An-Najm · Makki · ayah 24 of 62

An-Najm 53:24

أَمْ لِلْإِنسَـٰنِ مَا تَمَنَّىٰ

“Or is there for man whatever he wishes?”

Saheeh International

Essence

A wish is a picture you paint inside your own head, and the world does not have to hang it on its wall.

A reflection

Furnishing a house you do not own

A woman waits for her bus outside an estate agent's window. One photograph catches her: a terraced house with a green door. By the time the bus comes, she has painted the kitchen, chosen the curtains, and decided which room is the study. She has never seen the inside. She cannot afford the deposit. But for six minutes she lived there.

That is tamannī exactly. The lexicons trace the root to measuring out. A weight on the scales was called a manā. Death is maniyya, the term measured out for every life. And to wish, tamannā, is to measure a thing out in your own mind and picture it there. One lexicon adds a sharp note: most wishing is guesswork, so it sits close to lying, because it pictures what has no reality.

Now hear the ayah. Am lil-insāni mā tamannā: 'Or is it that the human being gets whatever he wishes?' The am here carries the force of 'no, rather', and a question that expects no. The commentaries agree on the answer it demands. It is not so.

The idol-worshippers had measured out a whole future in their heads. Their idols would intercede for them. The angels were God's daughters, and so on their side. The next world would treat them as kindly as this one had. All of it was furnished, curtained and painted. None of it was real.

The ayah does not mock the human habit of wishing. It names a confusion. A picture in the mind feels like possession. Six minutes outside an estate agent's window can feel like ownership. The danger is in building a life, or an afterlife, as if the picture were the house.

The same root that names wishing also names the decree. What is actually measured out for us is measured by Someone else.

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.