Al-Mursalat · Makki · ayah 36 of 50

Al-Mursalat 77:36

وَلَا يُؤْذَنُ لَهُمْ فَيَعْتَذِرُونَ

“Nor will it be permitted for them to make an excuse.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Not merely silent, but specifically never asked to speak — the one ordinary right almost every wrongdoer is given, withheld here because nothing remains for it to accomplish.

A reflection

A right withheld, not an ability lost

The verb here is passive and specific: they are not given permission. That is a different claim from the previous ayah's plain silence, and the commentaries read the two together as two layers of the same state rather than one repeated point. First, nothing is said. Then, this ayah adds, it is not even on offer as an option — the normal social and legal custom of allowing the accused a final word is the thing being withheld, not merely the accused's own capacity to produce one.

That distinction carries real weight. Almost every human process of judgement, however severe, preserves some form of this courtesy: a defendant's final statement, a condemned man's last words, a disciplinary hearing's closing question of "is there anything you'd like to add." It is treated, across very different cultures and eras, as close to a basic decency owed to anyone facing judgement, regardless of guilt. This ayah names its specific absence here, which means its absence is not an oversight or a cruelty added for effect — it is a deliberate signal that this case has already moved past the point where that final courtesy would do anything but delay an outcome no longer genuinely in question.

The commentaries describe the underlying reason directly: the case against them was already fully established beforehand, so permission to speak is not being cruelly denied — it has simply become redundant to the process it would normally serve.

There is a further detail worth noticing in how the two ayat divide this single state between them. The previous ayah describes what is missing from the accused's own side: nothing is said. This ayah describes what is missing from the process itself: no invitation to speak is extended at all. Together they close the scene from both directions at once, leaving no angle from which a reader could imagine some unstated opportunity still quietly remaining.

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