Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 117 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:117

مَثَلُ مَا يُنفِقُونَ فِى هَـٰذِهِ ٱلْحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنْيَا كَمَثَلِ رِيحٍ فِيهَا صِرٌّ أَصَابَتْ حَرْثَ قَوْمٍ ظَلَمُوٓا۟ أَنفُسَهُمْ فَأَهْلَكَتْهُ ۚ وَمَا ظَلَمَهُمُ ٱللَّهُ وَلَـٰكِنْ أَنفُسَهُمْ يَظْلِمُونَ

“The example of what they spend in this worldly life is like that of a wind containing frost which strikes the harvest of a people who have wronged themselves [i.e., sinned] and destroys it. And Allāh has not wronged them, but they wrong themselves.”

Saheeh International

Essence

What they spend in this life is like a freezing wind on a crop, and Allah wronged nobody.

A reflection

The sentence that removes your last complaint

For two years a woman has been certain her electricity meter is faulty. She has rung the supplier eleven times. She has described the bills to her sister, her neighbour and a man in a queue. Then an engineer comes, opens the airing cupboard, and finds that the immersion heater switch has been on continuously since the day she moved in.

The ayah ends with a sentence that most readers pass over. Allah did not wrong them, but they wronged themselves.

Notice that He says it at all. He has just described a whole lifetime of spending reduced to nothing. Anyone reading that will feel the objection rise. So the ayah answers it, in six words, before it can be made.

One commentator unpacks it carefully. He did not wrong them by refusing their spending, because ẓulm would mean putting what He did in a place it did not belong. Their work was not done for Him, while He had already made plain what He accepts and what He does not. After that, withholding the reward is not injustice. It is the thing landing exactly where it belongs.

And here is where the ego, which has a standing complaint, goes quiet.

We arrive at every account assuming we are the wronged party. It is the default setting of a human being, and it runs almost entirely without evidence. The traffic was against us. The family was difficult. The opportunity went to someone less deserving. We do not usually check the airing cupboard, because checking would mean the two years of complaining were the real waste.

Another commentator notes a small detail of the grammar: the closing verb is in the present form, which signals something continuing. Not a single historical act of self-harm, but an ongoing one.

So the ayah does something no human judge can do. It closes the case and the appeal at once, and it does so by removing the only charge we ever bring.

A humbler question is available, and it is uncomfortable because it works. In the matter you currently feel most wronged about, what have you not yet opened. Not who else was at fault, and not whether you were treated well. What, in your own house, has been quietly running since the day you moved in.

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.