At-Tur · Makki · ayah 15 of 49

At-Tur 52:15

أَفَسِحْرٌ هَـٰذَآ أَمْ أَنتُمْ لَا تُبْصِرُونَ

“Then is this magic, or do you not see?”

Saheeh International

Essence

They called the truth a trick all their lives; now they are asked whether the Fire is a trick too, or whether the fault was always in their own eyes.

A reflection

Both exits closed

A club chess player loses a game he was sure he was winning. Afterwards his opponent runs it through a computer engine, which shows the exact move where he blundered. He looks at the screen and shakes his head. The engine doesn't understand my plan, he says. A minute later: anyway, the lighting in that hall was terrible.

A classical theologian explains the logic of this ayah with great precision. When someone sees a thing and it is not as it appears, he says, the error must come from one of two places. Either something is wrong with the thing seen, or something is wrong with the one seeing. So the question has two halves. A-fa-siḥrun hādhā: is this magic, is the thing itself an illusion? Am antum lā tubṣirūn: or is there a fault in your sight? The question denies both. What you see is real, and you are seeing it clearly. What you used to say was false is true.

Those are the two exits every denial uses. Blame the evidence: it was edited, staged, misunderstood. Or blame the eyes: I was tired, biased, not in the right frame of mind. Most of us use one or the other whenever reality contradicts something we want to believe.

The chess player used both in one minute. The engine was wrong; the lighting was bad. What he could not say was the simplest sentence: I made a mistake.

On the Day this ayah describes, both exits are closed. The deniers cannot call the Fire a trick, and they cannot claim their eyes deceive them. They are left with the simplest sentence too late.

The mercy is that we can say it now. Think of one area where you keep blaming the evidence or your circumstances. Today, try the simplest sentence instead, to Allah and to yourself.

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.