Al-Mutaffifin · Makki · ayah 4 of 36

Al-Mutaffifin 83:4

أَلَا يَظُنُّ أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ أَنَّهُم مَّبْعُوثُونَ

“Do they not think that they will be resurrected”

Saheeh International

Essence

The ayah does not demand certainty from the cheat; it asks why even a suspicion of being raised does not stop his hand.

A reflection

Even a suspicion would do

Ẓann is a strange word. The Arabs called a well ẓanūn when no one could be sure it held water. A debt was ẓanūn when its owner might never see it repaid. Yet a warrior could tell his enemy ẓunnū, be sure, of an army on its way. One lexicon draws the line this way: ẓann can reach certainty, but it is the certainty of reflection, never of the eye.

The ayah chooses this word on purpose. It does not ask whether they know. It asks whether they do not even think it likely.

Classical readers took two paths here, and both are worth walking. Some said the word means certainty: do they not know? Others kept its plain sense of a likelihood, and drew out the force of that. Whoever suspects he will be raised and questioned, even weakly, would hardly dare to cheat. How much less the one who is sure? One of them puts it in Allah's voice: grant that they cannot be certain, can they not at least think it likely? That likelihood alone is enough to make a person careful.

We already live this way about lesser things. A text arrives from your child's school saying there may be head lice in the class. Nobody waits for certainty. The fine comb comes out that evening. We act on a real possibility all the time, when the cost of ignoring it is high.

So the ayah meets the doubter exactly where he stands. It does not say, 'First become certain.' It says: you have not ruled it out. Then why do you live as if you had?

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.