Al-Layl · Makki · ayah 9 of 21

Al-Layl 92:9

وَكَذَّبَ بِٱلْحُسْنَىٰ

“And denies the best [reward],”

Saheeh International

Essence

Under the closed hand lies a quiet verdict on the future: that the best is not real, and nothing given will ever come back.

A reflection

The show home with painted books

On a new housing estate, the show home is perfect. Fresh flowers, a bowl of glossy apples, a bookcase full of leather spines. Pull one of the books, and the whole row comes out together. They are a single painted block of wood. Nobody is meant to read them. They are there to make the room look lived in.

The third step on the hard road mirrors the third step on the easy one. The first man 'confirmed the best'. This one 'called the best a lie'. Kadhdhaba is the doubled form of the root for falsehood: to treat something as false, to call its speaker a liar. The early commentators gave 'the best' the same range as before. It is the word of Allah's oneness, Paradise, the replacement for what is given, and Allah's promise. One great commentator again preferred the replacement. This man did not believe Allah would make good what he spent.

The root has a striking old picture. A cloth painted to look embroidered was called a kadhdhāba: it lied by its appearance. There is an irony in that. The person who calls Allah's promise a lie usually ends up trusting something that looks solid and is only paint. He trusts savings that cannot cross the grave, status that ends at retirement, a body that is already ageing. The real book was offered to him; he chose the painted shelf.

The Quran never asks anyone to believe in nothing. It asks which promise you will believe. Everyone lives by one. Some believe the market's promise, or the promise of their own cleverness, or the promise that tomorrow will be like today. The man in this ayah did not stop believing. He believed the wrong book.

It is worth checking your own shelves. Which promises do you actually live by? Pull one out and see whether it comes away as a single block of painted wood.

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.