Imagine a man who spends nine and a half centuries calling people to their Maker, and at the end of it can count the ones who listened on his fingers. Not a bad year. Not a hard decade. Nine hundred and fifty years of door after door, by night and by day, in public and in whispers, met mostly with backs turned and fingers pushed into ears. This is the patience of Nuh, peace be upon him, the first messenger Allah sent to a nation that had begun to worship its own dead.
This is day seven of twenty-nine, retold faithfully from Mufti Ismail Menk's beloved series. Hold onto one feeling as you read: the long ache of being right while the whole world walks the other way. Because that ache is about to become the air the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ breathes in Makkah, and a lesson Allah hands to every believer who has ever felt alone in their faith.
A man talking to people who would not listen
قَالَ رَبِّ إِنِّى دَعَوْتُ قَوْمِى لَيْلًا وَنَهَارًا فَلَمْ يَزِدْهُمْ دُعَآءِىٓ إِلَّا فِرَارًا
“He said, "My Lord, indeed I invited my people [to truth] night and day. But my invitation increased them not except in flight [i.e., aversion]."”
Surah Nuh 71:5-6 Read 71:5 with tafsir
Nuh, peace be upon him, came not long after Adam, to a people who were close enough to the first man that they should have known better. They had taken righteous men who once lived among them and, little by little, turned their memory into statues, and the statues into gods. So Allah sent Nuh to call them back to the One who made them. And he called. He called by night and he called by day. He called them in the open and he pulled them aside one by one. He used every door a human being has.
And the more he called, the further they ran. Mufti Menk lingers here on the picture Nuh paints to his Lord, because it is almost unbearable in its detail: grown men, when this prophet opened his mouth, would jam their fingers into their ears, the way a stubborn child blocks out a voice it does not want to hear. Then they would pull their clothes over their heads so they would not even have to see his face. Picture it, he says, and feel how foolish it looks, because this is exactly what we do when a reminder reaches us and we decide we would rather not hear it. Nuh stood in front of that wall for 950 years.
Turn back, and watch what your Lord pours on you
فَقُلْتُ ٱسْتَغْفِرُوا۟ رَبَّكُمْ إِنَّهُۥ كَانَ غَفَّارًا يُرْسِلِ ٱلسَّمَآءَ عَلَيْكُم مِّدْرَارًا وَيُمْدِدْكُم بِأَمْوَٰلٍ وَبَنِينَ وَيَجْعَل لَّكُمْ جَنَّٰتٍ وَيَجْعَل لَّكُمْ أَنْهَٰرًا
“And said, 'Ask forgiveness of your Lord. Indeed, He is ever a Perpetual Forgiver. He will send [rain from] the sky upon you in [continuing] showers. And give you increase in wealth and children and provide for you gardens and provide for you rivers.'”
Surah Nuh 71:10-12 Read 71:10 with tafsir
Nuh did not only warn. He held out the gift in the other hand. Ask forgiveness of your Lord, he told them, He is the One who forgives again and again, and look at what comes back to you when you do. He will open the sky over you with rain, and rain is everything: a land's crops, its economy, its life. He will pour wealth on you, and children, and gardens, and rivers. Seek the One who owns provision, Mufti Menk says, and stop chasing it from those who own nothing. The whole of your sustenance has one Owner, so turn to Him and watch the doors swing open.
This is the verse Mufti Menk presses gently onto every one of us, because it is not locked in Nuh's century. Istighfar is still the key. When a believer keeps returning to Allah and asking His forgiveness, Allah forgives, and one of the signs that He has is the rain that comes at just the right measure, the wealth that finally settles, the children whose hearts are softened. There is a saying of the Prophet ﷺ that he draws in beside it: give glad tidings of Paradise to the one in whose record there is a great deal of seeking forgiveness. Nuh's people heard the offer for nine centuries. We get it tonight.
