Human Origin and Pride - Surah Ar-Rahman Reflections

The Duality of Human Nature

Last time in this Surah Ar-Rahman series... I'm someone who wants to contemplate the Quran and wants to play the newest game on PlayStation all at the same time. How am I all of these things at the same time? Who made me this complicated? Who made me? It's a profound thing to just if you just contemplate that about yourself.

You would become and you would become so much more self-aware. But you know who doesn't have time for self-awareness? People that are just indulged and distracted all the time.

To help you follow along and reflect more deeply we've created a companion workbook for this series. Download it at bayyina.com forward slash Rahman.

The Mystery of "Both of You"

Allah will now... Two ayat 14 and 15. Allah will mention the human being, that he will mention the jinn. The important thing, the first interesting curious thing to note here is Allah already mentioned both of you. The question that was asked:

Then which other wonders of wonderful acts of Allah of your master both of you - are you both going to be undermining? That question already referred to two, but Allah didn't say who those two are yet. And now he's saying it. So the expectation was first he'll say jinns and humans, then he will mention two, right? Because if you just say you two without any context, then how are you supposed to know who the you two is referring to?

The Seen and Unseen Enemies

There's been a few theories that you can find in tafsir literature. I'm not going to be sharing all of them with you because I didn't find them all that convincing. What I did find convincing is Ameen Ahsan Islahi's approach to this question, and so I'm going to share with you what I found the most convincing. That doesn't mean it's the right answer - it's just what settles the most with me.

This surah is addressing two groups according to the ayah of Surah Ar-Ra'd. Allah says that he put enemies for every Prophet that were devils of jinns and human beings that inspire each other, that motivate each other. So what that tells us is in the context of the Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, the Quraish are his enemies and they keep coming up with the most vile kinds of insults and attacks and undermining him and trying to even torture sahaba at one point - all of that's happening that they're doing that but actually behind them is an invisible army of devils that are inspiring them to do that.

And when they see when the devils see that one of them like Abu Lahab is being Abu Lahab, he's doing some Abu Lahab business, then the shayateen say wow that worked. Let's take the next step. So Abu Lahab got inspired by the devil, then the devil saw Abu Lahab act and got inspired to do even something worse and incite them to something worse. So they're actually inspiring each other. They're creating a negative spiral of evil, a downward spiral.

The Creation of Human Beings

From dried up crackling dirt, like the clay pot. This picture was a good depiction of the kind of thing salsal is. So if you want to visualize what salsal is, that picture would help you. We're going to look at the dictionary meaning, but this is essentially the idea and we'll dig a little deeper.

Meaning Allah created Adam alayhis salam from this, and by saying he created Adam from this, then all of us by extension are created from this, but he's originally talking about Adam alayhis salam.

The Nature of Salsal

The dry kind of sand or dirt that makes noise like a crackling noise. So when you walk on it, you get crunchy sounds. That's the kind of dirt that would be tin yabas or salsal. They use when meat has sal - like the word salsal - it's when it's gone bad and it starts smelling bad. Like you didn't cook it or you left it and it's gone bad and it stinks. That's actually called sal. The idea is the clay, the mud has gone through so many processes that it has a terrible smell also on top of that, that's reached the point of sal.

This is the same way when water goes bad. They call it salsula. Like if you left water at the bottom of the pot and it starts going bad and it has a bad smell, that water is called salsula. This word is also used for sharp and unpleasant sounds of animals like a donkey making a loud, ugly sound - that's actually had the sal. So these are the meanings and what that combines into is the kind of dirt that makes loud sounds.

Now, why is that important to note? We'll get to the analogy in a second. It's important to note because stuff doesn't grow on this kind of dirt. It cannot absorb water. So if you look at the passage so far, Allah described the fertile earth, didn't he? Habitats where every creature can eat. And then he described fruits that grow - obviously you need fertile land for fruits to grow. Then he described crop - soft dirt that accepts nutrients, that has nutrients in it, that takes water in. And then all of a sudden we're getting this picture which is like the opposite of life - lifeless, useless dirt. And then he compares it like pots, like the clay pot.

