By now you have watched Musa, peace be upon him, carried as a baby into the house that hunted him, raised, called, sent back to Pharaoh, and walked through a sea that closed over his enemy. You would think a people saved like that would never hesitate again. This is the day that quietly tells you otherwise.
Mufti Menk does not march us through every remaining year of the wandering. He stops at three scenes from the life of Musa that the Qur'an froze in place: a cow they could have slaughtered in a minute and instead argued into a mountain, a rich man named Qarun the earth swallowed whole, and the day Allah humbled the man who spoke to Him by sending him to learn from someone else. Three scenes, one lesson running underneath all of them: when the instruction comes, obey it.
One believer in the house of a tyrant
وَضَرَبَ ٱللَّهُ مَثَلًا لِّلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ ٱمْرَأَتَ فِرْعَوْنَ إِذْ قَالَتْ رَبِّ ٱبْنِ لِى عِندَكَ بَيْتًا فِى ٱلْجَنَّةِ وَنَجِّنِى مِن فِرْعَوْنَ وَعَمَلِهِۦ وَنَجِّنِى مِنَ ٱلْقَوْمِ ٱلظَّٰلِمِينَ
“And Allāh presents an example of those who believed: the wife of Pharaoh, when she said, "My Lord, build for me near You a house in Paradise and save me from Pharaoh and his deeds and save me from the wrongdoing people."”
Surah at-Tahrim 66:11 Read 66:11 with tafsir
Before the three scenes, Mufti Menk pauses on a single woman, because she is the answer to the excuse most of us live by. She was the wife of Pharaoh himself, the woman who had raised the infant Musa in the palace, and she knew. She knew the boy spoke the truth and her husband spoke a lie, and she stood inside the very engine room of the tyranny and refused to let it own her heart. Her du'a is preserved in the Qur'an forever.
Listen to the order of her words, Mufti Menk says, because she teaches you how to ask. She did not say, build for me a house in Paradise near You. She said, build for me near You a house, and only then, in Paradise. Nearness to Allah came first; the house came after. Once you are close to Him you already have everything. And notice where she was when she said it: surrounded, outnumbered, every face around her in the wrong. It is the position of the convert whose whole family is elsewhere, of the one person in a room who knows the joke is cruel and will not laugh. To stand out like that is hard. But Allah mentions His good servants by name to the angels, and a soul who refuses to drown in the crowd is exactly the kind of name He loves to mention.
The cow they argued into a mountain
وَإِذْ قَالَ مُوسَىٰ لِقَوْمِهِۦٓ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يَأْمُرُكُمْ أَن تَذْبَحُوا۟ بَقَرَةً ۖ قَالُوٓا۟ أَتَتَّخِذُنَا هُزُوًا ۖ قَالَ أَعُوذُ بِٱللَّهِ أَنْ أَكُونَ مِنَ ٱلْجَٰهِلِينَ
“And [recall] when Moses said to his people, "Indeed, Allāh commands you to slaughter a cow." They said, "Do you take us in ridicule?" He said, "I seek refuge in Allāh from being among the ignorant."”
Surah al-Baqarah 2:67 Read 2:67 with tafsir
A wealthy man had been murdered, and the killing was tearing the community apart: family against family, everyone accusing, no one confessing. They brought the problem to Musa, and Allah gave him an answer so simple it sounds like it cannot be the answer. Slaughter a cow. Any cow. Do it, and the matter will be settled. The whole thing could have ended that afternoon.
Instead they began to ask. What kind of cow? So Allah told them: not too old, not too young, somewhere in between. They could have slaughtered one then. Instead: what colour? A rich, radiant yellow, the Qur'an answered, pleasing to the eye of anyone who looks at it. Still they pressed: the cows all look alike to us, describe it exactly. And so the description tightened around them like a net of their own weaving: a cow never worked to plough or to water the fields, flawless, without a single mark. Here is the heart of it, Mufti Menk says, drawn straight from the words shaddadu fa shaddada Allah alayhim: they made it difficult, so Allah made it difficult for them. Obedience would have cost them one ordinary cow. Their delay cost them a hunt across the land for the one impossible animal that now existed only because their questions had conjured it.