The du'a a prophet only makes when everything is gone
وَقَالَ نُوحٌ رَّبِّ لَا تَذَرْ عَلَى ٱلْأَرْضِ مِنَ ٱلْكَٰفِرِينَ دَيَّارًا إِنَّكَ إِن تَذَرْهُمْ يُضِلُّوا۟ عِبَادَكَ وَلَا يَلِدُوٓا۟ إِلَّا فَاجِرًا كَفَّارًا
“And Noah said, "My Lord, do not leave upon the earth from among the disbelievers an inhabitant. Indeed, if You leave them, they will mislead Your servants and not beget except [every] wicked one and [confirmed] disbeliever."”
Surah Nuh 71:26-27 Read 71:26 with tafsir
Here Mufti Menk slows the story right down, because of what it teaches about the people who are close to Allah. For 950 years, when his people threatened him and reached for stones to kill him, Nuh did not curse them. He kept his hands down. The friends of Allah, he says, do not call down ruin on those who hurt them at the first wound; they keep praying guide him, have mercy on him, bless him. But there comes a point, after every door has been tried and every year has been spent, when even a prophet who held on that long finally raises his hands. And when he did, the du'a was terrifying in its weight: my Lord, do not leave a single one of them on the earth.
He was not being cruel. He had simply seen, over ten lifetimes, that they would only mislead Allah's servants and raise children more poisonous than themselves, and the next generation proved him right, charging their sons never to abandon the idols. So learn the warning folded inside this, Mufti Menk says, and feel it land on yourself: never be careless with someone who is sincerely serving Allah. When such a person finally turns their palms up and says, my Lord, deal with this one, the answer can come. If your own life feels like it is in knots you cannot untie, the first question to ask is whether you have wounded one of the friends of Allah. If you cannot benefit a person, at the very least, do not harm them.
The carpenter on the mountain
Then Allah told Nuh that it was over. The hearts were sealed; not one more person would believe. Stop calling them, He said, the chance has closed. And in its place came a command no one expected: build an ark. Nuh was no carpenter and no shipwright, he had never built anything in his life, and Allah told him to construct a vessel, not by the water, but on a mountain. So he did. He would fell a tree, drag it up, and find it had been made ready, and the nails with it, every piece sliding into the next like a jigsaw whose every part fits the first time. Mufti Menk gives the building a hundred years and the ship the scale of a covered vessel, sealed over the top like a submarine, and he is careful to mark those figures as a report carried from the People of the Book that the Qur'an neither confirms nor denies, mentioned only in passing, not built into our belief.
And the chiefs of his people walked past and laughed. So you were a prophet, and now you are a carpenter? Building a boat on dry land, miles from any sea, how do you plan to get it to the water, will a giant carry it for you? Nuh let them laugh. You laugh at us today, he answered, and a day is coming when we will laugh at you. It is the oldest posture of faith: doing exactly what Allah said while the clever people of the moment treat you like a fool. Hold the picture, because in a few centuries a man in Makkah will stand on a hill calling his people to the one God, and the chiefs of Quraysh will laugh at him ﷺ in just the same way, and the ending will be just the same too.
The sky opened and the earth burst at once
فَفَتَحْنَآ أَبْوَٰبَ ٱلسَّمَآءِ بِمَآءٍ مُّنْهَمِرٍ وَفَجَّرْنَا ٱلْأَرْضَ عُيُونًا فَٱلْتَقَى ٱلْمَآءُ عَلَىٰٓ أَمْرٍ قَدْ قُدِرَ
“Then We opened the gates of the heaven with rain pouring down. And caused the earth to burst with springs, and the waters met for a matter already predestined.”
Surah al-Qamar 54:11-12 Read 54:11 with tafsir
The sign came: water gushed up from the oven, from the very ground, and Nuh gathered the believers and a pair of every creature and climbed aboard. And as they did, he taught them a du'a we still say, that the Prophet ﷺ made the sunnah of travel: in the name of Allah it sails and in the name of Allah it comes to rest. You think the brakes stop the car, Mufti Menk says, but it is Allah who grants the stopping; ride in His name and trust the One who moves it and halts it.
