After a week off for camp, we began with a quick refresher of the first part of al-Baqarah, the three groups of people. Alif Lām Mīm: only Allah knows its meaning, but its wisdom is clear: a surprise call to grab attention, a challenge, and a humility gate. Then the people of taqwā (Ayāt 2–5), described by Allah as al-mufliḥūn, linked to the fallāḥ, the farmer, through delayed gratification. Then the kāfir (Ayāt 6–7), who knows the truth and rejects it. Most of this is in earlier notes, so only what was added this week is set down here, before we went on to complete Ayāt 10–13.
1. The Seal on the Heart
Of the kāfir, Allah says khatama Allāhu ʿalā qulūbihim wa ʿalā samʿihim: Allah has placed a seal on their hearts and on their hearing, and wa ʿalā abṣārihim ghishāwah: over their eyes is a cover. What is a seal? Think of letters in the olden days. To make sure no one tampered with a letter, you dripped hot wax on the envelope and pressed a stamp into it. If someone licked it open and glued it back, you might never know. But a wax seal, once broken, stays broken. It was the security code of its time.
So the seal is shut tight. They can’t see, they can’t hear, and they cannot understand. When you refuse to accept the truth, this is what Allah does to you.
2. The Munāfiq in Three Words: Claim, Deception, Disease
The passage on the munāfiq begins at Ayah 8, and each ayah so far has an operative word.
Ayah 8 — the claim. Wa mina an-nāsi man yaqūlu āmannā billāhi wa bil-yawmil-ākhir: they claim to believe in Allah and the Last Day, wa mā hum bi-muʾminīn, but they are not believers. The tongue claims to believe; the heart does not.
Ayah 9 — deception. Yukhādiʿūna Allāha wal-ladhīna āmanū: they think they are deceiving Allah and the believers. But Allah knows what you say out loud and what passes through your heart. All they deceive is themselves.
Ayah 10 — disease. Fī qulūbihim maraḍ: in their hearts is a disease.
A note on the Arabic: heart is qalb. Its plural is not “qalbs”, because you don’t add an S to make a plural in Arabic. (And qalbī is “my heart”.) The plural is qulūb. So fī (in) qulūb (hearts) him (their): in their hearts, maraḍ, a disease.
3. Ayah 10 — Why Doesn’t Allah Stop Evil?
فِى قُلُوبِهِم مَّرَضٌ فَزَادَهُمُ ٱللَّهُ مَرَضًا ۖ وَلَهُمْ عَذَابٌ أَلِيمٌۢ بِمَا كَانُوا۟ يَكْذِبُونَ
Fī qulūbihim maraḍun fa-zādahumu Allāhu maraḍā, wa lahum ʿadhābun alīmun bimā kānū yakdhibūn.
“In their hearts is a disease, so Allah increased them in disease; and for them is a painful punishment because they used to lie.”
Fa-zādahumu Allāhu maraḍā: and Allah increased their disease. If you are bent on doing evil, Allah says, “All right. Go and do evil.” Why doesn’t Allah stop us?
Imagine a teacher in class. One student is bullying another, right in front of him, and he does nothing. Good teacher or bad teacher? Bad teacher. Now, Allah has all the power in the universe. There are people who want to do evil: Israel killing babies in Gaza. Can Allah stop it? Yes. Yet He allows it to continue. In philosophy this is called the problem of evil: if God is so powerful and so merciful, why does He allow evil to happen?
The operative word is test.
Take another classroom scenario. The class is sitting an exam. The teacher sees a student write the wrong answer, walks over and says, “That’s wrong. Here’s the right answer.” Good teacher or bad teacher? Bad teacher, because now it isn’t a test. The result isn’t the student’s real result. Imagine he is sitting a medical exam and is supposed to fail, but the examiner helps him through. He graduates and becomes a doctor, and he is a menace to society. “Doctor, I have a headache.” “No problem. I’ll chop your head off.”
Life in this world is temporary. It is a test, and we are in the examination hall. If the teacher came and corrected every mistake the moment you made it, it would be a bad exam. So how do we understand people suffering? The suffering is temporary. If they are patient with it, they go to Jannah, and Jannah is forever. Remember the calculation we did of Ākhirah time against our time in this world.
When we see evil in the world, it is Allah testing everyone. When people in Gaza are dying, Allah is testing the people of Gaza with patience. And it is a test for us too. We know about it. Are we putting in any effort to stop it? Raising funds, donating, speaking up, doing anything? That is our test. In the Ākhirah, we see the results.