Now you have come with the truth
قَالَ إِنَّهُۥ يَقُولُ إِنَّهَا بَقَرَةٌ لَّا ذَلُولٌ تُثِيرُ ٱلْأَرْضَ وَلَا تَسْقِى ٱلْحَرْثَ مُسَلَّمَةٌ لَّا شِيَةَ فِيهَا ۚ قَالُوا۟ ٱلْـَٰٔنَ جِئْتَ بِٱلْحَقِّ ۚ فَذَبَحُوهَا وَمَا كَادُوا۟ يَفْعَلُونَ
“He said, "He says, 'It is a cow neither trained to plow the earth nor to irrigate the field, one free from fault with no spot upon her.'" They said, "Now you have come with the truth." So they slaughtered her, but they could hardly do it.”
Surah al-Baqarah 2:71 Read 2:71 with tafsir
The cow they were now forced to find belonged, it is reported, to an orphan and his widowed mother. The boy's dying father had owned only a single calf, and he had released it into the forest and left his wife and child in Allah's care, trusting Him over a society he knew would seize a weak family's wealth. Allah guarded that calf in the wild until the day the people, desperate, came looking for exactly it. The price they paid for the cow's hide filled with gold made the orphan rich in an afternoon. Mufti Menk lingers here, because the same Allah who let them complicate their own lives was quietly running a rescue for a fatherless boy whose father had simply trusted Him.
And then the purpose. They struck the dead man with a piece of the slaughtered cow, and by the leave of Allah he sat up alive, named his killer, and lay back down. Thus does Allah bring the dead to life, the verse says, and He shows you His signs that you might reason. Three lessons fall out of one strange story, Mufti Menk counts them off: the raw power of Allah over life and death, the justice He insists upon, and the one that is meant for us, that when the truth arrives we surrender to it instead of arguing it into a mountain. This is why Allah named an entire surah, the longest in the Qur'an, after this cow: al-Baqarah. The whole chapter your eyes pass every time you open the Qur'an carries the title of a people who could not just obey.
Qarun, and the wealth the earth swallowed
إِنَّ قَٰرُونَ كَانَ مِن قَوْمِ مُوسَىٰ فَبَغَىٰ عَلَيْهِمْ ۖ وَءَاتَيْنَٰهُ مِنَ ٱلْكُنُوزِ مَآ إِنَّ مَفَاتِحَهُۥ لَتَنُوٓأُ بِٱلْعُصْبَةِ أُو۟لِى ٱلْقُوَّةِ إِذْ قَالَ لَهُۥ قَوْمُهُۥ لَا تَفْرَحْ ۖ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يُحِبُّ ٱلْفَرِحِينَ
“Indeed, Qārūn was from the people of Moses, but he tyrannized them. And We gave him of treasures whose keys would burden a band of strong men; thereupon his people said to him, "Do not exult. Indeed, Allāh does not like the exultant.”
Surah al-Qasas 28:76 Read 28:76 with tafsir
The second scene is a man from Musa's own people, Qarun, given wealth so vast that the keys to his treasure stores alone would have buckled the knees of a band of strong men. Imagine, Mufti Menk says, one credit card can keep you up at night; this man's keys were a burden in themselves. And he had one disease. Arrogance. Everything he owned, he insisted, came from himself: my brain, my plan, my cleverness, my effort. I, I, I, and me, me, me. Nothing he had was ever traced back to the One who gave it. When his people warned him, do not exult, seek the home of the Hereafter with what Allah has given you and do not forget your share of this world, do good as Allah has done good to you, he waved them off: I was only given it because of knowledge I have.
Some looked at his gold and ached for it, and Allah preserves their wish word for word: would that we had what Qarun was given. But the people of knowledge answered them, and it is an answer worth memorising: the reward of Allah is better for the one who believes and does righteousness, and none are granted it except the patient. So Qarun went out before his people in his full glittering display, and the earth opened. It swallowed him, his house, and everything he owned, and there was no faction on earth to help him against Allah, nor could he save himself. By morning the very ones who had envied him were saying: it is Allah who extends provision to whom He wills and restricts it; had He not been gracious to us, He would have caused the earth to swallow us too. Mufti Menk draws the line straight to us: never be a show-off, and never let your eyes climb after what Allah gave someone else, because the One who gives has every power to take, and the safest posture before Him is humble, all the way to the ground.
The day Musa was sent to learn
فَوَجَدَا عَبْدًا مِّنْ عِبَادِنَآ ءَاتَيْنَٰهُ رَحْمَةً مِّنْ عِندِنَا وَعَلَّمْنَٰهُ مِن لَّدُنَّا عِلْمًا
“And they found a servant from among Our servants [i.e., al-Khiḍr] to whom We had given mercy from Us and had taught him from Us a [certain] knowledge.”
