'Abasa · Makki · ayah 3 of 42

'Abasa 80:3

وَمَا يُدْرِيكَ لَعَلَّهُۥ يَزَّكَّىٰٓ

“But what would make you perceive, [O Muḥammad], that perhaps he might be purified[1854]”

Saheeh International

Essence

No one can stalk their way to knowing another heart's future; the one you overlook may be the very one about to grow.

A reflection

The hunter who cannot see the game

The verb yudrīka, 'makes you know', comes from a root with a vivid first image, and the lexicons state it plainly. Picture a hunter creeping forward behind a camel towards his quarry. The camel is his screen, the dariyya. He cannot see the game yet, but by skill and patience he works out where it is. So dirāya is not knowledge that simply lands on you. It is knowledge you reach by approach, by careful reading of signs.

Now hear the question again: what would make you know? Whatever skill you have in reading people, whatever signs you track, there is a kind of knowing no hunter's craft can reach. The future of a heart is behind a screen you cannot walk round.

There is a further note in the sources, given as one scholarly observation. When the Quran asks 'what will make you know' in the past tense form, it usually goes on to give the answer. When it asks it in this present tense form, as here, the answer is left open. The question is not a riddle with a solution coming. It is a door left deliberately ajar.

Schools know this problem well. Every year teachers must predict students' final grades for university applications. They are experienced, and they are usually close. But every year some student predicted a C walks out with an A, and some predicted an A falls apart. The teachers were not careless. They were reading the signs, like good hunters. The signs simply did not contain the future.

The Prophet ﷺ was reading signs too. The leaders of Quraysh seemed promising: if they came, others would follow. The blind man seemed already settled, a believer who could wait. That was a reasonable reading. And Allah answered it with a question that humbles every reading of people: what would make you know?

The lesson is not that judgement is useless. It is that judgement about who will grow must always hold a door open. The one you have filed under 'already sorted' or 'not important' may be the one standing at the edge of something new.

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.