Al-Ghashiyah · Makki · ayah 23 of 26

Al-Ghashiyah 88:23

إِلَّا مَن تَوَلَّىٰ وَكَفَرَ

“However, he who turns away and disbelieves –”

Saheeh International

Essence

Both verbs assume something was offered first: you can only turn your back on what was near, and only cover what was there.

A reflection

Turning your back on the nearest

At a family wedding, two cousins who fell out five years ago meet in a narrow corridor by the cloakroom. There is no room to avoid each other. One of them turns his shoulder and studies the old photographs on the wall until the other has passed. You can only turn your back on someone who is close enough to face.

Tawallā grows from a root whose heart is nearness. The lexicons say two things are in walāʾ when nothing stands between them. The desert Arabs called the second rain of the season al-walī, because it came right after the first. The walī is the near one who also acts: the guardian, the ally, the friend.

From that same root comes the verb for turning away. The irony is sharp. The word for rejecting Allah is built from the word for being close to Him. Only what is near can be turned from.

And He is near. We are closer to the human being than his jugular vein (50:16). Every sign in this surah, the camel, the sky, the mountains, the earth, was placed within arm's reach. Turning away from that is not failing to find something distant. It is refusing to face something right there.

One classical commentator explains the two verbs together. Tawallā: he turned away from acting on the truth with his limbs. Kafar: he rejected it with his heart and tongue. The Quran describes the same man elsewhere: he neither believed nor prayed, but denied and turned away (75:31–32).

Most of us know the smaller versions. The prayer we turn from because the phone is nearer. The advice we turn from because it came too close. The ayah asks us to notice the turning while we can still turn back.

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.