Al-Qamar · Makki · ayah 47 of 55

Al-Qamar 54:47

إِنَّ ٱلْمُجْرِمِينَ فِى ضَلَـٰلٍ وَسُعُرٍ

“Indeed, the criminals are in error and madness.[1588].”

Saheeh International

Essence

The very words Thamūd once threw at their prophet, error and madness, come back to describe those who gather harm against themselves.

A reflection

The insult that came home

A teenager tells her mother that her rules are mad, that she has lost touch with the world. Twenty years later, the same woman hears her own daughter say the same words to her, almost exactly. She laughs, and then she goes quiet. The sentence has come round.

In this surah, Thamūd rejected their prophet with a phrase. Shall we follow a single man from among us? Then we would indeed be fī ḍalālin wa-suʿur: in error and madness (54:24). Now, twenty-three ayat later, the identical phrase returns. Inna al-mujrimīna fī ḍalālin wa-suʿur. The words they used against the warner are used, exactly, about the deniers.

One classical commentator explains Thamūd's line in a way that sharpens the echo. Ṣāliḥ used to tell them: if you do not follow me, you will be in error and in fires. They turned his words back on him: if we follow you, we would be in what you say. He also records the other sense of suʿur: madness, as a camel that runs as if crazed is called masʿūra.

So the phrase has travelled. A prophet's warning was thrown back at him as an insult. Now the Quran lays it, word for word, on those who threw it.

There is a quiet justice in that. Nothing new is invented against them. They are simply handed back their own words, now true of the people who spoke them. The surah's listeners in Makkah would have heard the echo at once, because they had just heard the phrase in Thamūd's mouth.

This is a pattern worth noticing in ourselves. The faults we are quickest to accuse others of often describe us. Mockery of the sincere as naive, of the careful as fearful, of the devout as unhinged, has a way of coming home.

Before you next call someone foolish for their faith or their caution, pause. Ask whether the word might one day be read back about you. Then choose a kinder one.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.