Al-A'la · Makki · ayah 10 of 19

Al-A'la 87:10

سَيَذَّكَّرُ مَن يَخْشَىٰ

“He who fears [Allāh] will be reminded.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The reminder takes root in the one who stands in awe, and that awe is not panic but the respect that grows from knowing.

A reflection

The coxswain checks the forecast three times

The coxswain of a lifeboat station has thirty years at sea. Before a routine training launch on a calm morning, he checks the forecast three times and walks the slipway himself. The new volunteer, twenty and fearless, laughs at him. The coxswain does not mind. He knows exactly what the sea can do, and that knowledge is why he is still alive.

Khashya is usually translated fear, and the word makes many modern readers flinch: religion as threat, faith as anxiety. But khashya is a particular fear. The lexicons describe fear mixed with reverence, growing out of knowing the one you fear. The Quran says as much: only those of His servants who have knowledge truly stand in awe of Allah (35:28). One classical commentator ties this ayah to that one. The one who fears, he says, is the one who knows Allah's power, knowledge and wisdom.

The Prophet ﷺ joined the two in a single sentence, as both Sahihs report. Some people had held back from something he had allowed, as if they were more careful than he was. He stood and said that he was the one who knew Allah best of them, and the one with the most khashya of Him. Notice the occasion. Their anxious extra caution was not awe. His awe, rooted in knowledge, was steady enough to take the ease Allah had given.

The word even has a physical weight. Its plural takes the pattern Arabic uses for illnesses, as though it seizes the whole person. The Quran gives it pictures the dictionaries lack. Some rocks split and pour out water; some tumble down, from khashya of Allah (2:74).

Another commentary adds a sharp observation. The one who does not believe in the Hereafter reads every calamity as luck: time struck them, as it strikes everyone. Only the one who expects to meet Allah reads the same events as signs, and benefits from them.

So the doubt turns around. Faith without khashya is not freedom. It is the twenty-year-old laughing on the slipway. The more you learn of Allah's greatness and His care, the less you fear at random, and the more you revere wisely.

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.