Al-Mujadila · Madani · ayah 4 of 22

Al-Mujadila 58:4

فَمَن لَّمْ يَجِدْ فَصِيَامُ شَهْرَيْنِ مُتَتَابِعَيْنِ مِن قَبْلِ أَن يَتَمَآسَّا ۖ فَمَن لَّمْ يَسْتَطِعْ فَإِطْعَامُ سِتِّينَ مِسْكِينًا ۚ ذَٰلِكَ لِتُؤْمِنُوا۟ بِٱللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِۦ ۚ وَتِلْكَ حُدُودُ ٱللَّهِ ۗ وَلِلْكَـٰفِرِينَ عَذَابٌ أَلِيمٌ

“And he who does not find [a slave] - then a fast for two months consecutively[1640] before they touch one another; and he who is unable - then the feeding of sixty poor persons. That is for you to believe [completely] in Allāh and His Messenger; and those are the limits [set by] Allāh. And for the disbelievers is a painful punishment.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The remedy scales down to whoever is offering it, so no one is ever too poor to put a wrong right.

A reflection

A door built wide enough for every pocket

A gym with one membership tier quietly excludes everyone who cannot afford it, however much they might have wanted to join. A gym with a sliding scale, a reduced rate, a free hour for those who ask, keeps the door open to people the first design would have turned away without ever saying so out loud.

This ayah is that second kind of design, built directly into revelation. Freeing a captive first; if that is beyond reach, two consecutive months of fasting; if even that is beyond reach, feeding sixty people who are genuinely hungry. Three tiers, each one answering the question the previous one leaves open: what if this is still too much? Nobody reading this remedy is left stranded with no way back simply because of what their means happen to be.

Notice what this refuses to allow. It would have been simple to set one fixed price for the wrong done and let poverty quietly become its own extra punishment, on top of whatever the original fault already cost. Instead the structure moves with the person rather than standing fixed against them, asking each person for what they, specifically, can actually give.

Anyone designing a system meant to correct real wrongs, in a workplace, a community, a family's own rules, faces the same choice this ayah makes visible. A single uniform penalty looks fair on paper and quietly favours whoever already has the most. A tiered path, scaled honestly to what someone can bear, is what actually makes the door open to everyone it claims to be open to.

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.