An-Najm · Makki · ayah 12 of 62

An-Najm 53:12

أَفَتُمَـٰرُونَهُۥ عَلَىٰ مَا يَرَىٰ

“So will you dispute with him over what he saw?”

Saheeh International

Essence

Arguing with a man about what he saw with his own eyes is not a search for truth but a way of milking him dry.

A reflection

An argument that milks the other dry

Tumārūnahu: you dispute with him. The word for this kind of arguing is mirāʾ, and the commentaries trace it to a picture from the herds. Marā al-nāqa: to stroke a she-camel's back and udder so that her milk comes down. One lexicon gives this as the root's first sense. A rider who drew the very last effort from his horse was also said to do it.

So why would arguing be named after milking? One commentator explains: each arguer strokes at the other to draw out what he has, the admission that wins the point. The argument becomes a contest of extraction.

That picture is painfully exact. Picture a couple at eleven at night, still arguing about something that began at dinner. Neither remembers the original point. Each is now trying to draw one thing out of the other: you admit it, say you were wrong. They go round and round, stroking at each other's defences, until both are exhausted and nothing nourishing has come out at all.

That is mirāʾ. Not discussion, not seeking, but milking. And it leaves the other person dry.

The Quran asks the Quraysh: a-fa-tumārūnahu, will you do that to him, over what he saw? They were not trying to understand his experience. They were trying to wring a retraction out of him.

We do this far more than we notice. In marriages, in families, in comment sections, with colleagues. The test is simple. In the middle of an argument, ask what you are trying to get out of the other person. If the honest answer is a surrender rather than an understanding, you are milking, not talking. Stop stroking, and let the conversation rest until you can actually listen.

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.