Al-A'la · Makki · ayah 16 of 19

Al-A'la 87:16

بَلْ تُؤْثِرُونَ ٱلْحَيَوٰةَ ٱلدُّنْيَا

“But you prefer the worldly life,”

Saheeh International

Essence

The fault is not enjoying this life but giving it first place, only because it is near and the next life is out of sight.

A reflection

Near things shout

A woman lives a ten-minute walk from the sea. She has not seen it since the spring. Her phone lies on the arm of the sofa, and all evening she picks it up without ever deciding to.

The Arabic name for this life explains her evening. Dunyā is the feminine of adnā, nearer. One lexicon says it was named simply for its nearness. The same root gives the nearer bank of a valley, against the farther one (8:42). It even gives an old table manner: when you eat, eat from what is near you.

So the ayah is not only describing wickedness. It is describing gravity. What is near pulls harder than what is far, whatever each is worth. The Quran says the human being was created of haste (21:37).

A Companion was once asked to recite this surah. When he reached this ayah, he stopped reading and turned to his students. We preferred this world, he said. They fell silent. He went on. We preferred it because we saw its finery, its food and its drink. And the Hereafter was kept out of our sight. So we took what was here now, and left what was deferred.

Another Companion, travelling with a friend, heard the people around them talking only of worldly things. He said: come, let us remember our Lord for an hour. Then he asked his friend what held people back. The friend guessed: this world, the devil, desire. No, he said. This world was brought forward, and the Hereafter was hidden. By Allah, if they saw it, they would not waver.

That diagnosis points straight to the cure. The problem is not that the far thing is small. It is that it is far. So the work is to bring it near: an hour of remembering, a page read about what waits, a visit to a grave.

The woman by the sea could start small. One evening, leave the phone on the table and walk ten minutes. Some nearness has to be chosen on purpose.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.