The Meaning of Fakhar

There's a common confusion in some English translations. They take the word fakhar like qassas and khabaz and khayat. You know, these are Arabic forms to describe people in a certain profession. So they say oh, this is the potter, the guy who makes the pottery. It's not. The word fakhar may take that shape, but in Arabic usage that's not what it means. It actually refers to the pot itself.

So he's describing this clay and then he makes the analogy with the pot. Ibn Atiya's summary of the comment here - I won't read all of the Arabic - his summary of his point is perhaps Allah is honoring the human being by using this word because he's comparing it to a beautiful thing that's been made like pots and pans and those kinds of things were actually put on display and they added to the beauty of the home. So perhaps that human beings have been molded and crafted because pottery is art, isn't it? And you have to have a certain skill to make it symmetrical. So that maybe that's actually kind of a compliment to human beings. That's his view. I'm not entirely sold on the view because I'll tell you in a second why.

So Allah says he made human beings from dried up dirt that make sounds just like the pot. But the word pot actually comes from the word fakhar. And anybody know what fakhar means? Even the non-Arabs here might know. Pride, arrogance, right? That's fakhar.

Fakhar actually in its origin has to do with hay that has no seed in it. If you have like crop and there's no seed, basically it's only good for animals. It's not good for anything else. That's called al-fakhir. Fakhur is a camel that has large udders but not a lot of milk. So it has large - so all show but no game, no substance. So it's actually lack of substance.

Similarly, fakhar is used for pots that are empty - like they're really big pots, but there's nothing inside. They're hollow on the inside. So actually the theme inside the origin of this word is something that lacks substance. It's empty or hollow on the inside, or it doesn't have what you think it might have. And from it you get the idea of a person who's fakhur - a person who's fakhur is someone who's very inflated but there's not a lot going on inside.

What's also really interesting about the pot is that it's very loud when it's empty, and the more you fill it the less sound it makes. And you'll find that in people too - the ones that are the emptiest inside are the loudest. They have something to say about everything. And once people are filled, they're more quiet. They don't feel the need to comment on everything. So there's a really interesting comparison being made between fakhar and human beings.

The Human Condition

Ibn Ashur saying what seems to be the case to me - he says is that this is a state of the human being. Like that we were made in a certain special kind of way. Perhaps it's referring to the way we were molded, but it's perhaps also referring to the idea that we seem to get really inflated while we're empty on the inside. And that may be a commentary on the takdheeb, you know, the denial of all of Allah's favors - that that's where it comes from.

Interestingly, another word that's similar to this that was used in Surat An-Najm was samidun. Towards the end, it's an interesting unique word. It's not very commonly used in the Quran. Samid is someone who - and is used for an animal that puffs up their chest to scare or intimidate their opponent, so to make themselves look bigger. And samad is also used for someone who fills their chest with air before they start singing out loud and dancing. And so it was used for people that are posturing and trying to impress and trying to sing and dance or whatever.

So it's as if Allah is now, by comparing the nutritious soil to this clay soil that is basically dried up and useless, and then he describes the human being made as fakhar... The thing with soil is the soil produces crop, and when the crop is done, can you reuse the soil? Yeah, you could totally reuse the soil. But if you break the pot, can you reuse the pot? The clay, it's useless now. It's useless. Why do you think you're so useful? Your usefulness on this earth is temporary. Your existence on this earth is temporary, and the only purpose you exist - the pot - the only purpose it exists is to be filled with something. Because if you're not filled with something, you're pointless. You're just for show. There's nothing else to you. It's such a profound commentary on the human condition.

Really interesting comment by Razi. He tried to figure out why is the pot called fakhar from pride? What does pride have to do with a pot? And he says well because soil - water goes right through it. But you take that same soil and mud and you put it through a process and it becomes a pot, and now it can hold water within it, and all of a sudden this pot is now full of pride - look what I became! Which is also a really interesting commentary on human beings, right? Because we were nothing, and then we become this thing, and then all of a sudden we're like... yeah, you know, we get full of ourselves.

