Al-Qasas · Makki · ayah 54 of 88

Al-Qasas 28:54

أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ يُؤْتَوْنَ أَجْرَهُم مَّرَّتَيْنِ بِمَا صَبَرُوا۟ وَيَدْرَءُونَ بِٱلْحَسَنَةِ ٱلسَّيِّئَةَ وَمِمَّا رَزَقْنَـٰهُمْ يُنفِقُونَ

“Those will be given their reward twice for what they patiently endured and [because] they avert evil through good, and from what We have provided them they spend.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Paid twice for patient faith across two revelations, they push back harm with good and give from what they were given.

A reflection

Paid twice for answering two calls

The ayah turns on one striking word: marratayn, twice. The people it describes had a scripture before the Quran. When the Quran was recited to them, they said, 'We were already Muslims before it' (28:53).

The two Sahihs record the Prophet ﷺ naming three people who receive their reward twice. One is a man of the People of the Book who believed in his own prophet, then believed in Muhammad ﷺ. The second is an enslaved man who gave Allah His due and gave his masters theirs. The third is a man who raised a slave woman well, taught her well, then freed and married her.

What joins three such different people? One classical explanation is simple. Each was addressed by two calls from two directions, and answered both. The believer of the earlier Book heard his own prophet, then the final one. The servant answered his Lord and his master. The third man gave the woman an upbringing, then gave her freedom and an equal place.

A young woman's father dies in her final year at university. He leaves a corner shop, and a family that depends on it. She opens the shutters at six, revises behind the till, and sits her exams in June. Nobody awards her two degrees. But everyone who knows her knows she carried two trusts and dropped neither.

Is a double reward unfair to someone born into faith? The hadith itself answers. Its three are a convert, a servant and a husband. What doubles is the load carried, not the family you came from. And every good deed of every believer is already multiplied tenfold (6:160).

So the ayah asks something of each reader. Where am I holding two trusts at once: a parent and a job, an old promise and a new duty? Faithfulness to both is not a divided life. It may be the very thing counted twice.

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.