Ash-Shuraa · Makki · ayah 43 of 53

Ash-Shuraa 42:43

وَلَمَن صَبَرَ وَغَفَرَ إِنَّ ذَٰلِكَ لَمِنْ عَزْمِ ٱلْأُمُورِ

“And whoever is patient and forgives - indeed, that is of the matters [worthy] of resolve.[1426]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Bearing a wrong and forgiving it, when you could have answered, is not softness; it is the road of resolve, taken straight without turning back.

A reflection

He wiped the sweat and recited

The commentaries preserve a small scene from the gathering of a great early scholar of Basra. A man began insulting another man in front of everyone. The one being insulted held himself back. He was sweating with the effort, and kept wiping the sweat away. Then he stood up and recited this ayah: and whoever is patient and forgives, that is of the matters of resolve.

The scholar said: by Allah, he understood it, and grasped it, when the ignorant have let it go.

The detail of the sweat is what makes the story true to life. The man was not calm. He was not above the insult. He felt every word of it, and the effort of restraint was visible on his skin. His patience was not the absence of anger. It was the labour of holding it.

The ayah describes exactly that labour. Wa-la-man ṣabara wa-ghafara inna dhālika la-min ʿazmi al-umūr. Whoever is patient and forgives, that is indeed of the matters of resolve. One commentator adds what the patient one does: he does not retaliate, and he entrusts his affair to Allah.

Most of us imagine forgiveness as a quiet feeling that arrives on its own. This scene suggests otherwise. Sometimes it arrives as sweat. You sit in the room, take the words, and choose not to throw them back. Then you stand and say why.

The man in that gathering was not famous; the commentaries do not even name him. What survives is that he understood one ayah well enough to live it under pressure, in public, with damp hands.

That is a reachable kind of greatness. Not heroic calm, but honest effort, offered to Allah, one insult at a time.

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.