Al-Baqarah · Madani · ayah 276 of 286

Al-Baqarah 2:276

يَمْحَقُ ٱللَّهُ ٱلرِّبَوٰا۟ وَيُرْبِى ٱلصَّدَقَـٰتِ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ لَا يُحِبُّ كُلَّ كَفَّارٍ أَثِيمٍ

“Allāh destroys interest and gives increase for charities. And Allāh does not like every sinning disbeliever.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Allah makes ribā wane like the moon and makes charity grow like a nurtured foal; He does not love the ungrateful who persist in sin.

A reflection

A month of drawing the moon

A girl keeps a moon diary for a school project, drawing its shape each night. She never sees it shrink. But at the end of the month, the drawings tell the story. A full circle, then thinner and thinner, then nothing.

'Allah yamḥaqu ribā'. The lexicons give the root as decrease. Muḥāq is the end of the month, when the crescent wanes away. A classical commentator defines it exactly: the decrease of a thing, stage after stage. The blazing midday heat was called māḥiq, because it withers everything.

And 'He yurbī charity': makes it rise and grow.

The verbs are His. That is where the ego is quietly overruled. We imagine we control growth with interest rates, compounding and clever structures. The ayah says the true direction of wealth is set by Someone else. A classical commentator draws out the paradox. Ribā looks like increase now, but is decrease in reality. Charity looks like decrease, but is increase in meaning. The wise, he says, do not follow what instinct and the senses suggest, but what revelation points to.

A sceptic may object: I see people grow rich through such dealings. Where is the waning? The commentators answer honestly. Often the end turns to loss. The Prophet ﷺ said that whoever increases through ribā, his affair ends in scarcity (Sunan Ibn Majah, graded ṣaḥīḥ). Or the blessing goes, while the figure stays. And the full reckoning is in the Hereafter, where no balance can be carried.

Allah gains nothing from either growth. He is free of all need (35:15). But He tells us which way the moon is moving, so we do not build on a waning one.

The full entry has 7 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.