Picture two men standing side by side. Same height, same build, the same pair of working hands; if you saw them in a line you could not tell which was which. Then you set each one a task. One of them cannot speak, cannot quite follow what you ask, cannot make himself understood, and whatever direction you point him in, nothing useful ever comes back. The other one you can trust with anything, send anywhere, and he not only does what is right, he calls others to it too.
That is the second of two examples Allah strikes back to back near the heart of Surah an-Nahl, and this is day twenty-six of twenty-seven, retold faithfully from Nouman Ali Khan's series. It looks at first like a simple lesson about a useless servant and a useful one. By the end, the picture has quietly turned all the way around, and the people who thought they were the masters discover they are the dead weight.
Two men who look the same
وَضَرَبَ ٱللَّهُ مَثَلًا رَّجُلَيْنِ أَحَدُهُمَآ أَبْكَمُ لَا يَقْدِرُ عَلَىٰ شَىْءٍ وَهُوَ كَلٌّ عَلَىٰ مَوْلَىٰهُ أَيْنَمَا يُوَجِّههُّ لَا يَأْتِ بِخَيْرٍ ۖ هَلْ يَسْتَوِى هُوَ وَمَن يَأْمُرُ بِٱلْعَدْلِ ۙ وَهُوَ عَلَىٰ صِرَٰطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍ
“And Allāh presents an example of two men, one of them dumb and unable to do a thing, while he is a burden to his guardian. Wherever he directs him, he brings no good. Is he equal to one who commands justice, while he is on a straight path?”
Surah an-Nahl 16:76 Read 16:76 with tafsir
The picture opens with two men, and Nouman Ali Khan notes how deliberate that word is. Not a strong man and a weak one, not a giant and a child. Two men, apparently equal, the kind you would size up as the same. The whole force of the example depends on that, because everything that follows is the difference you cannot see from the outside.
The first man is described as abkam. It means mute, someone who cannot speak, but it carries more than that. It is used for a person who cannot make himself understood and cannot understand others either, a breakdown of communication going both ways, and for a mind that cannot quite think a thing through. So this is a man with a real disability, in receiving and in giving, before you have asked him to do anything at all.
A burden, and a blunt knife
Then Allah piles the difficulty higher. La yaqdiru ala shay, he is not able to do a single thing, the very phrase used of the owned slave in the example just before this one. Even a task with no speaking in it, even something simple, he cannot manage. And then the heaviest word: he is kall ala mawlahu, a burden on the one responsible for him.
Nouman Ali Khan opens that word kall with care. In Arabic it describes someone who has run completely out of steam, who has collapsed mid-race with nothing left to give. And it is the word for a knife that has gone blunt, an instrument that no longer cuts, no longer serves the purpose it was made for. Hold onto the image of the knife, he says, because a knife has no will of its own. It exists only to carry out the intention of the hand that holds it. So here is a man who is supposed to be at his master's service, in his master's hand, and he is as useless to him as a blade that will not cut. You cannot instruct him, cannot deploy him, cannot get anything back.
Who is the mawla
There is one word in this verse Nouman Ali Khan asks us not to rush past: mawla. In the old world a slave's owner could be called his mawla, and on the surface the example sounds like that, a master and his useless slave. But mawla is far wider than owner. It is anyone who takes charge of you and is responsible for you: a guardian, an uncle, an older brother, an employer, a boss, anyone in a position of authority or protection or mentorship over another.
So the picture is not locked to slavery. It could be a father and the son who works his farm but cannot help him at all. It could be a manager and the employee who is more liability than asset, the soldier in the unit who is dead weight rather than strength. Every one of us who heads a family, he points out, is in that sense the mawla of that family. By choosing this word, Allah keeps the door open, and that open door is what lets the example, in a moment, swing around to face people who never imagined it was about them. There is another shade inside mawla too, he notes: protection. The one who is meant to take care of you. Keep that in mind, because it sharpens the ending.
Where the example breaks the pattern
Now comes the turn. You expect the other half of the comparison to be the useful servant: the one who does what he is told, gets the work done, earns his keep. That is the obvious opposite. But the Qur'an, Nouman Ali Khan reminds us, is forever the unexpected. Allah does not say the second man is a hard worker. He says he is one who commands justice and is on a straight path.
That does not sound like a servant being praised for his service. It sounds like a believer. And that is the point. This man is so trustworthy and so capable that he does not merely follow orders, he carries his master's very intent out into the world. Allah is the One who commands justice; here it is the servant commanding justice, executing the will of his Lord the way a sharp knife executes the will of the hand. He is given the biggest, most independent task there is, and he is exactly the man you can trust with it.
The men who could not open their mouths
Here is where the most striking reading Nouman Ali Khan offers comes in, and he flags it openly as his own. Many of the scholars read this example as the dumb idol set against Allah Himself, the statue that can do nothing beside the One who commands justice. With full respect for the tradition, he says he does not find that reading the most convincing, and he offers another that he feels sits better with the surah and with the rest of the Qur'an, encouraging you, as always, to study it and decide for yourself.
Think of the powerful of Makkah, he says. There is a report that some of the city's leaders crept out at night, separately, to press their ears against the wall of the Prophet's ﷺ house and listen to the Qur'an being recited, and ran into one another in the dark before dawn, each ashamed to be caught. By day they warned the youth of the city to stay away from this man; by night they could not stop listening. Privately, something in them knew it was true. But they could not say so. Their wealth came from the religious tourism the idols around the Kaaba drew in, their political safety and their trade routes rested on those same idols, their high status rested on being the keepers of the gods. To speak the truth out loud would cost them money, power, and standing all at once. So they kept their mouths shut. And the word for someone who will not speak, who has shut down his own tongue, is abkam. Allah strikes the example of a man who cannot speak, and these are men who would not.
