Al-Inshiqaq · Makki · ayah 25 of 25

Al-Inshiqaq 84:25

إِلَّا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّـٰلِحَـٰتِ لَهُمْ أَجْرٌ غَيْرُ مَمْنُونٍۭ

“Except for those who believe and do righteous deeds. For them is a reward uninterrupted.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The final ayah opens with 'except': for those who believe and set things right, a reward never cut off, reduced or held over them.

A reflection

The contract that never ends in July

Every July, a supply teacher's contract ends. Every September she waits to see whether a school will call. She is good at her job, and the children love her. But for six weeks each summer she lives with a low hum of worry. Her work never quite feels like it belongs to her.

Lahum ajrun ghayru mamnūn: for them is a reward never cut off. The early explanations gather several meanings in the phrase. Not diminished, said one Companion. Not counted out, said others. Not cut off, like the Quran's other description of the Garden: 'a gift that is never interrupted' (11:108). One classical commentator argues that all the meanings should be held together: a reward pure of any spoiling, lasting without a break, never reduced.

The lexicons add a vivid picture. The Arabs called the fine dust thrown up behind racing camels manīn, because the camels cut through it and left it behind. Anything that thins and gives way was mamnūn. This reward is the opposite: nothing trails off, nothing wears through.

Allah does not need our belief or our good deeds. 'Your Lord is the Free of need, the Possessor of mercy' (6:133). The reward is not a payment He is forced to make. It is mercy dressed as a wage, so that the one who worked may receive it with dignity.

Many people today know the supply teacher's feeling. Contracts end. Apps change their terms. Followers drift away, pensions shrink, health runs down. Almost everything we earn in this world comes with a date on which it stops. The hunger underneath is for something that will not be taken back.

This ayah names the one place where that hunger is met. Belief, and deeds that set things right, and then a reward without a July. It is offered now, to anyone who will take up the work, however late in the year they start.

The full entry has 4 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.