Al-Layl · Makki · ayah 15 of 21

Al-Layl 92:15

لَا يَصْلَىٰهَآ إِلَّا ٱلْأَشْقَى

“None will [enter to] burn therein except the most wretched one”

Saheeh International

Essence

The blazing fire is described by who ends up held inside it: the most wretched, whose lifetime of effort was toil that led nowhere.

A reflection

The frisbee is not a ball

On a small green outside a block of flats, a sign says 'No ball games'. Three boys are throwing a frisbee across it. When a neighbour leans out of a window, the eldest calls back, perfectly serious: 'It's not a ball'. He is technically right. He has also completely missed what the sign was for.

Some people read this ayah the same way. 'None will burn in it except the most wretched, who denied and turned away'. So, they conclude, only a disbeliever can be touched by the Fire; a believer's sins cost nothing. The commentators knew this reading well. One classical scholar called it a delusion, and listed it among the ways people deceive themselves.

They answered it in several ways. One early grammarian said this ayah describes a particular fire. The Fire has levels, and the hypocrites, for instance, are in its lowest depth (4:145). Another answer looks at the verb. Yaṣlā is not simply 'enters'. The Arabs used the word for a pit dug and heaped with embers, with a sheep buried right in the middle of them. Meat roasted on top of the coals was not called that. To ṣalā a fire is to be held inside it, surrounded. Denying that worst state, the scholar said, does not deny every lesser one.

And the next ayah closes the door. Only 'the most mindful' is promised to be kept away from it (92:17). The believer who sins is neither the worst nor the best. He is not promised the pit, and he is not promised distance either. His affair is with Allah, who 'forgives what is less than that for whom He wills' (4:48).

The sign on the green was about the windows, not the shape of the toy. This ayah is about where a road ends, not about a technicality to exploit. Read it as a reason to run from the fire, not as a map of where it cannot reach.

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.