Al-Mulk · Makki · ayah 9 of 30

Al-Mulk 67:9

قَالُوا۟ بَلَىٰ قَدْ جَآءَنَا نَذِيرٌ فَكَذَّبْنَا وَقُلْنَا مَا نَزَّلَ ٱللَّهُ مِن شَىْءٍ إِنْ أَنتُمْ إِلَّا فِى ضَلَـٰلٍ كَبِيرٍ

“They will say, "Yes, a warner had come to us, but we denied and said, 'Allāh has not sent down anything. You are not but in great error.'"”

Saheeh International

Essence

Their own confession uses the name Allah, and the rejection came first, with the doctrine invented afterwards to cover it.

A reflection

They were not atheists

Almost everyone reads this ayah with a particular kind of person in mind. The hardened unbeliever. The one who said there is no God.

Read their confession again. They say: Allah has not sent down anything.

They use the name. Their objection is not to His existence. It is to the delivery. They are not saying nobody is up there. They are saying nothing has come down from there, which is a completely different position and a far more common one.

And the verb they chose makes it sharper. The root of nazzala is a traveller dismounting at a camp and setting his load down. From the same root comes the arrival of a guest, and the hospitality a household brings out for him. Revelation, in that picture, is something unloaded at your camp and set in front of you.

So their denial is that anything was ever set down. Nobody alighted. No load. No guest.

There is a boatman on the cut who pays his licence every year. He would be offended if you suggested he did not respect the navigation. When the summit pound is closed for repairs he goes up anyway and finds the gates chained. He will tell you nobody informed him. The stoppage notice has been nailed to the beam of a lock he passes twice a day for five weeks. He has leaned on that beam while the lock filled.

That is the position in this ayah, and it is the position of a great many decent people now. I believe in God. I just do not accept that any of this was sent. The authority is honoured and the notice is not read.

Which makes the gate scene uncomfortably close. Nobody there is accused of atheism. They are asked whether a warner came, and the answer is yes.

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.