Al-'Alaq · Makki · ayah 7 of 19

Al-'Alaq 96:7

أَن رَّءَاهُ ٱسْتَغْنَىٰٓ

“Because he sees himself self-sufficient.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The danger is not in having enough but in seeing yourself as needing no one, a name that fits Allah alone.

A reflection

Trying on a name that does not fit

At a school prize-giving, an old boy who now develops property gives the address. 'Nobody ever gave me anything,' he tells the students. 'I did it all myself.' In the second row sits his old form tutor. Thirty years ago she paid his exam fees from her own purse. She claps politely.

Read the ayah slowly. It does not say 'if he becomes rich'. It says an raʾāhu staghnā: because he sees himself as self-sufficient. One classical scholar stops on exactly this. The transgression, he says, grows not from the wealth but from the way a person looks at himself.

Another commentator hears more in the verb. The s-t at the start of istaghnā can carry a sense of seeking. On this reading the man believes he became rich because he went after it and strained for it. He did not receive it from Allah's giving; he earned it by his own effort. The commentator's reply is blunt. How many people strain with everything they have, and still go hungry?

Only One is truly al-Ghanī, free of all need. 'O people, you are the ones in need of Allah, and Allah is the Rich, the Praised' (35:15). Self-sufficiency is His name, not ours. Claiming it is like a child wearing his father's coat to school and insisting it is his size.

Why should Allah mind? Is He jealous of our independence? He needs nothing from it either way. The warning is for us. The ayah before showed where that pride leads: a river over its walls (96:6). And it is a kind of blindness. The old boy at the lectern cannot see the woman in the second row, though she is ten feet away.

The cure is not to stop working. It is to see clearly. Every gain passed through His hand, and often through someone else's, before it reached yours.

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.