An-Nisa · Madani · ayah 40 of 176

An-Nisa 4:40

إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَا يَظْلِمُ مِثْقَالَ ذَرَّةٍ ۖ وَإِن تَكُ حَسَنَةً يُضَـٰعِفْهَا وَيُؤْتِ مِن لَّدُنْهُ أَجْرًا عَظِيمًا

“Indeed, Allāh does not do injustice, [even] as much as an atom's weight; while if there is a good deed, He multiplies it and gives from Himself a great reward.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Allah will not wrong anyone by a speck of dust, and any good, however small, He multiplies by an amount He leaves untold.

A reflection

Not even a speck in a sunbeam

Watch a shaft of morning sun through a window. The air is full of drifting specks, too light to feel. The lexicons say this is one picture of a dharra: the speck in a sunbeam, with no weight at all. Others say it is the tiniest young ant. One scholar said a hundred of them weigh a single barley grain.

The commentaries preserve a gesture from one of the Companions. He pushed his hand into the earth, lifted it, and blew. Every one of these, he said, is a dharra.

That is the scale of the promise. Allah does not wrong anyone by even that much. One commentary adds that the expression uses the smallest thing people can picture, but the meaning is total. He wrongs no one in anything, small or great (10:44).

This is where the ego shrinks. Picture a man who always rounds his share of a shared taxi fare down by a pound or two. It is too small to argue about, so nobody does. He feels it does not count. We all have our versions: the credit we quietly take, the small exaggeration, the minutes shaved.

The One who holds every power binds Himself not to wrong anyone by a mote of dust. We, who hold almost nothing, excuse ourselves in pounds.

Does Allah need to tell us He is just? He needs nothing from us, and His justice is not improved by our praise. The telling is for us. It steadies the wronged, warns the wrongdoer, and invites every reader to measure by His scale.

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.