Al-Infitar · Makki · ayah 14 of 19

Al-Infitar 82:14

وَإِنَّ ٱلْفُجَّارَ لَفِى جَحِيمٍ

“And indeed, the wicked will be in Hellfire.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Those whose lives burst their banks are in a blaze that feeds on itself, and its first heat can be felt long before the end.

A reflection

The fire before the Fire

For years a woman longed to be part of a certain circle of friends: the ones with the dinner parties and the holiday photographs. When at last she is invited in, she spends every evening afraid of saying the wrong thing. She rehearses her stories in the car. Two years later she notices she has quietly been left out of their group chat. She is lonelier than before she was invited.

Jaḥīm is heat at its fiercest. The first hearers pictured a great fire in a pit: coal heaped on coal, flame climbing over flame. The lion's two eyes were its jaḥmatān, for their constant burning. The worst of a battle was its jāḥim. And a man eaten up by greed was said to tajaḥḥama: to blaze inside.

A classical writer on the heart saw that last image already at work in this world. Whoever loves something in place of Allah, he said, is tormented by it three times over. Before he has it, by craving it. While he has it, by fear of losing it, and by all the small troubles that cloud it. After it is taken from him, by grief.

Then he went further. In the grave, that torment continues. There is the pain of a parting with no hope of return, and of what was lost by chasing the wrong thing. The worries, he says, work on such souls as worms work on bodies.

This is a small jaḥīm: heat that feeds on itself, one coal lighting the next. It can be a person, a status, a group, a number on a screen. Anything we make into the centre of our lives, when it was never made to bear that weight.

The ayah's Fire is far greater, and it is real. Another surah warns: 'You will surely see the Blaze' (102:6). But its sparks are already visible here, and that is a mercy. You can feel the heat of the road while you can still turn off it.

The cure is not to love nothing. It is to put Allah at the centre, and let everything else be loved in its proper place. Then nothing you gain becomes a coal, and nothing you lose can set you alight.

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.