At-Tur · Makki · ayah 13 of 49

At-Tur 52:13

يَوْمَ يُدَعُّونَ إِلَىٰ نَارِ جَهَنَّمَ دَعًّا

“The Day they are thrust toward the fire of Hell with a [violent] thrust, [its angels will say],”

Saheeh International

Essence

Those who shoved the truth away, and shoved the weak aside, will themselves be shoved towards the Fire: the push they gave becomes the push they receive.

A reflection

The push comes back

On a grey morning, an elderly tenant comes back from the shops to find her belongings in black bin bags on the pavement. The locks have been changed. The landlord wanted the flat empty for a higher rent, and he did not bother with the law. Neighbours stand in their doorways, watching her try to lift a bag that is too heavy.

The verb in this ayah is daʿʿa: to push away roughly, with a jolt, with rebuke. Not a refusal. A shove. The lexicons are clear about its force. And the Quran uses it in only one other place. In Sūrat al-Māʿūn, it describes the one who denies the Judgement: he is the one who yaduʿʿu l-yatīm, who shoves the orphan away (107:2). One of the early commentators linked the two ayat directly when explaining this one.

Put them side by side. In this world, there are people who shove: the orphan from his right, the widow from her home, the weak from the queue. On that Day, there are people who are shoved. The same verb, turned around.

One classical scholar describes the logic plainly. The deniers' knowledge was empty talk and their deeds were play, and this way of living required them to push the truth away with harshness and force. So they are pushed into the Fire, shove after shove. What they did becomes what is done to them.

This is not cruelty. It is the shape of justice. A world where those who shove the vulnerable aside are never shoved back would be a world where the orphan's tears count for nothing.

It is also a mirror. Each of us has small ways of shoving: a dismissive word, an elbow in a queue, a person cut off mid-sentence. None of us is a landlord with bin bags, perhaps. But the verb is a warning to watch our hands.

Today, notice one moment when you are about to push someone aside. Step back instead, and let them through.

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.