Al-Mulk · Makki · ayah 10 of 30

Al-Mulk 67:10

وَقَالُوا۟ لَوْ كُنَّا نَسْمَعُ أَوْ نَعْقِلُ مَا كُنَّا فِىٓ أَصْحَـٰبِ ٱلسَّعِيرِ

“And they will say, "If only we had been listening or reasoning, we would not be among the companions of the Blaze."”

Saheeh International

Essence

They had working ears and sound minds, so the regret is about a hearing that takes hold and a reason that ties you back.

A reflection

They were not deaf and they were not mad

Read quickly, this sounds like people saying they never had a chance. If only we had been able to hear. If only we had been given minds.

The commentaries close that reading off immediately. There is no doubt, one of them says, that they had sound hearing and sound minds. They were not deaf and they were not mad. Whatever the sentence means, it cannot mean that the equipment was missing.

So what were they short of? The sources answer with precision. Had we been hearing the warning with the hearing of someone seeking the truth, one writes. Or understanding it with the understanding of someone who reflects. Another: with the hearing of one who takes in and considers. Another reads it as hearing guidance, or understanding it so as to act on it.

And the Arabic word for hearing already contains all of that. Samʿ is a sound caught by the ear and let into the heart. The root runs from taking in a sound, through understanding it, to obeying it. That is why believers say samiʿnā wa-aṭaʿnā: we have heard and obeyed. In Arabic, hearing that changes nothing is barely hearing.

Stand a learner in a ringing chamber with twelve bells going. He hears everything and nothing. He cannot pick out the bell immediately before his own, which is the only thing he actually needs. Beside him a ringer of forty years, with worse ears, is following one line through the whole texture and placing her rope exactly. Same air, same room. Not the same hearing.

That is the distinction this ayah is built on, and it should make any long-standing believer uneasy. You have heard the Quran recited hundreds of times. The question is not whether sound reached you. It is whether you ever once picked out the line that was yours.

The full entry has 7 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.