Arabiq Online - Arabic of the Qur'an

Sūra al-Anʿām 6:118

The verb يَخْرُصُوْنَ  is not a very common one in the Qur’an – mentioned only 4 times, but wherever it is mentioned Allah is very chiding of the people who behave in such a way. يَخْرُصُوْنَ  from the verb: خَرَصَ  means ‘they express opinions based on guesswork and assumptions, and spread lies’, basically what we call ‘spreading fake news’ in today’s language. 

Originally the verb was used to refer to farmers or date-farmers who would be asked to give a rough guesstimate of the yield of their crop by sight alone, without having weighed or counted the fruit. This may serves its purpose fine when it comes to crops and dates, but when it comes to matters of faith and actions, Allah warns us against the majority of people.

وَإِن تُطِعْ أَكْثَرَ مَن فِي الْأَرْضِ يُضِلُّوكَ عَن سَبِيلِ اللَّـهِ ۚ إِن يَتَّبِعُونَ إِلَّا الظَّنَّ وَإِنْ هُمْ إِلَّا يَخْرُصُونَ ﴿١١٦﴾

If you obey most of those on the earth, they will lead you astray from the way of Allah. They follow nothing but conjectures and they are merely guessing.

In the Prophet’s time, there wasn’t even as much of a danger of obeying ‘most people on earth’, nor of their conjecture and lies on a large scale, but it’s astounding how applicable it is to our day and age now, when we are literally at risk of being followers of the mere conjecture and lies of ‘most people on earth’, i.e. those who control the global media outlets, whatever’s trending on social media pushed to the forefront by whatever the masses incline towards. And of course, fake news which spreads like wildfire. It’s as if Allah sent down this verse precisely for our time.