Al-Muddaththir · Makki · ayah 49 of 56

Al-Muddaththir 74:49

فَمَا لَهُمْ عَنِ ٱلتَّذْكِرَةِ مُعْرِضِينَ

“Then what is [the matter] with them that they are, from the reminder, turning away”

Saheeh International

Essence

What is the matter with them, that they show the reminder only their side, never once turning to actually face it?

A reflection

Showing it only your side

Iʿrāḍ, turning away, has a startlingly physical root sense: to turn away is literally to show someone only your side, your breadth rather than your face. A stick laid crosswise over the mouth of a vessel is ʿaraḍa, set across, blocking the way through. The person turning away is not simply distracted or unaware. They have deliberately angled their body so that only an edge, never a face, is on offer.

Tadhkira, reminder, comes from an equally concrete root: a thread tied round the finger so a need will not be forgotten, something kept ʿalā dhukr, somewhere it cannot slip from memory. A reminder, by its whole nature, is meant to be looked at directly, turned over, actually engaged. Put the two words together and this ayah pictures something almost comic in its ordinariness: a notice specifically designed to be faced, met instead by a body deliberately turned sideways to it.

A man mid-conversation with his wife about a bill he has been quietly avoiding for weeks does not storm out of the room or raise his voice. He simply angles his chair a few degrees towards the television, enough that he remains technically present while only a thin fraction of him is actually listening to a word she says. Nothing dramatic happens at all. The avoidance is managed entirely, invisibly, through posture.

This ayah's question, what is the matter with them, is aimed precisely at that managed, undramatic angle: not fierce rejection, simply a side permanently offered where a face was asked for.

Notice, too, how easily the sideways angle hides from the person holding it. The man adjusting his chair a few degrees would genuinely insist, if asked, that he is still part of the conversation. The angle is small enough to deny while being real enough to change everything about how much actually lands. This ayah's precision matters because the turning it names rarely looks, from the inside, like the refusal it actually is.

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.