Al-Fajr · Makki · ayah 12 of 30

Al-Fajr 89:12

فَأَكْثَرُوا۟ فِيهَا ٱلْفَسَادَ

“And increased therein the corruption.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Their overflow did not stay at the top: they made corruption plentiful, until spoiling became the way the land itself worked.

A reflection

Fruit going soft in the crate

On a Saturday morning at a community food store, a volunteer lifts a crate of donated apples. Near the middle is one soft, brown one. She means to pull it out after her tea break. By Monday, a third of the crate has turned.

When the first hearers heard fasād, they saw something as ordinary as that. The lexicons explain it as a thing leaving its balance, whether by a little or by a lot. An apple that has changed from its good state has fasadat, with no moral fault in the apple. So has milk that has turned. Its opposite is ṣalāḥ: a thing standing sound, doing the good it was made for.

Today, 'corruption' mostly makes us think of money. Bribes, fraud, a politician's hidden accounts. The Quran's word is much larger. One classical commentary makes the point directly. Just as ṣalāḥ covers every kind of goodness, fasād covers every kind of wrong. Whoever acts without Allah's command, it adds, and rules His servants unjustly, is a spreader of fasād.

Other commentaries fill in what the three powers of this surah spread: killing, disbelief, every kind of disobedience, injustice and harm to people. Bribery may be one of those. It is not the definition.

That wider picture changes what we look for. A family can go soft at the centre while its accounts are spotless. A workplace can be free of fraud and still leave everyone in it less sound than when they arrived. A heart can keep every rule about money and still turn, slowly, like milk left out.

The volunteer's crate teaches the other half. Fasād spreads by contact. The soft apple does not stay a private problem. That is why the next word in the ayah matters so much. It is not 'they did' corruption. It is 'they made it much'.

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.