Al-Qamar · Makki · ayah 49 of 55

Al-Qamar 54:49

إِنَّا كُلَّ شَىْءٍ خَلَقْنَـٰهُ بِقَدَرٍ

“Indeed, all things We created with predestination.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Into an argument about fate came one sentence: nothing in creation is accidental, for every single thing was measured before it was made.

A reflection

Nothing unmeasured, including you

A violin maker spends an afternoon on one small dowel of spruce, the sound post that sits hidden inside the instrument. He shaves it, tests it, shaves again. Half a millimetre too long and the violin chokes. Half a millimetre too short and it rattles. Nobody who hears the concert will ever see it. It is measured anyway.

Innā kulla shayʾin khalaqnāhu bi-qadar: indeed, every thing We created, We created with measure. One classical commentator gives a sharp picture of what this rules out. Allah did not create anything without measuring it, like an archer who shoots and the arrow lands somewhere he never intended. Everything came as He measured it. The small thing could have been made large, and the large small. Its size was chosen.

Another commentator reads qadar as a measure fixed and written before the thing came to be. Another, citing an early authority, says Allah measured for each created thing the measure that befits it. A modern commentary gathers it together: by a measure decreed beforehand, according to His knowledge and will.

This is majesty, and it brings the ego down to size. We live inside measures we did not set. Our height, our lifespan, the century and street we were born into, the number of breaths in a day. Pride imagines it chose its own dimensions. It did not.

Is Allah boasting by saying so? He needs no one's recognition. The statement is for us, and it is, oddly, a comfort. If every thing is measured, then so are you. You were not thrown. You were shaped to a size, a time and a task.

Tonight, look at your own hand for a moment: the length of each finger, the lines on the palm. Say: You measured this. Then thank Him for the measure.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.