Ash-Shuraa · Makki · ayah 38 of 53

Ash-Shuraa 42:38

وَٱلَّذِينَ ٱسْتَجَابُوا۟ لِرَبِّهِمْ وَأَقَامُوا۟ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَأَمْرُهُمْ شُورَىٰ بَيْنَهُمْ وَمِمَّا رَزَقْنَـٰهُمْ يُنفِقُونَ

“And those who have responded to their Lord and established prayer and whose affair is [determined by] consultation among themselves, and from what We have provided them, they spend,”

Saheeh International

Essence

Between their prayer and their giving sits the habit that names this surah: they draw out each other's best, like honey from the hive.

A reflection

Not a committee, a character

Two parents sit at the kitchen table at two in the morning, the baby finally asleep. They are deciding whether it is time to stop breastfeeding. Each has a list of what they have noticed. Neither decides alone.

Most readers carry a fixed picture of shūrā. It is a political word: a council, a parliament, perhaps a ruler's courtesy of asking before he does what he planned. The ayah's own setting says something different.

Look where it sits. Wa-alladhīna istajābū li-rabbihim wa-aqāmū al-ṣalāta wa-amruhum shūrā baynahum wa-mimmā razaqnāhum yunfiqūn. Answering their Lord, establishing prayer, consultation, spending. Consultation is listed among acts of worship and character, not among institutions. It describes what kind of people they are.

The grammar presses the point. The other qualities are verbs. This one is a noun clause: their affair is consultation. Two commentators explain that the meaning is that their affairs are a matter of consultation. One adds that the noun form shows this was their settled, continuing state, before Islam and after.

The root's only other noun form in the Quran is tashāwur, mutual consultation. Corpus data shows each form occurs once. And where is tashāwur? In a home. If the two parents wish to wean, by mutual consent and consultation, there is no blame on them (2:233).

So the Quran's picture of consultation begins at the kitchen table, not the council chamber. It is how believers handle what concerns more than one of them: a marriage, a family, a mosque, a business, a community.

The parents at two in the morning are not holding a meeting. They are living this ayah. Their affair is shūrā between them. That is where the habit is learned, long before anyone sits in a council.

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.