Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 81 of 165

Al-An'am 6:81

وَكَيْفَ أَخَافُ مَآ أَشْرَكْتُمْ وَلَا تَخَافُونَ أَنَّكُمْ أَشْرَكْتُم بِٱللَّهِ مَا لَمْ يُنَزِّلْ بِهِۦ عَلَيْكُمْ سُلْطَـٰنًا ۚ فَأَىُّ ٱلْفَرِيقَيْنِ أَحَقُّ بِٱلْأَمْنِ ۖ إِن كُنتُمْ تَعْلَمُونَ

“And how should I fear what you associate while you do not fear that you have associated with Allāh that for which He has not sent down to you any authority? So which of the two parties has more right to security, if you should know?"”

Saheeh International

Essence

Ibrahim turns his people's threat round: they fear what cannot harm, feel safe about what should alarm them, and have no warrant for either.

A reflection

Afraid of the spider, texting at the wheel

Ibrahim's people had warned him to fear their gods. He answers with a question that turns the warning round. How should I fear what you have associated, when you do not fear that you have associated partners with Allah?

One classical commentator puts the inversion in a single line. You deny me security where security belongs, and allow yourselves security where fear belongs. Fear and calm are both present in that crowd. They are simply in the wrong places.

Picture a man who will not sleep in the spare room because a large house spider lives behind the wardrobe. He has stood on a chair with a glass and a postcard for twenty minutes. The same man drives to work each morning reading messages at seventy miles an hour. The spider cannot hurt him. The phone in his hand nearly has, twice. His fear is real. It is just pointed at the wrong thing.

Ibrahim's people were in the same position. They trembled before carved figures that, as one commentary says, cannot see, hear, harm or help. Meanwhile they felt nothing about the thing that should have shaken them. They had set beside the Maker of the heavens and the earth something He Himself had made.

The ayah does not ask anyone to feel more fear in general. It asks for fear and calm to be moved to their proper places. Many anxious lives are not over-frightened. They are wrongly frightened. A heart that fears Allah rightly is freed from a hundred lesser dreads, because it has seen what those dreads are worth.

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.