Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 26 of 165

Al-An'am 6:26

وَهُمْ يَنْهَوْنَ عَنْهُ وَيَنْـَٔوْنَ عَنْهُ ۖ وَإِن يُهْلِكُونَ إِلَّآ أَنفُسَهُمْ وَمَا يَشْعُرُونَ

“And they prevent [others] from him and are [themselves] remote from him. And they do not destroy except themselves, but they perceive [it] not.”

Saheeh International

Essence

They hold others back from the message and keep their own distance from it, and the ruin they work lands only on themselves, unfelt.

A reflection

A trench dug to keep the rain away

The second verb in this ayah is yanʾawna: they keep far away. The lexicons give its root a picture from desert life. Around each tent the Arabs dug a nuʾy, a small trench or bank. Its job was to turn the rainwater aside so that it would not run into the tent. That image is established in the dictionaries.

The same root describes a proud man who naʾā bi-jānibihi. He swung his flank away, putting distance between himself and the one speaking to him.

Put the two pictures together and the ayah opens up. The Quran was being recited in the streets of Makkah. Its hearers did not merely disagree with it. They dug a ditch around themselves so that none of it would reach them. They kept their distance, and they turned the shoulder.

A gardener lays black plastic sheeting under a new gravel path, to keep the weeds down. Pleased with the result, he runs the same sheet under the rose bed beside it. Through a wet summer the rain drums on the plastic and slides off into the drain. By August the roses are dead of thirst, in the wettest summer he can remember.

That is the quiet tragedy of the trench. The water it turns away is the very water the tent needed. Nothing in the ditch hates the rain. It simply makes sure the rain goes somewhere else.

Most of us have a trench of some kind. It may be a habit of slipping out before the reminder at the end of a gathering. It may be the reflex that scrolls past any ayah that seems aimed at us. It may be a light, ironic tone that keeps every serious word at arm's length.

The ayah invites a plain question. Where have I dug my nuʾy? What is running off my roof that was sent to soak in?

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.