At-Tur · Makki · ayah 30 of 49

At-Tur 52:30

أَمْ يَقُولُونَ شَاعِرٌ نَّتَرَبَّصُ بِهِۦ رَيْبَ ٱلْمَنُونِ

“Or do they say [of you], "A poet for whom we await a misfortune of time"?[1557]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Unable to answer him, they called him a poet and waited for time to kill him; the message outlived them all.

A reflection

When they cannot answer, they wait

This ayah records a strategy, and an old one. The commentaries preserve a report about the meeting where it was born. The leaders of Quraysh gathered in their council house to decide what to do about the Prophet ﷺ. One of them said: tie him up, then wait for him the accident of time, until he dies as the poets before him died. He is only one of them.

A classical commentator explained the logic. The Arabs were careful not to provoke poets, he said, because a poet's words were memorised and spread. So they reasoned: we will not confront him now, in case his words defeat us. Our way is patience. We will wait for his death.

It is the strategy of those who cannot win the argument. They do not engage the message. They wait for the messenger to go away.

Picture an old firm with a new operations manager. He arrives with a list of reforms: honest pricing, faster repairs, no hidden charges. At board meetings, nobody can answer his figures. So the senior directors stop arguing. In the corridor one says to another: his contract ends in two years. We just have to wait.

That is tarabbuṣ. Not a debate, a delay. It is often more dangerous than open opposition, because it looks like peace.

The Quran names the strategy out loud, and that alone weakens it. Once you have heard the opponents say 'we are waiting for him to die', you understand that they had no answer. If they had one, they would have given it.

And the waiting failed. The man they waited for did die, as every human does. But the message did not die with him, as a poet's fame might. It is still recited aloud in prayer every day. The accident of time took the waiters. The words remained.

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.