Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 134 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:134

ٱلَّذِينَ يُنفِقُونَ فِى ٱلسَّرَّآءِ وَٱلضَّرَّآءِ وَٱلْكَـٰظِمِينَ ٱلْغَيْظَ وَٱلْعَافِينَ عَنِ ٱلنَّاسِ ۗ وَٱللَّهُ يُحِبُّ ٱلْمُحْسِنِينَ

“Who spend [in the cause of Allāh] during ease and hardship and who restrain anger and who pardon the people - and Allāh loves the doers of good;”

Saheeh International

Essence

Three marks of those the Garden was prepared for: they spend in ease and hardship, hold their rage in, and let people off.

A reflection

Spending in the week you cannot afford it

A man was made redundant on a Tuesday. On the Friday he spent an hour fitting a neighbour's broken door handle for nothing. Labour was the only currency he had left that week. He said afterwards that the hour had been for him, not the neighbour, and that he could not have explained why.

The ayah does not say those who give generously. It says those who spend in al-sarrāʾ and al-ḍarrāʾ, and the commentaries spread those two words out into a whole life. Ease and hardship. Plenty and straitness. Health and illness. One reading has it as giving during life and bequeathing after death. Another reads it as spending at weddings and feasts, and in calamities and at funerals. Another as what pleases you to spend, on children and relatives, and what does not. One commentary simply concludes that the verse is general.

So there is no season in which this is suspended. Whether a person is at a wedding or in a prison, one commentary says, he does not leave off doing good.

And the amounts were small. The commentaries preserve reports of an early figure giving an onion in charity, and of the Prophet's wife giving away a single grape. These are reports rather than firm narrations, and nothing hangs on them. They tell you what the first generations thought the verse was asking for.

Why is spending named before the harder-sounding things? One commentary answers that it is the hardest thing on the self and the clearest proof of sincerity. At the time it was also the greatest deed, given what the fighting and the poor among them needed.

Notice, finally, that none of it reaches Him. He says plainly that He is free of all need (35:15), and asks no provision from anyone (51:57). The root of the word for spending means going out and being gone. It leaves your hand, and the only person it changes is you.

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.