Al-An'am · Makki · ayah 98 of 165

Al-An'am 6:98

وَهُوَ ٱلَّذِىٓ أَنشَأَكُم مِّن نَّفْسٍ وَٰحِدَةٍ فَمُسْتَقَرٌّ وَمُسْتَوْدَعٌ ۗ قَدْ فَصَّلْنَا ٱلْـَٔايَـٰتِ لِقَوْمٍ يَفْقَهُونَ

“And it is He who produced you from one soul and [gave you] a place of dwelling and of storage.[331] We have detailed the signs for a people who understand.”

Saheeh International

Essence

After the seeds, the dawn and the stars, the next sign is you: grown from one soul, and held in trust.

A reflection

Our family does not marry outside

He is the One who brought you into being from a single soul. The pronoun is plural: you, all of you. Every nation, every family name, every complexion and accent traces back, the ayah says, to one.

Picture a wedding where an uncle leans over to a guest from the other family. He says, smiling, 'Of course, our family does not usually marry outside.' He means it as a compliment to his own line. The guest smiles back politely. Somewhere behind both of them, the One who made every line from a single soul is not impressed by either.

The ego loves a lineage. It is one of the oldest forms of pride: my tribe, my caste, my country, my surname. This ayah takes the ground from under all of it in four words. One soul. Whatever you are proud of in your ancestry, you share its root with the person you look down on.

That should humble us, and it should also free us. A person who knows he comes from one soul does not need to defend a family name as if his worth depended on it. His worth comes from the One who made the first soul, not from the branches that followed.

A sceptic may ask whether a God who reminds people that He made them all is simply asserting His authority over them. But He gains nothing from the reminder; He is free of all need (35:15). We gain everything from it. It turns strangers into relatives, and it makes contempt for any human being a form of self-contempt.

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.