Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 41 of 165

Al-An'am 6:41

بَلْ إِيَّاهُ تَدْعُونَ فَيَكْشِفُ مَا تَدْعُونَ إِلَيْهِ إِن شَآءَ وَتَنسَوْنَ مَا تُشْرِكُونَ

“No, it is Him [alone] you would invoke, and He would remove that for which you invoked Him if He willed, and you would forget what you associate [with Him].”

Saheeh International

Essence

In danger, Him alone is called; He lifts the harm if He wills, and the partners are left behind like forgotten things.

A reflection

The vending machine and the word 'if'

An office worker feeds coins into a vending machine and presses the button. Nothing drops. He presses again, harder. Then he shakes the machine and walks off muttering. He paid, so it owed him.

Many of us pray as if Allah were that machine. A request goes in, and an answer should come out. When it does not, we shake the machine, or walk away from it.

This ayah contains two small words that end that picture. 'He removes what you call Him for, if He wills.' The removal is real, and it is His. But it is not owed. One classical commentator raises the obvious question. Elsewhere Allah says: 'Call on Me, I will answer you' (40:60). How do the two fit? Sometimes, he answers, Allah states the answer firmly, and sometimes He ties it to His will. A later commentator adds that every acceptance of prayer, for anyone, rests on His will.

That shrinks the ego in a healthy way. We are not customers holding a receipt. We are servants asking a King who is also the Most Merciful. The 'if' does not make Him capricious. It means His knowledge of what is good for us is larger than ours.

Does God need the 'if' to feel powerful? He needs nothing. The word is not there to display power. It is there to protect us: from treating Him as a mechanism, and from despair when the answer is not the one we asked for.

The Prophet ﷺ gave the practical side. A person's prayer is answered as long as he is not hasty, saying: I prayed and was not answered (Sahih al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim). That haste is exactly the vending-machine spirit.

So keep asking. Let the 'if' rest with Him. It is the safest word in the ayah, because it sits in the hands of the One who knows.

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.