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اَلْمَسَدِ
The Flame
(or Palm-Fiber)

بِسْمِ اللّٰهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ۔

تَبَّتْ يَدَآ اَبِيْ لَهَبٍ وَّ تَبَّ۔ؕ مَآ اَغْنٰى عَنْهُ مَالُهُ وَ مَا كَسَبَ۔ؕ سَيَصْلٰى نَارًا ذَاتَ لَهَبٍ۔ وَّ امْرَاَتُهُ ؕ حَمَّالَةَ الْحَطَبِ۔ فِيْ جِيْدِهَا حَبْلٌ مِّنْ مَّسَدٍ۔

In the name of God—the most compassionate, the most merciful.

May Abu-Lahab’s both hands waste away and may he waste away [as well]! His wealth and what he’s earned will never profit him: he’ll roast in a fire with a flame; while his wife who carries kindling around will have a palm-fiber rope around her neck.

The mood is graphic as Muhammad’s fanatic and “unreconstructed” uncle Abd-al-Uzza is denounced, and thus nicknamed for ever. 

This chapter, containing five verses, was revealed at Mecca. This is the only passage in the Koran where an opponent of the Prophet is denounced by name. Abu Lahab, whose real name was Abdul Uzza, was a first cousin of the Prophet’s father. He was the only member of the Prophet’s clan who bitterly opposed him.

Abu Lahab made it his business to torment the Prophet, and his wife took pleasure in strewing thorn bushes in the path the Prophet was expected to take.

Consumed with grief on seeing many of the Quraysh leaders of the unbelievers killed at Badr, Abu Lahab died a week after Badr. Though this chapter refers, in the first instance, to a particular incident, it carries the general message that cruelty and haughtiness ultimately recoil upon oneself.

Abu Lahab, the name of an actual person, has come to denote a particular kind of character. ‘Abu Lahab’ who was an uncle of the Prophet Muhammad has come to be a symbol of such an opponent of the call for Truth as will stoop in his hostility to meanness. Just as the Prophet had to face this character, similarly others of his followers (ummah) may have to face just such a character. However, if the dayee (the one who performs dawah) has become active for the sake of God in the real sense, then God’s help will be given to him. The inimical efforts of people like Abu Lahab will, by God’s grace, become ineffective and, in spite of all their means and resources, the antagonists will perish. They will themselves burn in the fire of their own jealousy and enmity. Their aim may have been to ensure that the call of God came to a miserable end, but the opponents themselves will be the ones to suffer that everlasting fate.