Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 31 of 165

Al-An'am 6:31

قَدْ خَسِرَ ٱلَّذِينَ كَذَّبُوا۟ بِلِقَآءِ ٱللَّهِ ۖ حَتَّىٰٓ إِذَا جَآءَتْهُمُ ٱلسَّاعَةُ بَغْتَةً قَالُوا۟ يَـٰحَسْرَتَنَا عَلَىٰ مَا فَرَّطْنَا فِيهَا وَهُمْ يَحْمِلُونَ أَوْزَارَهُمْ عَلَىٰ ظُهُورِهِمْ ۚ أَلَا سَآءَ مَا يَزِرُونَ

“Those will have lost who deny the meeting with Allāh, until when the Hour [of resurrection] comes upon them unexpectedly, they will say, "Oh, [how great is] our regret over what we neglected concerning it [i.e., the Hour]," while they bear their burdens [i.e., sins] on their backs. Unquestionably, evil is that which they bear.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Those who deny the meeting with Allah have already lost the deal, and learn it when the Hour arrives with their loads on their backs.

A reflection

Capital and profit, both gone

At fifty-five a man cashes in his pension early and buys a sailing boat. Two summers are glorious. Then the mooring fees climb and his knees stiffen. He sells the boat at a loss to a younger couple. The pension is spent and the boat is gone. He has neither.

The ayah opens with a market word. The lexicons place the root of khasira in trade: the shrinking of the capital a merchant started with. One commentary draws the conclusion. There is no loss without a sale already made. So the ayah implies a deal: faith was sold, and denial was bought with it.

Another commentary sets out the accounts. A person is given capital: a life, a body, senses and a mind able to think. They are given to gather what lasts, such as knowledge of Allah, good character and deeds that outlive the doer. Spend them only on pleasures that end, and at the close of life the capital is gone. So is the profit, because it was made of things that end too. Nothing remains of either.

That is the pension and the boat, on the scale of a whole life.

Notice the tense. Qad khasira: they have lost, and the word qad makes it certain. Even while they were trading, the ledger was already in the red. The Hour does not cause the loss. It reveals it.

Notice too that the ayah never says what they lost. Not money, not family, not standing. The loss is left without an object, as if everything sat inside it.

For the reader this is an audit, not a sermon. Every day spends capital. Ask what each hour bought, and whether the purchase will exist when the hour is gone. A prayer, a kindness, a child taught well: these outlast the spender. They are the only profit that survives the closing of the books.

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.