Al-Buruj · Makki · ayah 7 of 22

Al-Buruj 85:7

وَهُمْ عَلَىٰ مَا يَفْعَلُونَ بِٱلْمُؤْمِنِينَ شُهُودٌ

“And they, to what they were doing against the believers, were witnesses. [1896]”

Saheeh International

Essence

They were witnesses to their own crime, performing it for one another, and one day their own limbs will be called to testify.

A reflection

Cruelty performed for the boss

One classical reading of shuhūd is startling. The men at the trench, it says, had been appointed as witnesses for one another before the king. Each could vouch that no one had slackened in carrying out his orders. Another commentator adds a variant: they testified before the king that what they were doing was good and right.

Picture it. Not just cruelty, but cruelty as a performance review. Men feeding the fire while glancing at one another, making sure their loyalty was seen and could be reported.

We like to think only monsters could do such things. The ayah suggests something more uncomfortable: ordinary people, performing for an audience that matters to them. Watch the door of a nightclub late on a Saturday. The bouncers handle a drunk man roughly enough. Then the owner appears on the balcony above, and the handling gets harder. Nothing about the drunk man has changed. The audience has.

Organisations work this way more often than they admit. A new manager humiliates a supplier on a call because her director is listening. A team competes to be the harshest in a disciplinary meeting because toughness gets praised. Nobody gives the order to be cruel. Everybody learns what is rewarded.

That puts a heavy question in front of anyone who leads anything. What do your people think you want to see? If they believe you reward harshness, they will perform it for you, and they will vouch for one another that it was done well. The king of the trench may never have carried a single log. He did not need to. He had made cruelty the way to be noticed.

The reverse is also true. A leader who visibly rewards mercy, honesty and fairness will find those performed too, until they stop being a performance and become a culture.

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.