Al-Mumtahanah · Madani · ayah 11 of 13

Al-Mumtahanah 60:11

وَإِن فَاتَكُمْ شَىْءٌ مِّنْ أَزْوَٰجِكُمْ إِلَى ٱلْكُفَّارِ فَعَاقَبْتُمْ فَـَٔاتُوا۟ ٱلَّذِينَ ذَهَبَتْ أَزْوَٰجُهُم مِّثْلَ مَآ أَنفَقُوا۟ ۚ وَٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ ٱلَّذِىٓ أَنتُم بِهِۦ مُؤْمِنُونَ

“And if you have lost any of your wives to the disbelievers and you subsequently obtain [something],[1678] then give those whose wives have gone the equivalent of what they had spent. And fear Allāh, in whom you are believers.”

Saheeh International

Essence

When one believer's loss could be made right from what the community had gained together, the Quran asked that it actually be made right.

A reflection

A shared gain, used to right one person's loss

The ayah addresses a specific situation left unresolved by the arrangement just described: a believer whose wife had left to join the disbelievers, without receiving back what he had spent on their marriage. Rather than leaving that particular man to simply absorb the loss alone, the ayah instructs that if the community later gained resources collectively, a share of that gain should go toward making his loss right.

The root behind the word for gain here, ʿuqbā, pictures whatever follows at the heel of something else, the day's end following its deed. What follows the community's collective gain, in this instruction, is not simply distribution according to who fought hardest or earned most individually. It is, in part, a correction of a specific wrong one member had quietly carried since before the gain arrived at all.

The precise mechanics of how this was calculated and distributed in that particular historical arrangement belong to scholars of fiqh and sirah, and are not detailed here as an applicable procedure today. What remains, beyond the historical specifics, is the underlying instinct: a community's shared resources are not only for forward motion, new ventures, fresh gains. They can also be turned backward, deliberately, to settle an old loss one member was left carrying alone, simply because the timing of events had not yet allowed it to be settled.

A community that only ever asks what its collective gains can build next, and never pauses to ask whose old, still-unresolved loss they could finally repair, has genuinely missed half of what shared resources were ever actually for in the first place.

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.