4. Fa-Zādahum: More Paper for the Examinee
So why does Allah increase the disease? Back to the exam hall. A student is writing an answer. It may be the wrong answer, but it is his answer. He raises his hand: “Can I have more paper?” Should the examiner refuse because the answer is wrong? Or should he just hand over more paper? A good examiner gives more paper.
The munāfiq wants to do evil. This is a test, and he is given more paper. Wa lahum ʿadhābun alīm: and for them is a painful punishment, for the lies they told.
Recall alīm, from alam, pain. Not just pain but ever-increasing pain, just as Raḥīm is ever-increasing mercy. The pattern runs through the language. Faʿala is to do: verb, action. Faʿīl carries the sense of doing more and more and more of it.
5. Ayah 11 — “Do Not Spread Corruption”
وَإِذَا قِيلَ لَهُمْ لَا تُفْسِدُوا۟ فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ قَالُوٓا۟ إِنَّمَا نَحْنُ مُصْلِحُونَ
Wa idhā qīla lahum lā tufsidū fil-arḍi qālū innamā naḥnu muṣliḥūn.
“And when it is said to them, ‘Do not cause corruption on the earth,’ they say, ‘We are only reformers.’”
We met qīla last week: it is said, where the speaker is unknown. Say “it is said that you shouldn’t eat ice cream while swimming”, and who said it? No one knows. It’s just an ancient word of wisdom. Allah usually uses qīla for advice, because what is said matters more than who said it. Good advice is good even if it comes from someone who skipped camp. Bad advice is bad even if it comes from someone who went to camp and woke the whole campsite at 3:50 in the morning. We evaluate the statement by the statement, not by who said it.
The advice here is lā tufsidū fil-arḍ: do not spread corruption on the earth. Fasād is a general word for evil things. Don’t cause two people to fight each other. Don’t spread lies. Don’t destroy the environment. Don’t start a war.
What were the munāfiqūn doing in Madinah? They were neither here nor there, and Madinah was at war with Makkah. In war, some communication must stay secret: the strengths and weaknesses of the state. Revealing these to the enemy is treason, and the one who does it is a traitor. If an American shared nuclear weapons secrets with North Korea, what would you call that person? A traitor.
That is what the munāfiqūn were doing. They thought the Muslims wouldn’t last: a small group, a new religion, sure to be defeated. So they kept friends with the Quraysh, so that when the Muslims lost, they’d be on the winning side. And just in case the Muslims won, they were with them too. Outwardly Muslim, inwardly supporting the Quraysh, going both ways. Allah tells them to stop: that is fasād. And they reply, innamā naḥnu muṣliḥūn: “No, we’re just peacemakers, trying to make peace between the two of you.” They are not. They are spreading corruption.
6. The Lesson of Ayah 11: Receive Advice with Humility
The munāfiq, when advised, said, “No, I didn’t do that. I was planning something else.” The lesson for us is the opposite. We receive advice with humility, from anyone. Even if we think we are superior, when the advice is sound, we accept it. We take responsibility for our actions. If we were wrong, we admit there was a mistake, and we course-correct.
7. Ayah 12 — Corrupters Who Don’t Realise It
أَلَآ إِنَّهُمْ هُمُ ٱلْمُفْسِدُونَ وَلَـٰكِن لَّا يَشْعُرُونَ
Alā innahum humul-mufsidūna wa lākin lā yashʿurūn.
“Unquestionably, it is they who are the corrupters, but they perceive it not.”
This is a declaration from Allah: indeed, they are the corrupters, but they don’t realise it. They are so arrogant that they don’t even notice when they’ve done wrong. They think what they’re doing is good. That is the danger of arrogance.
8. The Height of Arrogance: Iblīs
Who is the worst example of arrogance? Firʿawn claimed to be god and forced people to worship him. But the height of arrogance is Iblīs.
When Allah commanded him to make sujūd to Ādam, he said, anā khayrun minhu, khalaqtanī min nārin wa khalaqtahu min ṭīn: “I am better than him. You created me from fire, and You created him from clay.” Allah expelled him from Jannah for that sin. Did he then say, “O Allah, I’m sorry, I made a mistake”? No. He said, fa-bimā aghwaytanī: “Because You caused me to go astray.” In other words: “I made this mistake because of You. Had You not created Ādam, we’d have lived happily ever after in Jannah. Why did You create him? And why tell me to bow to him? You told me to do all these things, and now You blame me.”
