At-Tahrim · Madani · ayah 1 of 12

At-Tahrim 66:1

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّبِىُّ لِمَ تُحَرِّمُ مَآ أَحَلَّ ٱللَّهُ لَكَ ۖ تَبْتَغِى مَرْضَاتَ أَزْوَٰجِكَ ۚ وَٱللَّهُ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ

“O Prophet, why do you prohibit [yourself from] what Allāh has made lawful for you, seeking the approval of your wives? And Allāh is Forgiving and Merciful.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Even the kindest wish to keep peace at home has a limit, and the Prophet ﷺ is shown it with a question, not a rebuke.

A reflection

The vow that tried to keep the peace

Picture an ordinary kind of household tension. A husband lingers a little longer than usual at one wife's house, and two of the others notice. Sahih al-Bukhari records what happened next. The Prophet ﷺ used to sit with Zaynab bint Jaḥsh and drink honey there. ʿĀ’isha and Ḥafṣa agreed between themselves that whichever of them he visited next would tell him she smelled something unpleasant on his breath, as though he had eaten a foul-tasting resin. He explained each time that he had only drunk honey at Zaynab's. Troubled by the suggestion, and wanting no more friction in his own home over it, he said he would never drink it again, and made something lawful forbidden to himself.

Notice what actually happened here. Nothing he had done was wrong. The honey was lawful, the visit was lawful, and he gave both up not because Allah asked him to, but because two people he loved were uneasy. That is an entirely recognisable move, repeated in ordinary homes every week. A father quietly stops seeing an old friend because his wife feels unsettled by the friendship, and never once explains why, hoping the discomfort will simply pass. The peace holds for a while. The actual unease, never discussed, usually does not.

The Quran's correction here is not an accusation. It is a question: why do you forbid yourself something Allah made lawful for you? The question is gentle, but exact. Smoothing over a tension by quietly surrendering something good, instead of having the honest conversation the tension actually calls for, is not peace achieved. It is a debt postponed — as, within the next few ayat of this very surah, it plainly was, when the arrangement unravelled regardless of the care taken to hide it.

Love does ask for accommodation from the people who give it. It does not ask for a vow. The difference between the two is whether the thing given up needed anyone's permission to be given up at all.

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.