Student Research Team

Now there are some names on the screen here. I'm just going to tell you a little story about these people. I went to Pakistan recently. I just spent about three weeks there. I was teaching a course there and I decided to expand and do some experiments with Muslim students around the world.

So there's a wonderful institution in Pakistan called the International Islamic University of Islamabad, similar to the International Islamic University in Malaysia in Gombak. So my seminar was being attended by a bunch of students from there also, and I just said if there's any students here that have background in Islamic studies, they've graduated in usul ad-din, etc., that would like to work with me on tafsir work - right, because I'm working on these surahs like I'm working on Surah Rahman right now and others - and they'd like to assist me and do some homework with me, then let me know. And so in just one seminar like 50 of them applied.

And I took - we had a group of friends that were helping me so they kind of engaged some interview process and we selected a few candidates, and then I started meeting with them. And the National Incubation Center was very kind enough to let us use their space to work with them. So I worked with these students. There's about nine females and two males, and they are brilliant. They're all brilliant, mashallah. Like their Arabic, their ability to grasp the materials, study the tafasir.

We did a lot of work on Surah Rahman together actually before I got here. We were working six to eight hours a day at the incubation center with the team, working on different parts of the surah and the words and the analysis. What you're seeing on the screen is like a 10% version of all the notes that they put together - each of them put together.

Student Insights

But then what I do now, I have two calls every day before these lectures. I have my own study for seven or eight hours every day, but outside of that I have two calls. I have one call with Shaykh Sohaib Saeed and I have one call with some of those students, just to get their thoughts on the ayat of the day because they've been doing the research with me. So today three of them had some interesting thoughts, so I'm going to share them with you.

The first thought is my own - the contrast between what the human being has been given and his origin. Meaning Allah has really entitled us a lot in this surah, from عَلَّمَ الْقُرْآنَ to عَلَّمَهُ الْبَيَانَ to the order of the cosmos to the facilities on this earth, and then immediately he takes us to: by the way, you were made from the most useless kind of dirt on this planet.

And much like pottery is made - it's not made from expensive materials. That's why you can find pottery in the poorest villages. You can find pottery. You may not find glass there, you may not find a lot of metal or jewelry there, but you can find pottery in any village in the world because the source material is the cheapest possible material.

So Sumera had a thought - she said the human being is like a showpiece until put to use. Like pots that are sitting there empty, until you put them to use, what are you there for except for show? So you're just there for fakhar.

And Zaid added something that was really cool, because he's from a village in Pakistan. So he says in our village we put some water in the summer - we put water in the pot and it stays cold no matter how hot it gets. And this may be a commentary on the ability of the human being, unlike the jinn that's made of fire so they get inflamed easily. Human beings can be in very tough situations and still maintain their cool. They have the ability to have sabr.

That may be an implication of the word - like it may be a commentary on our internal ability that when we do fill ourselves with iman - by the way, iman and revelation are compared to water in the Quran, subhanAllah. So if the pot is filled with water it can stay cool. It could calm you from the inside even if the outside's scorching hot and boiling - it stays cool on the inside. That was really beautiful.

The Creation of the Jinn

First thought that people had about this ayah is when human beings were created from dirt, that must refer to Adam because he was literally made from dirt. Well that must mean that jan here refers to the father of all jinns. So just like the father of all humans Adam, this must be a reference to the father of all jinns, al-jan. That's what Imam Razi and others have also said. The question is, is that Iblis? That's an interesting question, but it's a nobody-cares question because when Allah doesn't tell us something, that's because it's not relevant for you. So don't worry about it.

