At-Taghabun · Madani · ayah 17 of 18

At-Taghabun 64:17

إِن تُقْرِضُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ قَرْضًا حَسَنًا يُضَـٰعِفْهُ لَكُمْ وَيَغْفِرْ لَكُمْ ۚ وَٱللَّهُ شَكُورٌ حَلِيمٌ

“If you loan Allāh a goodly loan, He will multiply it for you and forgive you. And Allāh is [most] Appreciative[1694] and Forbearing,[1695]”

Saheeh International

Essence

Allah calls your charity a loan to Him, multiplies it, forgives you besides, and describes Himself, astonishingly, as the grateful one in the exchange.

A reflection

The One who owns everything, calling Himself grateful

Gratitude ordinarily flows upward, from the lesser to the greater, from someone who received to someone who had the power to withhold. A servant thanks an employer; a patient thanks a surgeon; nobody expects the gesture reversed. This ayah reverses it anyway. After describing a believer's charity as a loan extended to Allah, it closes with shakūr, one of Allah's own names here: deeply, actively grateful, as though the One who already owns the heavens, the earth, and the very wealth just given away were somehow in the debtor's position.

A fair question deserves to be asked plainly: why would a Being who needs nothing describe Himself this way, and isn't gratitude, by definition, something owed by someone who lacked and received, not someone who already possessed everything to begin with? The classical reflection on this name answers by describing what Allah's gratitude actually looks like in practice, rather than leaving it abstract. He multiplies what was given, far beyond its original measure. He praises the giver before the angels. He exchanges what was surrendered for something greater: a ring of horses given up for Sulayman's sake returned, on one reading, as command over the wind itself; homes and land abandoned for His sake returned as dominion across the earth; years of a prisoner's patience returned as authority over the very land that once held him captive.

That is not gratitude owed by a debtor. It is generosity dressed, deliberately, in the clothing of gratitude, so that the giver never has to feel like a sacrifice was simply extracted from them. The ego's instinct is to assume anything taken from it was a loss. This ayah insists otherwise, in the most pointed way available: the One who took nothing He needed still calls Himself thankful for having been given it.

There is a further example worth sitting with, closer to ordinary grief than the others: companions who lost loved ones to persecution, or whose honour was mocked and insulted for the sake of standing by this message, are described elsewhere as having that very insult answered by Allah's own prayers and blessing settling upon them instead. Measured by ordinary accounting, each of these exchanges looks lopsided in the giver's favour before the giving even happens, a small, costly thing surrendered, and something considerably larger handed back, with gratitude attached to the handing back as though the larger gift were somehow still insufficient thanks for the smaller one given first.

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.