Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 37 of 165

Al-An'am 6:37

وَقَالُوا۟ لَوْلَا نُزِّلَ عَلَيْهِ ءَايَةٌ مِّن رَّبِّهِۦ ۚ قُلْ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ قَادِرٌ عَلَىٰٓ أَن يُنَزِّلَ ءَايَةً وَلَـٰكِنَّ أَكْثَرَهُمْ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ

“And they say, "Why has a sign not been sent down to him from his Lord?" Say, "Indeed, Allāh is Able to send down a sign, but most of them do not know."”

Saheeh International

Essence

Asked for a sign on demand, the reply affirms Allah's power in one line, then points to a wisdom most never look for.

A reflection

The candidate who brought his own questions

A young man arrives for an interview for a job he badly wants. Before the panel can begin, he slides a sheet across the table. It lists the questions he is willing to answer. The panel looks at the sheet, then at each other. Nobody needs to say what has gone wrong.

The leaders of Quraysh did something like this. They did not refuse evidence outright. They wrote the terms of the evidence themselves. They asked why no sign had been sent down to him from his Lord. By a sign, the commentaries explain, they meant a wonder of their own choosing. Elsewhere the Quran records their list. A spring bursting from the ground, a garden of palms, a house of gold, a climb into the sky (17:90-93).

The reply is one line long. 'Say: Allah is able to send down a sign.' The word is qādir. Its root is measure: every thing given its exact amount and limit, by One with the power to give it, for a reason. His power was never really in question. One classical commentator notes that nobody who accepted His existence ever disputed it. What they did not know was His wisdom.

That is the quiet blow to the ego. We tend to treat God as a candidate who must pass our interview. We set the questions, the timetable and the pass mark. The ayah turns the table round. He is the One who measures, not the one measured. He sends what He sends in its measure, at its time.

Someone may ask whether this is pride on God's part. Is He refusing simply because He can? The commentaries answer that the refusal was mercy towards the askers, as the reflections below explain. He gains nothing from being believed, and loses nothing from being doubted. The only loser is the candidate who never lets the interview begin.

Humility here is not silence. It is letting the One who made the questions ask 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.