Al-Munafiqun · Madani · ayah 8 of 11

Al-Munafiqun 63:8

يَقُولُونَ لَئِن رَّجَعْنَآ إِلَى ٱلْمَدِينَةِ لَيُخْرِجَنَّ ٱلْأَعَزُّ مِنْهَا ٱلْأَذَلَّ ۚ وَلِلَّهِ ٱلْعِزَّةُ وَلِرَسُولِهِۦ وَلِلْمُؤْمِنِينَ وَلَـٰكِنَّ ٱلْمُنَـٰفِقِينَ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ

“They say, "If we return to al-Madīnah, the more honored [for power] will surely expel therefrom the more humble." And to Allāh belongs [all] honor, and to His Messenger, and to the believers, but the hypocrites do not know.”

Saheeh International

Essence

He boasted the mighty would expel the lowly, and within days his own son made him stand at the gate and confess, in those exact words, which one he was.

A reflection

Hard ground and a trodden path

ʿIzzah and dhillah are built as a deliberate pair in the Arabs' own language, and the lexicons are explicit that the opposition is not accidental. ʿAzīz is rooted in ʿazāz, hard, solid ground that nothing can easily beat down or wear a path across. Dhull names its opposite: ground so soft and so often walked over that it has been flattened into a track, and the same root describes a dābbah dhalūl, an animal thoroughly broken in, tamed to the point of offering no resistance at all to whoever leads it.

This is a sharper picture than mere social rank. ʿIzzah is not simply being respected. It is being the kind of ground nobody can press flat no matter how many times they try. Dhillah is not simply low status. It is having already been walked over so often that walking over you no longer meets any resistance whatsoever.

Ibn Ubayy's boast assumed his own faction stood on the hard ground and the believers on the trodden path, soon to be driven out like livestock led wherever its handler wished. The ayah's reply inverts the entire picture rather than merely disputing the head-count behind it: ʿizzah belongs to Allah, His Messenger, and the believers, full stop, regardless of which faction currently holds the larger crowd in Madinah. Ground does not become hard because more people happen to be standing on it. A path does not stop being trodden because the one walking it insists otherwise.

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.