Al-Fajr · Makki · ayah 18 of 30

Al-Fajr 89:18

وَلَا تَحَـٰٓضُّونَ عَلَىٰ طَعَامِ ٱلْمِسْكِينِ

“And you do not encourage one another to feed the poor.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The failure named is not only hunger left unfed, but a community in which nobody spurred anybody else to feed it.

A reflection

A culture of nudging

On a building site in a city centre, a man sleeps most nights by the gate. The crew have an unwritten rule. Whoever goes for the breakfast run buys one extra roll and a tea. Nobody set the rule; it grew. And if the new apprentice comes back with only the crew's order, three voices ask him at once: where's his?

Taḥāḍḍūna is a mutual form: urging one another, each spurring the other on. The root's picture is rousing someone towards a deed, above all towards good. So the fault in this ayah is not only that someone went hungry. It is that nobody nudged anybody. One classical commentary glosses it simply: they did not command their own households to feed a poor person who came to them.

The reciters preserve three readings, and each adds something. Some read 'you do not urge', some 'you do not urge one another', some 'you do not press one another'. Together they describe a culture. Feeding the poor was not on anyone's lips, so it was not in anyone's hands.

That changes what the ayah asks of us. Private generosity matters, and hidden charity is praised elsewhere. But this ayah looks at the group. A family, a workplace, a mosque, a street: what does it make normal? Whose name do people say when food is being shared?

That is leadership in its most ordinary form. Not a campaign, but a question asked at the right moment: 'where's his?' A culture of urging does not need a charity director. It needs a few people who keep reminding the rest, until the extra roll is simply what the crew does.

In your own circle, who is the one who asks? And if nobody is, could it be you?

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.