As-Saf · Madani · ayah 3 of 14

As-Saf 61:3

كَبُرَ مَقْتًا عِندَ ٱللَّهِ أَن تَقُولُوا۟ مَا لَا تَفْعَلُونَ

“Greatly hateful in the sight of Allāh is that you say what you do not do.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The verdict on the previous question arrives in one word, maqt, the Quran's name for the fiercest hatred there is, and it is handed down against something this ordinary.

A reflection

A word a custom was once named after

Maqt is not the lexicons' word for ordinary dislike. It names the fiercest hatred there is, reserved for a deed so foul that the loathing attaches itself to the act rather than to a person's face or temperament. Before Islam, one particular custom carried this very word as its name: a man marrying his father's widow after the father died was called nikah al-maqt, the marriage of hatred, because the practice itself was so despised that it needed no further description once this single word was attached to it. The word did not describe an emotion in passing. It was a verdict, built into the name of the thing.

That is the register this ayah reaches for, over something that looks, on the surface, almost unremarkable: saying something you do not then do. Most people would file an unfulfilled promise under carelessness, forgetfulness, or at worst a minor social failing, the kind of thing a shrug and an apology usually settles. The Quran places it instead beside a word once reserved for a practice an entire society found genuinely repugnant.

The mismatch is the point. A reader who thinks they already know how seriously to take broken words is being handed a correction, in a single loaded word, before the ayah even finishes its sentence. The weight is not added by tone or exclamation. It is built into which word was chosen, and which word was left unused.

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.