At-Taghabun · Madani · ayah 11 of 18

At-Taghabun 64:11

مَآ أَصَابَ مِن مُّصِيبَةٍ إِلَّا بِإِذْنِ ٱللَّهِ ۗ وَمَن يُؤْمِنۢ بِٱللَّهِ يَهْدِ قَلْبَهُۥ ۚ وَٱللَّهُ بِكُلِّ شَىْءٍ عَلِيمٌ

“No disaster strikes except by permission of Allāh. And whoever believes in Allāh - He will guide his heart. And Allāh is Knowing of all things.”

Saheeh International

Essence

No calamity moves without first being granted leave, and belief does not stop the calamity; it guides the heart to what to do once it has already arrived.

A reflection

Not random, and not yours to carry alone

Idhn is permission, leave granted, the word used when something that could have acted on its own instead waits to be let through. Nothing in this ayah is described as slipping past that permission unnoticed. Every calamity that lands, however small, however senseless it looks from the inside, first passed through the same granting that governs galaxies.

This is a genuinely heavy claim to sit with, and the ego's first reaction to it is rarely gratitude. Most people, quietly, would rather believe their suffering is either their own fault entirely, something they can fix by trying harder, or pure accident, something nobody is responsible for and nobody needs to be humble in front of. Both of those postures leave the sufferer still at the centre, either blaming themselves with a controlling pride that insists they should have been able to prevent it, or standing alone in a universe answerable to no one. This ayah quietly removes both postures. The calamity was never fully yours to have prevented, and it was never ownerless either.

That is not a small adjustment to make. Letting go of the assumption that you were supposed to have controlled what happened to you, or that it happened to you for no reason at all, asks something real of the self-importance most people build their coping around. What is offered in exchange is not an explanation, which this ayah pointedly does not supply, but something closer to company: whatever just happened was received into a permission that is neither careless nor arbitrary, held by the one witness who was never confused about any of it, even while you remain completely in the dark.

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.