Ar-Rahman · Madani · ayah 21 of 78

Ar-Rahman 55:21

فَبِأَىِّ ءَالَآءِ رَبِّكُمَا تُكَذِّبَانِ

“So which of the favors of your Lord would you deny?”

Saheeh International

Essence

The fourth time, the question follows a barrier no one sees, and asks about favours that look like nothing: the flood that never came.

A reflection

The protection you did not install

A man shows a visitor round his new house. Cameras on every corner, an alarm linked to his phone, a safe bolted to the floor, three kinds of insurance. He feels, he says, completely protected. He has thought of everything.

He has not thought of the sea. Nobody does. The commentaries on the ayat just before this refrain describe what it protects us from without our noticing. One early reading says the barrier holds the salt from the sweet and the sweet from the salt. It holds the water from the dry land, and the dry land from the water. None encroaches on another, it adds, by His power, His gentleness and His majesty. Another early reading says simply: they do not overrun you and drown you.

That is the favour this fourth refrain asks about. Not something received. Something held back.

It is hard on the ego, because the ego counts its own precautions. The cameras, the policies, the savings, the careful plans. All of them sit on top of protections we never installed and could never maintain. The sea kept off the land, the river kept sweet, the ground kept still beneath the house with all its alarms.

So the question lands with particular force here. The favours you can see, you might at least remember. The ones you cannot see, the floods that did not come, you will never even count unless the refrain makes you.

He needs no thanks for them (35:15). But a person who knows how much is being held back sleeps differently from one who thinks the alarm system is doing it.

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.