Luqman · Makki · ayah 17 of 34

Luqman 31:17

يَـٰبُنَىَّ أَقِمِ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَأْمُرْ بِٱلْمَعْرُوفِ وَٱنْهَ عَنِ ٱلْمُنكَرِ وَٱصْبِرْ عَلَىٰ مَآ أَصَابَكَ ۖ إِنَّ ذَٰلِكَ مِنْ عَزْمِ ٱلْأُمُورِ

“O my son, establish prayer, enjoin what is right, forbid what is wrong, and be patient over what befalls you. Indeed, [all] that is of the matters [requiring] resolve.[1163]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Pray to set yourself right, speak up for others, expect it to cost you: a knot the heart ties and keeps tied.

A reflection

Not a list of chores, and not a licence to police

This ayah is often taught as four duties: pray, tell people what is right, stop what is wrong, be patient. Two misreadings follow. Some hear it as a chore list for children. Others hear 'enjoin good and forbid evil' as permission to police everyone else.

The commentaries read the ayah as a sequence, not a list. One explains it plainly. Pray, to complete yourself. Then enjoin good and forbid evil, to complete others. That, it says, is the work of the prophets and those who inherit from them: to be complete in themselves and to complete others. Another commentary quotes a line of verse. Begin with yourself, and forbid it its error; when it desists, then you are wise.

And the patience is attached for a reason. One commentary explains: be patient with what befalls you from people, in Allah's cause, when you command them to good and forbid them evil. Do not let what you suffer from them turn you away. Another says plainly that the one who enjoins good will be hurt.

So the ayah's picture is not of a busybody. It is of someone who has done the work on themselves first, then speaks, and then pays for speaking without becoming bitter.

A sixteen-year-old tells his friends he will not come to the park any more when they go there to vape. He says it once, without a sermon. For a term he loses his place in the group. He does not lecture them and does not go back. By the summer, one of them has quietly started walking home with him.

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.