Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 113 of 165

Al-An'am 6:113

وَلِتَصْغَىٰٓ إِلَيْهِ أَفْـِٔدَةُ ٱلَّذِينَ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ بِٱلْـَٔاخِرَةِ وَلِيَرْضَوْهُ وَلِيَقْتَرِفُوا۟ مَا هُم مُّقْتَرِفُونَ

“And [it is] so the hearts of those who disbelieve in the Hereafter will incline toward it [i.e., deceptive speech] and that they will be satisfied with it and that they will commit that which they are committing.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Gilded speech works in three steps, a heart tilting, then pleased, then earning by it, and the hinge is forgetting the Hereafter.

A reflection

Lean, approve, act: the three steps of being persuaded

A care worker on a night shift is making tea at three in the morning. A colleague mentions, lightly, that everyone rounds their timesheet up by half an hour. The agency never checks. She does not agree. She only asks how it works.

A month later she is defending it to a new starter. They underpay us anyway, she says, so it is only fair. By spring she is rounding up a full hour, and she has stopped noticing.

The ayah lays out that slide in the order it happens. First the hearts tilt towards the gilded speech: wa-li-taṣghā ilayhi afʾidatu. Then they are pleased with it: wa-li-yarḍawhu. Then they earn whatever they earn: wa-li-yaqtarifū. Lean, approve, act.

One classical scholar reads this ayah with the one before it as naming four aims of the whisperers. They deceive the listener, win the tilt of his heart, make him love what he hears, and move him to act on it. Notice where the contest is decided. Not at the act, and not even at the approval. It is decided at the tilt, the first small lean of interest, which feels like nothing at all.

That is why the tilt is the cheapest place to stop. At the tea urn, a question still costs nothing to drop. By spring, dropping the habit means admitting that a whole season was wrong. Each step makes the next one feel like consistency rather than a choice.

So the ayah offers a practical diagnostic. When a clever argument for something you would not normally do lands on you, watch the lean. Are you asking how, rather than whether? Are you already rehearsing why it would be fair? Those are the first two verbs of this ayah, happening quietly inside you. The third is never far behind them.

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.