'Abasa · Makki · ayah 18 of 42

'Abasa 80:18

مِنْ أَىِّ شَىْءٍ خَلَقَهُۥ

“From what thing [i.e., substance] did He create him?”

Saheeh International

Essence

One question dissolves pride by asking what we were made from, and its answer turns all the honour towards the Maker.

A reflection

The question that deflates pride

The surah has just exclaimed at human ingratitude. Now it asks a question, one of the most effective ever put to human pride. From what thing did He create him?

The commentators explain its purpose. It is a question meant to make a person see how small his origin was, and so how strange his arrogance is. One of them puts it this way. From what did his Lord create him, that he should be so proud, and hold himself above obeying Him? The indefinite 'thing', shayʾ, already hints at the answer: something slight.

An early voice, quoted in one commentary, sharpened it into a sentence that is hard to forget. How can anyone be proud, he asked, who has twice passed through the passage of urine: once at conception, once at birth?

Picture the chief executive of a large company on the morning of a minor operation. Yesterday he chaired a board meeting. Today he is in a hospital gown that does not close at the back, a plastic band on his wrist, waiting for a porter. A nurse asks him to spell his surname, twice. His title means nothing here. And for a moment, sitting on the edge of the bed, he feels something close to relief. He is just a body, in need, like everyone else on the ward.

That is the effect this question is meant to have. It removes the costume. Beneath the titles, the wealth and the influence, every human being began the same way.

A sceptic may object: is this a God who belittles His creatures in order to feel great? The answer lies in what the question does. Allah does not need our smallness; He needs nothing at all (35:15). Elsewhere He says, 'We have honoured the children of Adam' (17:70). The honour is real. But it is given. The question simply reminds us whose gift it is.

Pride is claiming as our own what was only handed to us. This one question hands it back. And what remains is not humiliation, but wonder: that the Maker could raise so much from so little.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.