Surah Al-A‘raf: Faith, Blessing, and Musa’s Struggle
7 March 2021
Beginning with Ourselves
We all want to be at peace. We want to feel better in our homes, at work, and in our relationships with people. But when we tie peace solely to changes in external circumstances, we can overlook the part our own behavior plays. That is why the question at the beginning of the lesson is so close to home: What can I change in myself today? I cannot control all of another person’s choices, but I can review my own words, reactions, habits, and desire to learn. To do this, I need to stop thinking that I am flawless. I may be mistaken, my knowledge may be incomplete, or I may have been reacting wrongly to an issue in the same way for years. Recognizing these things does not diminish my worth; it opens a door to change.
Being a good example also begins here. Instead of continually telling people what they should do, we can try to live what we know to be right in our own lives. Those around us see how we speak when we have problems, how we handle a disagreement, and how we approach another person’s rights. Of course, we do not have to appear calm and happy all the time. Nor can we promise that we will have a life without problems. What matters is being able to respond to problems by turning toward learning and seeking solutions, rather than merely blaming or avoiding. The influence of someone who works on themselves may be more authentic than their efforts to force someone else to change.
Knowledge, Emotion, and Seeking Solutions
Our emotions are a valuable part of life. We feel joy, sadness, fear, and excitement. But when we decide immediately under the influence of a strong emotion, we may confuse what we need at that moment with what will be beneficial in the long term. Something we say to relieve our anger may become a wound that remains in our relationship for a long time. A hasty decision made to ease our anxiety may worsen the problem we want to solve. The balance the lesson draws attention to is not the elimination of emotion. It is keeping knowledge, reflection, and consideration of consequences alive while recognizing what we feel. As people come to know their emotions, they can choose more consciously what to do with them.
Imagine that we encounter a traffic accident. We may see that someone with knowledge and experience can assess the situation more systematically. They distinguish what they know from what they do not know, call for the necessary help, and observe their own limits. Someone with no preparation may experience fear and confusion. This comparison is not intended to belittle the frightened person. It is meant to show that knowledge and preparation can provide useful support in a difficult moment. The same need exists in our relationships. In a disagreement, we can learn to listen, ask the right question, and take a break until our anger subsides. When we add these skills to good intentions, our possibilities for action expand.
Becoming more skilled in our profession over time is a similar example. As we gain experience, we recognize more quickly a fault that took us a long time to resolve in our early years. A repairer learns what to look for; an employee better understands at which stage of their work a problem arises. But do we show the same desire to learn about ourselves? If we say the same sentence in every argument and then experience the same hurt, there may be something to learn here too. Saying “I do not know” is the beginning of apprenticeship. When we imagine we know everything, however, making room for new knowledge becomes difficult. Being open to learning enables us to develop skills in our own lives too.
Another everyday example the lesson gives is continually experiencing the same difficulty in heavy traffic. We may not be able to change the whole city, but on some days we can change our departure time, route, or preparation. Not every situation has an easy solution; not everyone has the same opportunities. Nevertheless, distinguishing what we cannot change from what we can is valuable. We can turn some of the attention we spend continually complaining toward a practical step. When a mental or physical illness is involved, however, we should not attribute it solely to lack of knowledge or weakness of faith. Seeking professional support when necessary is consistent with our responsibility toward ourselves. Asking for support is not the opposite of effort.
Faith, Blessing, and Responsibility
From verse ninety-six of Surah Al-A‘raf onward, the relationship between faith, mindfulness of Allah, and blessing is emphasized. Let us not understand this relationship merely as earning more money. Let us also think of a life in which people trust one another, rights are respected, and blessings are not wasted. How we use what we earn, what we direct our effort toward, and the standards by which we build our relationships matter. Nevertheless, we cannot consider a person’s wealth evidence of the soundness of their faith, or their poverty evidence of a deficiency in it. The verse’s call is before us to consider our own orientation and responsibility, rather than to classify others by their income. We should not lose our moral standard while thinking about blessing.
Imagining oneself completely secure is also one of the important questions in this section. We make plans; we want to organize our work, home, and future. But having a plan does not mean we control every circumstance. Managing a place and owning the people in it are different things. An employer does not own their employees’ lives; nor can a ruler regard people as their possessions. The lesson uses this distinction while reminding us of human limits before Allah, who creates, owns, and governs. When we do not make our own power absolute, we both become less inclined to oppress others and think more carefully about the responsibility of the authority we hold.
People closing themselves off to what is right is also discussed. When continually rejecting a statement, are we truly investigating it, or have we made rejection a habit? As we defend a wrong statement we have made, we may eventually become less able to see its wrongness. That is why directing warnings about the closing of the heart toward ourselves is more useful than using them only about others. What subjects have I stopped listening to? When evaluating information, am I resisting in order to protect my own interests? Asking these questions does not mean passing definitive judgment on people’s inner worlds. It means trying to examine our own sincerity and openness to learning. The courage to acknowledge that we are mistaken becomes important here.
