Al-'Ankabut · Makki · ayah 9 of 69

Al-'Ankabut 29:9

وَٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّـٰلِحَـٰتِ لَنُدْخِلَنَّهُمْ فِى ٱلصَّـٰلِحِينَ

“And those who believe and do righteous deeds - We will surely admit them among the righteous [into Paradise].”

Saheeh International

Essence

Whoever believes and keeps doing deeds that repair is promised more than a reward: Allah will bring them in among the righteous.

A reflection

A family for the one who lost one

Read this ayah straight after the one before it. There, a child is told to refuse parents who press him towards shirk. He keeps his kindness, but he loses something real: the warmth of belonging to the family that made him. The next words he hears are these. We will surely bring them in among the righteous.

One commentary connects the two directly. Allah will reward the child for his kindness to his parents and his patience in his faith. And He will gather him with the righteous, not in his parents' company, even if he was closest to them in this world. A person, it explains, is gathered with those he loves. Sahih al-Bukhari records the Prophet ﷺ saying exactly that: a person is with those he loves.

So the promise is shaped to the wound. The one who lost a family is given another.

A woman has been cut off by her parents and brothers since she became Muslim. On the morning of her wedding she wakes early, dreading the empty side of the hall. Her phone is already full. The women from her Thursday study circle have planned the henna, the food and the lifts. One of them, sixty years old, has asked to walk beside her as she goes in.

It is not the same as her mother. Nothing will be. But it is a glimpse of what this ayah promises in full. The righteous are not a waiting room before the real reward. They are part of the reward: the company you were made for, and kept for.

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.