Al-Waqi'ah · Makki · ayah 51 of 96

Al-Waqi'ah 56:51

ثُمَّ إِنَّكُمْ أَيُّهَا ٱلضَّآلُّونَ ٱلْمُكَذِّبُونَ

“Then indeed you, O those astray [who are] deniers,”

Saheeh International

Essence

The surah has been speaking about them for ten ayat, and here it turns and says you.

A reflection

The sentence that turns and points

There is a moment in a choir rehearsal that nobody enjoys. The conductor stops the whole piece, turns to one section, and sings their line back to them. Not unkindly. Just accurately. Forty people have been hiding inside a sound, and for ten seconds one group is not inside it any more.

That is what this ayah does, and it is easy to read straight past.

Count back through the passage. They were, before that, indulged (56:45). They used to tie themselves to the great wrong (56:46). They used to say (56:47). All third person. A report about other people, which is a comfortable grammatical position to read from.

Then: then indeed you.

The commentaries note that the address runs on from the previous instruction to say, so the Prophet is to deliver this directly. One of them says the particle at the start carries either a lapse of time or a step up in rank. Either way the turn is deliberate and the sequence is building.

And one commentary makes a point about the scope that should stop any reader from relaxing. Some commentators, it says, take the address as being to the people of Mecca. But the apparent sense is that it is general, to every astray denier.

So this is not a historical aside about a tribe. It is an address with a description in place of a name, and anybody who fits the description is standing in it.

That is worth sitting in for a moment rather than hurrying past, which is what the surah intends. The entire first half was about three groups of people somewhere else. This is the ayah where the Quran stops describing and turns round.

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.