An-Nisa · Madani · ayah 149 of 176

An-Nisa 4:149

إِن تُبْدُوا۟ خَيْرًا أَوْ تُخْفُوهُ أَوْ تَعْفُوا۟ عَن سُوٓءٍ فَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ كَانَ عَفُوًّا قَدِيرًا

“If [instead] you show [some] good or conceal it or pardon an offense - indeed, Allāh is ever Pardoning and Competent.[229]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Good shown or good hidden, or a wrong let go: the ayah steers toward pardon, because Allah pardons while fully able to punish.

A reflection

Pardon that comes from strength

The ayah ends by pairing two names. ʿAfuww: the One who pardons, again and again. Qadīr: the One with full power.

Qadīr comes from a root of exact measure. The lexicons picture a horse whose hind hooves land precisely where its forefeet stepped. His power is never clumsy, and neither is His pardon.

The pairing is the point. One classical commentator explains it plainly. Allah has never ceased to pardon His creatures, while fully able to punish them for disobeying Him. Then he draws the lesson: so pardon, you too, whoever wronged you, even when you could hurt him back.

Pardon from weakness is not really pardon. A man who cannot hit back and says 'I forgive you' may simply have no choice. Pardon means something only where punishment was possible. And no one is more able to punish than Allah.

One early commentator put it in a sentence worth carrying. Allah is more able to pardon your sins than you are to pardon your companion's.

This is where the ego shrinks. We hold our small grievances as if they were crowns. We feel that letting a wrong go makes us smaller, and that pride requires a reckoning. Yet the Most Powerful pardons more than anyone. If pardon diminished, it would diminish Him first.

Picture the owner of a corner shop who finds her Saturday assistant, sixteen, slipping a twenty-pound note from the till. She has the clip on her phone. The police are one call away. She sits him down in the stockroom, lets him squirm, then says: you're back next Saturday, and you'll be counting the till with me.

She was strong enough to end him. That is exactly why her pardon carried weight. The Prophet ﷺ said that Allah increases a servant who pardons only in honour, as Sahih Muslim records.

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.