Is Iblis the father of all jinns? Personally I'm inclined to say no, because there were other jinns already there. There were already jinns there. And the other interesting thing, because Allah will mention in Surat Al-Jinn that the jinns say that "the fool among us says ridiculous things." Who are they referring to - the fool among us? Iblis. They don't say "our dad is crazy." They say "the fool among us says ridiculous things." So he may well not be the original jinn. He's one of the jinn, but this may be referring to the original that was created.

The Nature of Fire

When you use the word jinn you're referring to the species. When you're saying jan, you're referring to the quality - someone who has jinn qualities, meaning one jinn. So jan is not the reference to the entire species - is referring to one. That's the point that's being made here by Imam Razi.

Marij means two things. It means release - irsal. It also means to mix something together. So when something is mixed together, it's called marij, like amrun marij - two things mixed with each other. Marij min nar means of course there's fire and then there's the fuel of the fire. Marij means some kind of mixture that has fire in it and has some fuel in it. The fuel has not been mentioned what that is, but those two merge together and become one. And they are made of some kind of fire.

Interestingly the word nar is also nakira which means some kind of fire. All of this boils down to the following: Some say that marij means it has smoke, others say it doesn't have smoke because it's mixed together. Others say this is the spark of the fire, others say this is the invisible part of the fire, which I'm inclined to believe - that it mixes with its material until it becomes invisible.

One of our team members is actually a scientist, a chemistry major, and she told us that in lab sometimes there are different kinds of fires. There are fires that don't have high temperatures. You can put your hand in it and nothing happens, because chem majors are weird - they do that kind of stuff. There are fires that are entirely invisible but very dangerous - your lab could be on fire and you don't see it and you don't even know and you could die. So there are different kinds of fires. They're not - fires are not all - they don't look the same. They don't have the same combustion. They don't have the same temperature. They don't have the same appearance to the naked eye.

And so when Allah says nar, it's actually some kind of fire that we're not familiar with, because it's made with some kind of mixed material that we're also not familiar with. He didn't tell us, but he did tell us it's some kind of thing that eventually just becomes fire itself - some kind of fire itself. So we shouldn't think that jinns are made of the fire that we see, because if that was the case then the language here would have been min an-nar. There would have been an alif lam on nar. The fact that there's no alif lam there, it means min nar - like some kind of fire. Maybe perhaps some kind of fire that you're not familiar with.

And so we try to kind of cage - don't do a barbecue because jinns because fire - like no, you can do a barbecue. That's the fire you made, that's not the jinn fire. It's some other thing that Allah created. And where that was made - was it made on earth, was it made somewhere else? Allah doesn't say.

Comparing Creation Materials

The question Razi asks - because Imam Razi loves that - he asks questions where he says when I read this ayah, here are the questions that come in my mind, and then he tries to answer that question. So he asked the question: Why even mention the jinn? The surah is about the favors done to human beings. They're still kind of hung up on the word favor, aren't they? Because that's the dominant view, and I've already explained what Allah means - wonders.

But regardless, we can understand here because the focus is on uniquely wondrous things done to benefit human beings - that the flavor is that of favors. Then Allah is comparing just like he compared us to animals and we see how much we've been favored. The same way now by describing how the jinns are made of fire and we're made of something that is cool and constructive as opposed to them being made of fire, which is destructive.

We are made of something that has nutrients in it. We are made - they're made of something that produces life. We're made of something that connects us to the earth, and therefore the nourishment comes from dirt just like we are from dirt. The qualities of the earth become our qualities. It has the capacity to hold within it great potential. The earth can produce a variety of vegetation. A variety of things can come out of the earth. A variety of life can be sustained on the earth. Human beings are capable of varieties of skills, varieties of production. The human mind can do incredible things. Physically, we can do different things. We're all very different. We have so much variety - all of that comes from what? The fact that we are from dirt.

And the jinns are made of something - the best thing that it can be used for is destruction, to burn something down. What's also interesting is the jinn are made of fire that cannot destroy human beings, because when you put fire to dirt it makes clay that can be used for pottery and build something. So even if the shayateen are attacking someone and the heat is coming on us, if we understand our purpose correctly, instead of destroying us, it only hardens us and makes us tougher.

