Al-Mutaffifin · Makki · ayah 7 of 36

Al-Mutaffifin 83:7

كَلَّآ إِنَّ كِتَـٰبَ ٱلْفُجَّارِ لَفِى سِجِّينٍ

“No! Indeed, the record of the wicked is in sijjeen.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The surah gives the quiet cheat a name that sounds far too large for a few grams: fājir, one who has breached the dam.

A reflection

A few grams, and a breached dam

Fujjār comes from a farmer's picture. Fajara al-sukr: to breach an earth dam, cutting a gap until the water bursts through. From the same root come springs and rivers that burst out of the ground, and fajr, the dawn: darkness split open by light. So fujūr is not a hairline crack. It is a breach wide enough for a whole life to flood out.

Now notice where the word falls. The surah began with people who skim a little at the scales. Then, with one kallā, it speaks of the record of the fujjār. One classical reading makes the link explicit. The kallā halts them from short measure and from forgetting the Resurrection, then the threat widens to the fujjār in general. Another commentator says the word here covers the openly faithless and also the sinful, so the short-measurers are inside it.

It seems an overreaction, until you remember how breaches happen. A stone flicks up from a lorry and leaves a chip in a car windscreen, the size of a lentil. Nobody bothers. Then comes the first frost. By morning a crack runs from the chip right across the driver's line of sight. The glass did not fail in the frost. It failed on the day the chip was ignored.

The surah names the end of the road at the start of it. A few grams skimmed are a few grams. But a heart that has agreed to skim has already cut the first channel through the bank. The name fājir is not an exaggeration of the act. It is an honest forecast of where the act leads, unless it is mended while it is still small.

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.