Al-Mutaffifin · Makki · ayah 8 of 36

Al-Mutaffifin 83:8

وَمَآ أَدْرَىٰكَ مَا سِجِّينٌ

“And what can make you know what is sijjeen?”

Saheeh International

Essence

Some things cannot be stalked and cornered by research; the only way to know them is to be told by the One who knows.

A reflection

"If we cannot know it, why believe it?"

The objection is reasonable. If the Quran itself says we cannot know what sijjīn is, why should anyone accept it?

Look at the verb. Adrāka comes from dirāya, a hunter's knowledge. The Arabs pictured a hunter creeping forward behind a camel, the dariyya, using it as a screen until he could get close to the game. Tadarraytu al-ṣayd meant: I worked out where the game was before I could see it. So dirāya is knowledge you reach by stalking, skill and patient approach.

The ayah says: this is not that kind of thing. You cannot creep up on it. One commentator puts it plainly: it is not something you or your people knew. It had to be told.

Yet a great deal of what we know most firmly comes exactly this way. Nobody remembers being born. You know your birthday because your mother told you, and a certificate agrees with her. You have never checked it for yourself, and you never will. Yet you would not dream of calling it a guess. You trust the witness because of who she is.

So the real question is not whether I can see it. It is whether I trust the One telling me. The Quran builds that trust elsewhere, through signs we can examine. There is the order of the heavens, the turning of night and day, and a messenger known never to lie. Having earned trust in what can be checked, it tells us about what cannot.

What remains open is only whether we accept a report from the One whose other reports have held. For a sincere sceptic, that is a question worth sitting with, not a door already shut.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.