Al-Baqarah · Madani · ayah 84 of 286

Al-Baqarah 2:84

وَإِذْ أَخَذْنَا مِيثَـٰقَكُمْ لَا تَسْفِكُونَ دِمَآءَكُمْ وَلَا تُخْرِجُونَ أَنفُسَكُم مِّن دِيَـٰرِكُمْ ثُمَّ أَقْرَرْتُمْ وَأَنتُمْ تَشْهَدُونَ

“And [recall] when We took your covenant, [saying], "Do not shed your [i.e., each other's] blood or evict one another from your homes." Then you acknowledged [this] while you were witnessing.”

Saheeh International

Essence

They pledged not to shed one another's blood or drive one another from home, and called it 'your own blood'; they agreed, and bore witness.

A reflection

Your brother's blood is called yours

Two branches of one family live in the same English town. Their grandparents came from the same village abroad. For thirty years they have fought over a strip of land back home. At their grandmother's funeral they sit on opposite sides of the room and do not speak.

The covenant does not say 'Do not shed each other's blood'. It says 'Do not shed your blood', dimāʾakum, and 'Do not drive yourselves from your homes'. Commentators explain the choice. A person connected to you by lineage or faith is treated as yourself. One commentator puts it this way: because their religion was one and their cause was one, they were like a single person among the nations. So killing one another was killing themselves.

The Prophet ﷺ described the believers in the same way. In their mutual love, mercy and kindness, they are like one body. When one part aches, the whole body responds with sleeplessness and fever (Sahih Muslim).

That image makes harm to one another absurd, in the literal sense. No one stabs his own hand. And yet communities, families and congregations do it all the time.

One classical commentator, writing centuries ago, did not let his own people off. After explaining the ayah, he wrote that all of this is sacred for Muslims too. Then he added, with evident grief, that all of it had happened among Muslims through strife. And he said: 'To Allah we belong, and to Him we return.'

That honesty is the right way to read this passage. It is about a covenant broken long ago. It is also a mirror held up to any people who share a faith and still wound each other.

Ask where your own body is fighting itself: a family, a mosque, a circle of friends. Then remember whose blood it is.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.