Standing Behind Our Promises
The emphasis on failing to keep promises in Surah Al-A‘raf invites us to consider faith together with our daily lives. How seriously do we take promises made in a partnership, marriage, or relationship with a customer? Do we stand behind our word while things are easy and forget it when they become difficult? A promise is not merely a sentence that has left our mouth; it also affects the other person’s plans and trust. Therefore, if there is a responsibility we cannot fulfill, we need to talk about it, explain the situation, and seek ways to make amends rather than conceal it. If we increase another person’s burden while freeing ourselves from our own, we may have treated a promise as a mere formality. Trust is nourished by consistency in our behavior.
Adam’s forgetting and then turning back from wrong also remind us that people should not make their mistake the permanent definition of their lives. Saying “I made a mistake, so nothing can change now” and insisting “I made no mistake” close the same door in different ways. By recalling the prophets’ pleas for forgiveness, the lesson asks us to acknowledge our own wrongs too. Reflecting on Allah’s forgiveness does not mean abandoning responsibility. On the contrary, it makes it possible to turn toward correction without falling into despair. If we have hurt someone, we need to respect their rights; if we have a wrong habit, we need to seek help and ways to leave it behind. Let us not use the time still before us to continue the same wrong by postponing its correction.
Musa’s Words Before Pharaoh
In Musa’s call to Pharaoh, the responsibility to speak the truth and the release of people held under oppression stand out. Here we see not merely an argument between two people, but also the tension between power and what is right. Holding authority does not make everything a person says true. Frightening people, silencing them, and ruling over their lives are not evidence that a message is right. Musa’s account moves us away from viewing authority solely through its display and resources. While asking who is powerful and how much power they hold, we should also ask for whose benefit and by what standard that power is used. Human dignity cannot be left outside this question.
The verses concerning the staff and the hand are considered in the lesson through different ways of interpretation. Here it is important to distinguish between the event reported by the text and an explanation developed from it. A comparison may offer us an opportunity to think, but that comparison is not the verse itself. Likewise, explaining a miracle with a modern scientific term does not mean the explanation has been scientifically demonstrated. The basic question we are considering is being able to distinguish truth from falsehood without being swept away by appearances. Thinking about verses in relation to one another and their contexts keeps us from both hasty judgments and presenting our interpretation as unquestionable reality. Let us maintain this care as we learn.
People’s eyes being influenced by the magicians’ display is also connected in the lesson with today’s world of images. Something we see on a screen can affect us deeply; but being affected does not mean that what we see shows the whole truth. On social media, we look at photographs of a family always smiling. We do not see that family’s arguments, tiredness, or difficulties they have not shared. Then we may compare the entirety of our own life with a few selected images of someone else’s. Such a comparison draws us into an unnecessary sense of inadequacy. Before asking why my life is not like theirs, the question to ask is how much I really know about their life. The visible part and the whole life are not the same.
Changing Direction Upon Seeing the Truth
The magicians coming to faith after recognizing the truth leads us to consider that a person’s past alone does not determine their future. They may have worked in allegiance to someone, acted with an expectation, and been involved in wrongdoing. But they show that they do not have to remain where they were in the face of the truth they encounter. Pharaoh’s anger that they believed without his permission reveals that oppression seeks control over belief as well. People’s consciences do not depend on a ruler’s permission. Their asking for patience in the face of threats shows not that they will face no difficulties because they believe, but their need for endurance amid difficulty. Patience here is an attitude deeper than passive waiting.
It is also important that Musa’s people say they were harmed both before and afterward. Turning toward the right path does not mean that all difficulties will disappear at that instant. Sometimes people go through a difficult process even after taking a rightful step. Asking for help, solidarity, and patience should be considered together in this process. If opportunities and authority are obtained afterward, the question then becomes how to act with them. Having escaped oppression does not justify our oppressing someone else. Being a victim in the past does not automatically make all our future choices right. Whatever position people reach, their need for justice continues. Responsibility continues, changing form with circumstances.
Not Forgetting Once We Are at Ease
As the account continues, we see promises made during hardship being broken when the hardship eases. This situation is not unfamiliar to us either. We pray for a problem to be solved and say that we will live more carefully once it is resolved. Then, when we are comfortable, we may return to the same habits. Here we need to evaluate ourselves not only by our sincerity at that moment but also by our behavior afterward. If we have made a promise, we can establish a way to remember it. If we have apologized, we can strive not to repeat the same hurt. Being grateful without assuming that comfort will last helps us preserve in easy times what we learned in difficult ones. Remembering becomes a real habit when we give it a place in our lives.
The account of asking for a god resembling other people’s idols after crossing the sea shows that, even when an external obstacle disappears, there are still matters within people to work on. Let us consider this today in terms of our own attachments. Our work, home, phone, or a new possession may meet our needs; but when we tie all our peace to their existence, we may lose our balance. While obtaining more, do we forget to listen to our children, understand our parents, and ask about the troubles of those close to us? The lesson’s invitation is not to abandon life and work. It is to see how much space we give to what, not to make the temporary the sole purpose of life, and to turn our knowledge into goodness. A small change we begin in ourselves today can be its first step.