So we've been given this incredible advantage over the fire. And by the way, one of the coolest ways to put out a fire is what? No, no, no, not just water - dirt. Dirt can put out fire because dirt is not combustible. So we've been given kind of a rock-paper-scissors advantage over the fire. So again, an advantage to human beings has been described.

The Master of Two Easts and Two Wests

And then the ayat will burn. This is where things are going to get a little - I don't know how else to describe it - psychedelic.

But there are two worlds - the world of jinn and the world of human beings. The jinns are not limited to this planet. So when I say east and west, what does that refer to? Sunrise and sunset. That's what east and west refers to. But if you're not on this planet, if you have access to beyond this planet, you're chilling on Mars - east and west is a different thing. Yes or no? Yeah, and if you can go even beyond this solar system, is east and west a different thing then?

So my east and west is restricted to the sun and the moon which is mentioned in the beginning. That's where my definition of east and west comes from. But the angels' definition of east and west or the jinn's definition of east and west cannot be limited to my definition of east and west, because that is their landscape. What is their real estate? And what is the east of their real estate and the west of their real estate is not like mine.

So perhaps one of the things Allah is saying when he says he's the master of both easts and the master of both wests is perhaps the master of the east and west of humans and the other east and west of the jinns - like they have their own east and west, and perhaps he's their master too.

The Summer Solstice

Another implication of this at the same time is that if you're familiar with the concept of the summer solstice - the sun, to make it super simple - if a farmer has a home and when he wakes up after fajr he sees the sun rise from the window, six months later the sun is going to rise from the second window. The sun doesn't rise from the exact same place. Over the course of half a year it moves, and then over the next six months it moves back where it started. This is called the summer solstice. So over the course of the year, how many easts do you get? Two. And over the course of the year then on the flip side, how many wests do you get? Two.

So this is why رَبُّ مَشْرِقَيِ الشَّمْسِ صَيْفًا وَشِتَاءً وَمَغْرِبَيْهَا - the two easts of the summer and the winter and the two wests of the summer and the winter. Which is really cool because now by this phrase Allah has connected - Allah is the rab of each of them differently. Like what he expects from humans is different, what he expects from jinns is different. So the word rab is repeated twice also, maybe even indicating that like the expectations are different because you're what he created.

When he created the human beings he gave a set of expectations to them. When he created the jinn he has a different set of expectations from them. Not the same as what he has from us. Similarly what we saw earlier on was a reference to fruits and crop and farm, and that has a lot to do with the seasons. And by saying two easts and two wests we're not just talking about the sun and the night and the day - we're now encompassing the seasons too. So it ties in with what was being talked about before.

Now again this question. Now this time what does Allah want me to ponder as one of his divine miracles? Seasons and how - what a gift of Allah it is that their world, their east and west is not my east and west. Can you imagine if I had to deal with jinns? Like having to see them and meet with them and hang out with them and all that stuff?

There is some interaction between humans and jinns. Yes, there is some interaction between them. Of course, I read the ayah to you. They inspire each other. We read Surah An-Nas - they would do whispers in the chests of people. So we know that happens. We know Sulaiman alayhis salam controlled the jinn. So there is interaction between them. Yes, but for the most part is there a barrier between the two? For the most part? Yeah. Imagine if there was zero barrier. That itself is a wonder from Allah - two magnificent, heavy species that coexist, and for the most part Allah has created a barrier between them.

Coming Up Next

Coming up next time in this Surah Ar-Rahman series: In the eyes of some beholders, it's beautiful. How much value is the original Mona Lisa? Forget the Mona Lisa. How much is an NFT of a monkey with like one lens on it was an ugly picture, but somebody thinks it's got value. We can give anything value. Human beings give subjective value to things, and then entire worlds are impacted by that subjective value, aren't they? Entire worlds are shaped by the value we give to things. Allah is teaching us this point because the value of these things are actually only inside of our minds.