Al-Muzzammil · Makki · ayah 15 of 20

Al-Muzzammil 73:15

إِنَّآ أَرْسَلْنَآ إِلَيْكُمْ رَسُولًا شَـٰهِدًا عَلَيْكُمْ كَمَآ أَرْسَلْنَآ إِلَىٰ فِرْعَوْنَ رَسُولًا

“Indeed, We have sent to you a Messenger as a witness upon you just as We sent to Pharaoh a messenger.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The messenger sent to you is not new strategy; Pharaoh had one too, and how that went is already on record.

A reflection

A witness who was actually there

Rasūlan shāhidan ʿalaykum. A messenger as witness over you.

A classical lexicon ties the root of shahid to three things held together: presence, knowledge, and the act of making something known. A witness, in this sense, is not someone who merely happened to be in the room. It is someone who was genuinely present, genuinely knew what happened, and whose role is specifically to state it afterwards, in a setting where that statement carries weight.

A classical commentator reads this ayah's witness plainly: on the Day of Judgement, testifying to exactly what came from each person, their disobedience as well as their response. That is a courtroom image, not a casual one. This messenger is not a distant reporter summarising events from secondhand accounts. He lived among the very people he will later testify about, watched what they did with the message he brought them, and will stand, on that Day, to say so.

Most people treat a messenger's words as advice that can be weighed, accepted in part, quietly set aside where inconvenient. This ayah reframes the entire relationship. The messenger is not offering an opinion for consideration. He is gathering testimony that will be read out in full, later, in front of the only Judge whose verdict will actually be final.

It is worth noticing what an ordinary witness is actually relied upon for. A witness in a courtroom is not only there to record wrongdoing; a good witness is equally trusted to confirm what was done rightly, so that a genuine effort is not lost or forgotten in the account. There is no reason to assume this witness's testimony only ever runs in one direction. The weight of being watched this closely is real. So, just as genuinely, is the weight of knowing that a sincere response is recorded with the same care as a careless one.

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.