Then the flood came from two directions at once, and Mufti Menk calls the description in Surah al-Qamar one of the most vivid in the whole Qur'an. The gates of the sky were thrown open with water pouring down, not falling but unleashed, and at the same moment the earth itself was split into bursting springs, every drop it had been holding sent up. The water of the sky coming down and the water of the earth rising up met at a point Allah had already measured to the inch. Picture a tennis ball pressed to the bottom of a full bucket, he says; that was the earth. Nothing was left to chance, and nothing was left dry.
The son who climbed for higher ground
وَهِىَ تَجْرِى بِهِمْ فِى مَوْجٍ كَٱلْجِبَالِ وَنَادَىٰ نُوحٌ ٱبْنَهُۥ وَكَانَ فِى مَعْزِلٍ يَٰبُنَىَّ ٱرْكَب مَّعَنَا وَلَا تَكُن مَّعَ ٱلْكَٰفِرِينَ قَالَ سَـَٔاوِىٓ إِلَىٰ جَبَلٍ يَعْصِمُنِى مِنَ ٱلْمَآءِ ۚ قَالَ لَا عَاصِمَ ٱلْيَوْمَ مِنْ أَمْرِ ٱللَّهِ إِلَّا مَن رَّحِمَ
“And it sailed with them through waves like mountains, and Noah called to his son who was apart [from them], "O my son, come aboard with us and be not with the disbelievers." [But] he said, "I will take refuge on a mountain to protect me from the water." [Noah] said, "There is no protector today from the decree of Allah, except for whom He gives mercy."”
Surah Hud 11:42-43 Read 11:42 with tafsir
The ark rode waves like mountains, and through the spray Nuh saw his own son standing apart, on the wrong side, with the people of disbelief. A father's heart broke open: O my son, come aboard with us, do not be with the disbelievers. And the boy answered with the calm logic of a drowning man who does not yet know he is drowning: do not worry, father, I will climb a mountain, the water will never reach that high. There is no refuge today from the command of Allah, Nuh told him, except for the one He has mercy on. A wave came between them, and the son was gone.
What is this scene for, Mufti Menk asks, turning it straight to us. How many people are drowning in a sin right now, warned by their family and their teachers and their own conscience, certain they have it handled, certain they can climb just high enough to be safe? In the very middle of the wrong, the reminder reaches them, and they wave it off the way Nuh's son waved off the ark. There is no mountain high enough to climb above what Allah has decreed. The only safe ground was the boat his father was begging him to board.
He is not of your family
قَالَ يَٰنُوحُ إِنَّهُۥ لَيْسَ مِنْ أَهْلِكَ ۖ إِنَّهُۥ عَمَلٌ غَيْرُ صَٰلِحٍ ۖ فَلَا تَسْـَٔلْنِ مَا لَيْسَ لَكَ بِهِۦ عِلْمٌ ۖ إِنِّىٓ أَعِظُكَ أَن تَكُونَ مِنَ ٱلْجَٰهِلِينَ
“He said, "O Noah, indeed he is not of your family; indeed, he is [one whose] work was other than righteous, so ask Me not for that about which you have no knowledge. Indeed, I advise you, lest you be among the ignorant."”
Surah Hud 11:46 Read 11:46 with tafsir
Nuh turned to his Lord with a grief any parent would feel. My Lord, my son was of my family, and Your promise was to save my family, and You are the most just of judges. He did not challenge the decree; he was trying to understand it. And the answer reframed the word family itself: O Nuh, he was not of your family, his deeds were unrighteous, so do not ask of Me what you have no knowledge of. The bond of faith, Mufti Menk says, runs deeper than the bond of blood. Biologically the boy was his son. In the only family that counts before Allah, he had already walked out.
Then the water was called home. O earth, swallow your water; O sky, hold back. The flood drained away, the ark settled on a mountain called Judi (where exactly, Allah knows best, Mufti Menk says, and he sets aside the claimed discoveries), and Nuh was told to come down in peace, with blessings on him and on the nations that would spring from those with him. For every one of us reading this is a child of Nuh: of all who sailed, the Qur'an tells us, only his line continued. He is the second father of humanity after Adam. The man the world laughed at became the man the whole world descends from, and Allah closes his story with a question meant for you: is there anyone who will take heed?