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qālū ʾa-ʾidhā mitnā wa-kunnā turāban wa-ʿiẓāman ʾa-ʾinnā la-mabʿūthūna
They said, ‘What, when we are dead and become dust and bones, shall we be resurrected?
— Ali Quli Qarai
23Al-Mu’minūnالمؤمنونVerse 82 of 118
The Believers23. Al-Mu’minūnالمؤمنون
Al Mu’minūn
The Believers
MeccanVerse 82 of 118
Surah al-Mu’minun - Verses 81-83
81. “Nay, but they say the like of what the ancients said.”
82. “They say: ‘What! When we die and become dust and bones, shall we then be raised up again?”
83.”Certainly we and our fathers have been promised this aforetime; this is naught but fables of the ancient.”
The Arabic word /’asatir/ is the plural form of /’usturah/, meaning a story or legend that is false. The word /’usturah/ itself is derived from the word ‘satr’, meaning line. Thus words that come one after the other can be said to line up. The Qur’an mentions nine times from the tongue of the unbelievers this word to oppose the message of the prophets. They had no reasons or arguments to refute them; their only responses to the Truth were incredulity and denial,
(“...shall we then be raised up again?...”)
In the previous verses, those who denied the oneness of Allah and the Resurrection were called to ponder the world of existence and the signs in the microcosm and macrocosm. Now, as these verses indicate, they have abandoned intellectual thinking and simply, blindly imitate their ancestors, and have dismissed the Resurrection as tales of the ancients. The verse says:
“Nay, but they say the like of what the ancients said.”
But their argument about the denial of Resurrection is also the same thing that the ancients used to say. Then their exact words are reiterated in the next verse:
“They say: ‘What! When we die and become dust and bones, shall we then be raised up again?”
This question of theirs shows that the unbelievers were rather ignorant, for if they had contemplated their creation in this world, that is, the possibility of their coming into existence from nonexistence, then they would have been able to conclude that their resurrection from the dead would have been just as possible and they would confess that Allah is their Creator. In the next verse, they indicate that this is an unbelievable action. Such things have been promised to us and our forefathers before. They are nothing but fables of the men of old.
The verse says:
“Certainly we and our fathers have been promised this aforetime; this is naught but fables of the ancient.”
By this, they mean that their re-creation, the Reckoning, Paradise, and Hell are nothing but mere fancy.