That is arrogance. You make a mistake, refuse to accept it, justify it, blame others, and don’t even realise it is a mistake. Alā innahum humul-mufsidūna wa lākin lā yashʿurūn: they are so full of arrogance that they don’t even realise it.
9. Ayah 13 — “Shall We Believe as the Fools Believe?”
وَإِذَا قِيلَ لَهُمْ ءَامِنُوا۟ كَمَآ ءَامَنَ ٱلنَّاسُ قَالُوٓا۟ أَنُؤْمِنُ كَمَآ ءَامَنَ ٱلسُّفَهَآءُ ۗ أَلَآ إِنَّهُمْ هُمُ ٱلسُّفَهَآءُ وَلَـٰكِن لَّا يَعْلَمُونَ
Wa idhā qīla lahum āminū kamā āmanan-nāsu qālū a-nuʾminu kamā āmanas-sufahāʾ, alā innahum humus-sufahāʾu wa lākin lā yaʿlamūn.
“And when it is said to them, ‘Believe as the people have believed,’ they say, ‘Should we believe as the fools have believed?’ Unquestionably, it is they who are the fools, but they do not know.”
Again, wa idhā qīla lahum: it is said to them, and who said it doesn’t matter. Āminū kamā āmanan-nās: have īmān like those people, the Muslims of Madinah. The Muhājirūn who migrated: Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, ʿAlī, Sayyidunā Bilāl, Zayd ibn Ḥārithah. And the Anṣār who accepted Islam: Zayd ibn Thābit, Saʿd ibn ʿUbādah, Saʿd ibn Muʿādh. “Look, it’s the true religion. You can see the good they’re doing in Madinah.”
Qālū, they said: a-nuʾminu kamā āmanas-sufahāʾ, “You want us to believe like those idiots?” One idiot is a safīh; the plural is sufahāʾ.
10. Why Would They Call the Believers Fools?
Think about it from the munāfiq’s point of view.
Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq was a rich man before Islam. By the time he was about to migrate, he had lost ninety percent of his wealth. Where did it go? He spent it buying slaves who were being tortured and abused by their masters, and freeing them. Bilāl is one example. When you buy a slave, you expect service in return: “I’ve paid for you; now serve me.” Instead, he set them free. If you don’t believe in the Ākhirah, isn’t that stupid? He spent his money and got nothing out of it.
Sayyidatunā Khadījah was a rich woman who spent almost all of her wealth supporting the daʿwah of the Prophet ﷺ. Without the Ākhirah, that sounds foolish too.
And Muslims today? We wake at ungodly hours to pray Fajr. To someone who doesn’t believe in God and the Ākhirah, here is a person who wakes at four in the morning just to stand, do some stretches and go back to sleep. Then for one month a year he doesn’t eat or drink during the day, in summer, at thirty-eight degrees. And the sisters cover their heads in forty-degree heat. Doesn’t that sound foolish?
All of this only makes sense because we believe in the Ākhirah.
11. Why Believe in the Ākhirah?
But then they’ll ask: if it makes your life in this world harder, why believe in the Ākhirah at all?
Because without the Ākhirah, life has no meaning. Ask yourself honestly: what do you want from this life? To be happy. For one person, happiness is a private jet to fly wherever he wants. For another, it’s opening the wardrobe to ten thousand hoodies in every colour. But can everyone own a private jet? No. So if you don’t get yours, does life have no meaning? Some people are born to difficult parents, in difficult countries, in difficult situations. What is the meaning of all that suffering?
Life is a test, and if you pass it, you get eternal bliss and happiness in Jannah. Belief in the Ākhirah is what makes life worth living.
This world is not necessarily a comfortable place. Hungry: not comfortable. Then Maghrib comes in Ramadan, someone eats ten chickens and drinks ten big bottles of cola: food coma, also not comfortable. Sleep-deprived: not comfortable. Too much sleep: also not comfortable. In this world you always have to find the sweet spot, and finding it is difficult. In Jannah, you can have as much as you want.
The Ākhirah gives you a clear goal in life, a purpose that goes beyond human recognition. Otherwise, why would you do good when no one is watching?
12. Who Are the Real Fools?
The munāfiqūn, who do not believe in the Ākhirah, ask, “Why should we believe like the fools?” Allah answers: alā innahum humus-sufahāʾ, truly, they are the fools, wa lākin lā yaʿlamūn, but they don’t know it yet.
Remember the marshmallow test. The smart one is the one who can wait. The one who wants instant gratification ends up in trouble. These are the sufahāʾ.
Next week, in shā’ Allāh, we continue the passage on the hypocrites from Ayah 14.
