Al-Qiyamah · Makki · ayah 21 of 40

Al-Qiyamah 75:21

وَتَذَرُونَ ٱلْـَٔاخِرَةَ

“And leave [i.e., neglect] the Hereafter.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The danger is rarely denying the later life outright; it is leaving it, quietly and in the present tense, while believing in it all along.

A reflection

Believing in it, and leaving it anyway

Most of us read this ayah and quietly step aside. It is about the deniers of Makkah, we assume, the men who laughed at the idea of rising again. We believe in the Hereafter. So the sentence is not ours.

Look at the verb, though. It does not say 'you deny the Hereafter'. It says tadharūna: you leave it. The plainest commentaries explain the leaving without mentioning belief at all. They do not work for it, says one. Another describes the road to it: doing what Allah commanded, and leaving what He forbade. To leave the Hereafter is to leave that road unwalked.

So the ayah reaches further than the men who first heard it. A person can hold the right belief and still leave the destination alone.

A woman has kept a jar on her kitchen shelf for eleven years, labelled for Umrah. Whenever the boiler fails or the children need shoes, she borrows from it. She has never once doubted that she will go. The jar has simply never been allowed to fill.

The verb carries a further sting. The lexicons record that the Arabs let the past tense of this verb die. They said 'leave it' and 'he leaves it', but almost never 'he left it'; another verb took over that work. So the ayah cannot say 'you once left the Hereafter', as though it were an old decision filed away. It can only say: you are leaving it. Present tense. Today.

That is uncomfortable, and it is also hopeful. A habit in the present tense can stop in the present tense. Nothing in the verb says a door has closed.

So the question the ayah sets is not whether I believe. Most of its readers do. The question is what today gave to the later life. If the honest answer is nothing, the ayah is speaking to me, not to Makkah.

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.