At-Tahrim · Madani · ayah 9 of 12

At-Tahrim 66:9

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّبِىُّ جَـٰهِدِ ٱلْكُفَّارَ وَٱلْمُنَـٰفِقِينَ وَٱغْلُظْ عَلَيْهِمْ ۚ وَمَأْوَىٰهُمْ جَهَنَّمُ ۖ وَبِئْسَ ٱلْمَصِيرُ

“O Prophet, strive against the disbelievers and the hypocrites and be harsh upon them. And their refuge is Hell, and wretched is the destination.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The word often heard as a call to arms names, first, effort spent to its very limit — against an enemy, temptation, and yourself.

A reflection

Effort spent to its limit, against three opponents

The root behind jāhid pictures milk churned until every last trace of butter has been worked out of it — effort pushed to the far edge of what a person has in them. One lexicon names three opponents this kind of struggle can be spent against: a visible enemy, the whispered pull toward wrong, and one's own self.

The very first time this root appears in the order the Quran was revealed, before fighting was ever permitted, the instruction names none of these as combat. Strive against them with it, the Quran itself, a great striving (25:52). The weapon named there is recitation and argument, not a blade. Only later, in Madina, does the same word come to include armed defence as one of its forms — one form among several, never a redefinition of the whole word down to that single meaning.

So when this ayah commands struggle against the disbelievers and the hypocrites, it is invoking a word whose natural home is wider than the battlefield it is sometimes narrowed to. A nurse sitting with a dying patient through a fourth consecutive night shift is spending herself in exactly this sense, to the very limit of what she has left to give, with no audience and no applause waiting at the end of it. Most of what this word actually describes, across its forty uses in the Quran, happens far from any field of combat — at a sickbed, at a difficult desk, in the long, unseen patience of holding firm against one's own worst instincts.

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.