Surah al-Kahf 18:65 Read 18:65 with tafsir
The third scene begins with a question put to Musa: who is the most knowledgeable person alive? He answered, naturally, that it was him, and why not, he received revelation, he spoke to Allah directly. So Allah corrected him gently. No one holds all knowledge; Allah gives it out in pockets, this one excelling here, that one excelling there. There is a servant of Mine, He told Musa, given a knowledge you were not given. And Musa, peace be upon him, the prophet who spoke with Allah, set out on a journey to sit at the feet of someone who could teach him something he did not know. Before the story even moves, Mufti Menk catches the lesson: we are meant to benefit from one another's knowledge, and the people we should keep closest are not the ones who polish this world for us but the ones who can carry us toward the next, the scholars who are the heart's physicians when we are dying of a spiritual illness we cannot even feel.
They found him where the two seas meet, the place a fish had slipped from their basket into the water as a sign. This pious servant, known in the reports as al-Khidr, was not a prophet, Mufti Menk is careful to say, but a righteous man following the law of Musa, given a particular knowledge directly from Allah. Musa asked, with beautiful humility, may I follow you so you can teach me. And al-Khidr warned him: you will never manage to be patient with me, for how can you be patient over things you have not encompassed in knowledge? Musa promised he would try.
How can you be patient over what you do not know?
قَالَ هَٰذَا فِرَاقُ بَيْنِى وَبَيْنِكَ ۚ سَأُنَبِّئُكَ بِتَأْوِيلِ مَا لَمْ تَسْتَطِع عَّلَيْهِ صَبْرًا
“[Al-Khiḍr] said, "This is parting between me and you. I will inform you of the interpretation of that about which you could not have patience.”
Surah al-Kahf 18:78 Read 18:78 with tafsir
Three times Musa could not hold his peace. Al-Khidr bored a hole in a boat that had carried them for free, and Musa cried out, will you drown its people? He killed a young boy they passed, and Musa was aghast: a pure soul, for nothing? He rebuilt a leaning wall for a town that had just refused them so much as a meal, and Musa said, you could at least have taken a wage for it. Each time al-Khidr reminded him: did I not tell you you would never be able to bear with me? At the third, they parted.
And then the meanings, every one of them mercy wearing the mask of harm. The boat belonged to poor men who lived by it, and a king downstream was seizing every sound vessel by force; a damaged boat he would pass over, so the flaw was its rescue. The boy's parents were believers, and Allah knew the child would have grown to crush them with rebellion and disbelief, so He took him and would grant them a better child, purer and nearer to mercy. The wall stood over a buried treasure belonging to two orphans whose father had been a righteous man, and had it collapsed the treasure would have been looted; held up, it would wait until the boys grew to claim what was theirs. Mufti Menk draws out the staggering point underneath: Allah knows not only what was and is and will be, but what was never going to be, and how it would have unfolded had He let it. The boat was never actually going to be seized, because Allah already knew there would be a hole in it. That is the depth of His knowledge, and the smallness of ours: a single drop, against a whole ocean. Musa, peace be upon him, was sent on this journey so the man who spoke to Allah would feel, in his own chest, how little any of us can see.
The obedience these stories were really about
Step back and the three scenes rhyme. A people who could have obeyed in a sentence and chose to debate. A man drowned in his own wealth because he never bowed. A prophet learning that the wisdom behind Allah's commands is often hidden from the very people asked to follow them. The thread Mufti Menk keeps pulling is obedience: when the instruction comes, do it, do not stall it into something heavy, do not demand to understand every reason before you submit, because the One issuing the command sees the whole ocean while you are holding a single drop.
And he turns it, near the end, onto our worship, which is exactly where your own faith stands in this story. Look at the pillars, he says. In salah, fasting, and Hajj, we gladly do the obligation and then add far more on top, the sunnah and the voluntary outweighing the fard many times over. But in charity we cling to the bare two and a half percent and grow strangely stingy with anything beyond it. Bani Israil were a nation handed everything, a prophet who spoke to Allah, a sea split open, food sent from the sky, and still the hardest thing they were ever asked to do was simply to obey without arguing. That is the warning folded into this whole pillar: this ummah was told to learn from their example, not to repeat it. So when the command is clear, whether it is the prayer that calls you five times a day or the wealth Allah asks you to loosen your grip on, the believer's answer is the one Bani Israil reached only at the very end, and far too late: now you have come with the truth. We hear, and we obey.