Al-Fajr · Makki · ayah 23 of 30

Al-Fajr 89:23

وَجِا۟ىٓءَ يَوْمَئِذٍۭ بِجَهَنَّمَ ۚ يَوْمَئِذٍ يَتَذَكَّرُ ٱلْإِنسَـٰنُ وَأَنَّىٰ لَهُ ٱلذِّكْرَىٰ

“And brought [within view], that Day, is Hell - that Day, man will remember, but how [i.e., what good] to him will be the remembrance?”

Saheeh International

Essence

Hell is brought near, and at last the human being remembers; then the ayah asks the most painful question: what good is remembering now?

A reflection

The key on the kitchen table

A woman pulls the front door shut behind her and hears it click. Through the kitchen window she can see her keys, exactly where she left them, on the table by the fruit bowl. She remembers them perfectly now. Remembering does not open the door.

The Arabs had a small, homely picture for dhikr. A man tied a thread round his finger so as not to forget a need; the thread was his tadhkira, his reminder. Dhikr is the opposite of forgetting: keeping a thing present, in the heart and on the tongue.

This ayah uses the word twice, and the two uses collide. Yatadhakkaru l-insān: the human being remembers. Wa-annā lahu l-dhikrā: and where, for him, is the remembering? The commentators noticed the apparent contradiction. How can he remember and yet have no remembrance? They resolved it simply. He remembers, but the benefit of remembering is gone. It is remembering that has come too late to do its work.

What does he remember? One of the earliest commentators says: what he neglected in the world. Obeying Allah, and the good deeds that would have brought him near. Another says he remembers that his whole life's ambition was the world, and sees now that it was a mistake.

That is the tragedy of this ayah, and its mercy. The tragedy is a memory that arrives after the door has shut. The mercy is that we are reading about it while the door is still open.

Every dhikr we make now is a thread round the finger, tied before we leave the house. Every time we remember Allah today, it still does its work. So the question for us is not whether we will remember. Everyone will, on that Day. It is whether we will remember in time.

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.