Al-Ma'arij · Makki · ayah 24 of 44

Al-Ma'arij 70:24

وَٱلَّذِينَ فِىٓ أَمْوَٰلِهِمْ حَقٌّ مَّعْلُومٌ

“And those within whose wealth is a known right[1753]”

Saheeh International

Essence

A share for the needy already sits inside a believer's wealth, not as a gift to be decided on later but as a known due that was always there.

A reflection

In their wealth, not out of it

A freelancer counts what lands in her account at the end of each job and gives away whatever feels left over once her own costs are covered. Her neighbour, a salaried man, has ten per cent of every payslip withheld before the number ever reaches him. He never sees it as his to decide about.

The ayah does not say a known right comes min amwālihim, out of their wealth, as though it were subtracted from a pile that was fully theirs to begin with. It says the right is fī amwālihim, inside their wealth, already there the moment the wealth exists. One reading of this phrase is simple but easy to miss: the share was never carved out of something whole. It was mixed into the wealth from the start, the way a shareholding is mixed into a company before any dividend is ever paid out.

This changes what the act of giving actually is. The freelancer's model makes every gift a small loss weighed against what she would otherwise have kept. The salaried man's model makes the deduction part of what the number always meant; what reaches his hand was never the whole figure to begin with. The ayah asks for the second posture inside a person's own wealth, long before any official deduction exists to enforce it. The needy person's share is not a request made of your money. It is already named inside it.

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