Al-Mu'minun · Makki · ayah 60 of 118

Al-Mu'minun 23:60

وَٱلَّذِينَ يُؤْتُونَ مَآ ءَاتَوا۟ وَّقُلُوبُهُمْ وَجِلَةٌ أَنَّهُمْ إِلَىٰ رَبِّهِمْ رَٰجِعُونَ

“And they who give what they give while their hearts are fearful[962] because they will be returning to their Lord -”

Saheeh International

Essence

The ones who give, pray and fast are the ones whose hearts still tremble, because they know whom they are going back to.

A reflection

ʿĀʾisha's question

A woman has run a night shelter for ten years. One evening she tells a friend she worries none of it counted. Her friend laughs. If you are worried, she says, what hope is there for the rest of us?

ʿĀʾisha had a question about this ayah, and the answer turned her expectation upside down. Jamiʿ al-Tirmidhi records that she asked the Prophet ﷺ: are these the people who drink wine and steal? Hearts that tremble, she assumed, belong to those with something to fear.

He said: no, daughter of al-Ṣiddīq. They are the ones who fast, pray and give charity, and they fear it will not be accepted from them. Those are the ones who race in good deeds. The narration is graded ṣaḥīḥ, and Sunan Ibn Majah carries it too.

This is the surprise at the centre of the ayah. Fear is not placed in the guilty. It is placed in the doers of good. The trembling heart belongs to the person with the full record, not the empty one.

The commentators repeat it, one after another. One explains that they give, fearing their gift will not be accepted, worried they fell short in its conditions. He calls this tenderness and caution. An early authority, quoted in two commentaries, says: they worked in obedience, strove hard in it, and feared it would be returned to them.

The woman at the shelter is not suffering from low self-esteem. She is describing exactly the state this ayah praises. She has done much and does not lean on it.

That is the reversal. The person who feels sure of his good deeds has stopped looking at them honestly. The person who still trembles is still giving, still checking, still turning to Allah. ʿĀʾisha's question shows how natural the other assumption is. The Prophet's ﷺ answer shows how wrong it is.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.