monstrous one, like lying about Allah. It is a falsehood that turns reality upside down, so that a person faces exactly away from where they should.

The commentaries explain the ayah as being turned away from belief in the Prophet ﷺ and the Quran. Turned away, as the commentaries explain, by talk that keeps flipping its own signposts. Poet, sorcerer, madman: each label points a different wrong way.

The danger of a flipped sign is that you can follow it in good faith. That is why the believer is asked not only to walk, but to check the signs. Where did this idea about faith come from? Who turned this post, and which way was it facing before?

Perhaps something you believe about Allah feels upside down: harsh where He is merciful, trivial where He is serious. Then go back to the junction. Read the original sign, the Quran itself, before you drive another mile.

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.