Al-Hashr · Madani · ayah 5 of 24

Al-Hashr 59:5

مَا قَطَعْتُم مِّن لِّينَةٍ أَوْ تَرَكْتُمُوهَا قَآئِمَةً عَلَىٰٓ أُصُولِهَا فَبِإِذْنِ ٱللَّهِ وَلِيُخْزِىَ ٱلْفَـٰسِقِينَ

“Whatever you have cut down of [their] palm trees or left standing on their trunks - it was by permission of Allāh and so He would disgrace the defiantly disobedient.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Whether the palm trees were cut down or left standing, both choices already carried His permission, and only their purpose was ever genuinely in question.

A reflection

Permission that covers both sides of a disagreement

Two paramedics arrive at the same call. One chooses a different protocol from the other for the same patient. Both are fully within guidelines. Neither is wrong, even though they acted differently in the same moment.

The believers at the siege of Banū al-Naḍīr split exactly this way. Some cut down the enemy's palm trees to press the siege harder. Others left them standing, reluctant to destroy what had grown over generations and might soon belong to the Muslims as spoils. Each side had good reasons. Neither consulted the other and arrived at the same answer.

The ayah does not pick a winner. It says plainly that whatever was cut, and whatever was left standing, was already by God's permission. This is a quieter kind of greatness than a thunderous command settling an argument. It is the sort that holds two opposite human choices inside one sanction, without needing either side to be proven right over the other.

There is something humbling on offer here. Anyone certain their own side of a sincere disagreement must be correct is quietly assuming that being right was always the whole point. Two companions of the Prophet ﷺ, acting in good faith on the same battlefield, reached opposite conclusions. The ayah settles the matter not by crowning a winner, but by widening what counts as permitted in the first place.

That widening is itself worth sitting with. It would have been simpler for the revelation to declare that cutting was correct and holding back a lapse, or the reverse. Instead it holds both inside one sentence, joined by nothing stronger than 'or'. A reader looking for a rule to apply cleanly to every future case will not find one here. What is offered instead is something else. It is a greatness large enough to let two honest answers stand together, neither needing the other to be wrong. Neither side is left afterwards to wonder whether they alone had failed the test everyone else had somehow passed.

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.