Ali 'Imran · Madani · ayah 157 of 200

Ali 'Imran 3:157

وَلَئِن قُتِلْتُمْ فِى سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ أَوْ مُتُّمْ لَمَغْفِرَةٌ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ وَرَحْمَةٌ خَيْرٌ مِّمَّا يَجْمَعُونَ

“And if you are killed in the cause of Allāh or die - then forgiveness from Allāh and mercy are better than whatever they accumulate [in this world].”

Saheeh International

Essence

If you are killed in His way or simply die, forgiveness from Allah and mercy are worth more than everything the others are piling up.

A reflection

A coin in the hand beats a number on paper

Offer a four-year-old a shiny pound coin or a passbook with four hundred pounds written in it, and he takes the coin. Every time. Nobody thinks the child is a fool. We just assume he will grow out of it.

The verse makes a comparison, and the two sides of it are so unequal that making it at all seems almost strange. Forgiveness from Allah and mercy from Allah. Against that: what they are gathering. And the word used to join them is khayr, better, which is a comparative, and comparatives belong on one scale.

That is the whole work of this verse. Not to inform anybody that Allah's forgiveness is valuable. To force the two things onto the same chart, because unaided we cannot do it.

And the word itself tells you why the comparison is winnable. The lexicons say the root's first picture is leaning towards. Khayr is the opposite of sharr because every heart inclines to it, warms to it, wants it. To choose, ikhtāra, is to take the khayr of two things, and istikhāra is asking for the better of two courses. One lexicon offers that derivation as a view rather than a certainty. But the sense is clear: the verse is appealing to the leaning that is already in you, not installing a new one.

So where does the ego come into this. Exactly here. We assume the preference problem belongs to the four-year-old, and that a grown man with a mortgage and a pension has graduated. Nothing of the kind. We have merely got better at describing the coin. The accumulating man is not making a sophisticated judgement; he is making the child's judgement in a suit, and the pride is in believing otherwise.

And Allah does not need the comparison made in His favour. The man about to walk out onto a dangerous road does.

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.