Pointed in every direction, and still no good
ضَرَبَ ٱللَّهُ مَثَلًا عَبْدًا مَّمْلُوكًا لَّا يَقْدِرُ عَلَىٰ شَىْءٍ وَمَن رَّزَقْنَٰهُ مِنَّا رِزْقًا حَسَنًا فَهُوَ يُنفِقُ مِنْهُ سِرًّا وَجَهْرًا ۖ هَلْ يَسْتَوُۥنَ ۚ ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ ۚ بَلْ أَكْثَرُهُمْ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ
“Allāh presents an example: a slave [who is] owned and unable to do a thing and he to whom We have provided from Us good provision, so he spends from it secretly and publicly. Can they be equal? Praise to Allāh! But most of them do not know.”
Surah an-Nahl 16:75 Read 16:75 with tafsir
Look back at the line: wherever his master directs him, he brings no good. Nouman Ali Khan hears in that the way Allah taught these very people. A master with a struggling servant tries him on one task; he fails, so the master gives him an easier one, and an easier one again. Allah introduced Himself to them one way in one passage, then explained it again another way, then another, surah after surah, image after image, pointing them in this direction and in that, the way a patient teacher reaches for a new approach every time the student says he still does not understand. The signs were set before them in the sky, inside their own selves, in the ruins of nations gone before. Each one pointed somewhere; from none of them did any good come back.
And set this beside the example one verse earlier, the owned slave who can do nothing against the man given good provision who spends it secretly and openly. That man was useful with his wealth, giving to benefit others. This man is useful with his voice, calling others to justice. Both servants pour themselves out for the good of other people. Notice the deeper move underneath, Nouman Ali Khan says. It begins sounding as if these proud, wealthy people are the masters with useless slaves. By the time the example has done its work, you realise Allah is the Master, and they are the useless slaves, the human beings made to stand up and speak the truth who would not do the one thing they were made for.
Strong and trusted enough to be sent far
Stay on the praise of the second man: he is on a straight path. Nouman Ali Khan draws out why that detail matters so much. The best servant, the best employee, is the one who is two things at once, capable and trustworthy. Lose either and the whole thing collapses; trustworthy but bad at the job is no use, brilliant at the job but not to be trusted is worse. When a worker is both, you can leave the business in his hands and take the vacation without once checking the camera, because he will act exactly as you would have, even when you are not watching.
That is the man on a straight path. He is not only told to be just; he is walking it himself, living the thing he calls others to. And walking a path means a journey, and a journey means going far from the one who sent you, out where no one is watching, where a lesser man would sell the goods and vanish or pocket the difference and lie. To be sent on that journey is the mark of the most trusted servant of all, handed the heaviest amana and the most freedom to carry it. The first man could not be trusted with the smallest errand. This one is trusted with the road itself, and on it he keeps to the way, and turns back anyone he sees straying from it.
The mirror: which man are you
وَلِلَّهِ غَيْبُ ٱلسَّمَٰوَٰتِ وَٱلْأَرْضِ ۚ وَمَآ أَمْرُ ٱلسَّاعَةِ إِلَّا كَلَمْحِ ٱلْبَصَرِ أَوْ هُوَ أَقْرَبُ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَىْءٍ قَدِيرٌ
“And to Allāh belongs the unseen [aspects] of the heavens and the earth. And the command for the Hour is not but as a glance of the eye or even nearer. Indeed, Allāh is over all things competent.”
Surah an-Nahl 16:77 Read 16:77 with tafsir
وَٱللَّهُ أَخْرَجَكُم مِّنۢ بُطُونِ أُمَّهَٰتِكُمْ لَا تَعْلَمُونَ شَيْـًٔا وَجَعَلَ لَكُمُ ٱلسَّمْعَ وَٱلْأَبْصَٰرَ وَٱلْأَفْـِٔدَةَ ۙ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَشْكُرُونَ
“And Allāh has extracted you from the wombs of your mothers not knowing a thing, and He made for you hearing and vision and hearts [i.e., intellect] that perhaps you would be grateful.”
Surah an-Nahl 16:78 Read 16:78 with tafsir
Now the picture turns to face you, and it is not flattering, because the silence in it is one we know. Have you heard this exact logic, Nouman Ali Khan asks, in our own time and in our own homes? A wrong is being done plainly, against the word of Allah, and you say nothing, and in private you admit it: I know what is happening is wrong, I know what uncle is doing, what my father is doing, what my brother is doing is wrong, but you know how the family is, my hands are tied, I cannot say anything. The celebrity, the politician, the person with a platform watches an open injustice and stays carefully quiet because the contract, the career, the donors are on the line, and then phones you privately to say how very sad it makes them feel. That is the abkam. A burden, who brings no good in any direction, because he will not speak the one truth he was made to speak.
And the line that follows lands like a hand on the shoulder. Allah brought you out of your mother's belly knowing nothing at all, and then He gave you the hearing, the sight, and the heart, made you able, on purpose, so that you would be grateful. You were not created a blunt knife. You were created sharp. So why act useless? The Hour, the verse before it warns, is no further than the blink of an eye, and a master does not keep a tool that will not cut. The question the whole example leaves in your hand is the one it opened with: of the two men who look exactly alike from the outside, which one are you, tonight, when the truth needs saying and it will cost you something to say it?