Al-Mutaffifin · Makki · ayah 34 of 36

Al-Mutaffifin 83:34

فَٱلْيَوْمَ ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ مِنَ ٱلْكُفَّارِ يَضْحَكُونَ

“So Today[1886] those who believed are laughing at the disbelievers,”

Saheeh International

Essence

The laughter changes sides: those who were the joke in the streets of this world break into laughter like a meadow breaking into flower.

A reflection

A meadow breaking into flower

The root of yaḍḥakūn has lovely pictures. Laughter was the face opening and the teeth showing, so the front teeth were called ḍawāḥik, the laughers. The Arabs said a cloud laughed when lightning flashed from it. The earth laughed when it put out its flowers. A palm's sheath laughed when it split open, and a pool laughed when it brimmed over. At its root, laughter is something hidden breaking open into light.

That is what happens to the believers here. For years they were closed up: laughed at, winked at, called lost. They kept their faith quiet and their heads down. Now it breaks open.

One classical commentator describes what they are laughing about. They see that the mockers were standing on nothing. They see that they themselves traded a little toil for rest that never ends.

The Quran describes the same moment elsewhere. 'I have rewarded them today for their patience. It is they who are the winners' (23:111).

Picture a boy on a school trip who unrolls a small prayer mat behind the coach at a service station. His classmates film him and laugh for the rest of the day. Twenty years later one of those classmates dies young. At the funeral, the family look around for someone who knows how to lead the prayer. It is him. As he stands at the front, one of the old classmates catches his eye and nods.

The ayah promises far more than that nod. But it is the same shape: the thing that was laughed at turns out to be the thing that mattered.

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.