Ar-Rahman · Madani · ayah 43 of 78

Ar-Rahman 55:43

هَـٰذِهِۦ جَهَنَّمُ ٱلَّتِى يُكَذِّبُ بِهَا ٱلْمُجْرِمُونَ

“This is Hell, which the criminals deny.”

Saheeh International

Essence

"This is Hell": a pointing finger, not a distant rumour, and the verb for what the criminals do to it is the refrain's own.

A reflection

"This": the word that brings it close

Most people hold Hell at a distance in their minds. It is somewhere else, at the end of a long road, a subject for sermons rather than a place. Even believers who have no doubt about it tend to picture it as far off.

The ayah begins with one word that refuses that distance: hādhihi. This. This is Hell.

It is a pointing word. You do not say "this" of something over the horizon. You say it of something in front of you.

One classical commentary draws exactly that out. The plainest reading, it says, is that the description of the forelocks and feet is complete. Then "this is Hell" is said because of its nearness. It is as when someone says: here is Zayd, he has arrived, meaning he has come close. Hell, which the criminals deny, is here, not far from them.

The same commentary notices the tense. The ayah does not say "which the criminals denied". It says yukadhdhibu, which they deny, in the present. If the sentence were only spoken to them on that Day, it notes, it would naturally be past tense. On that Day no one is still denying. A later commentary adds that the present tense marks the denial as continuous: a habit, not a single moment.

So the ayah carries two pieces of present time into a scene about the end. The Hell is near. The denial is now.

That is the opposite of the comfortable reading. Hell is not only the place someone else goes, someday. It is the thing being denied, today, by people who think it far away.

Read the ayah with your finger, so to speak, pointing. This. Then ask what in your own life is close and being denied.

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.