Al-Qalam · Makki · ayah 12 of 52

Al-Qalam 68:12

مَّنَّاعٍ لِّلْخَيْرِ مُعْتَدٍ أَثِيمٍ

“A preventer of good, transgressing and sinful,”

Saheeh International

Essence

It is one thing to do no good yourself; this ayah names someone who works to stop good from happening to anyone at all.

A reflection

Not merely withholding, but blocking

The root behind mannāʿ names withholding in its most basic physical sense: the closed hand, the barred gate, the fortress out of reach. To manaʿa is to stand between a person and what they want. Turned outward and used of walls and fortresses, the same act becomes protection; turned toward good itself, it becomes something else entirely.

The intensive pattern mannāʿ marks this as habitual, not an occasional lapse into stinginess. And the phrase names its object precisely: not merely wealth, or charity, but al-khayr, good itself, in the broadest sense the word carries, stopped at the gate.

There is a meaningful difference worth holding onto between failing to do good and actively preventing it. A person who simply never gives, never helps, never steps forward, is a familiar, ordinary kind of lacking, common enough that most people recognise it in themselves on a bad week. The person this ayah names is doing something more active: standing at the gate itself, so that good that might otherwise have reached someone does not reach them, whether through discouraging another's generosity, blocking access to what would help, or using influence specifically to close doors that could have opened.

A man on a residents' committee repeatedly votes down a modest proposal to let a local charity use the community hall for free one evening a month, not because the hall is ever otherwise booked that evening, but because the idea came from a neighbour he dislikes and he would rather the hall sit empty than see credit go anywhere near that neighbour's name. Nothing is gained by the obstruction. That is precisely the point: this is not about the good withheld costing him anything. It is about the gate itself, closed for its own sake.

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.