Surah Al-Mujadala – Muhammad Ayyub

Al-Mujadala (The Pleading, or She Who Disputes) is the 58th surah of the Quran and opens the 28th juz. It is a Medinan surah of 22 verses and the 105th in the traditional order of revelation, after Al-Munafiqoon. It takes its name from its first verse, about a woman who pleaded with the Prophet over her husband, and the name of God occurs in every one of its verses.

Context of revelation

The woman was Khawla bint Tha'laba, whose husband Aws ibn al-Samit had pronounced the pre-Islamic formula of zihar, declaring her as unlawful to him as "his mother's back". She came to the Prophet ﷺ to complain of her situation. Aisha said: "Praise be to God, whose hearing encompasses all voices! The woman who pleaded came to the Prophet while I was in a corner of the house, and I could not hear what she said," before God revealed the opening verse (an-Nasa'i and Ibn Majah, authentic; also cited by al-Bukhari).

Themes

• The abolition of zihar as "a hateful and false statement", with its expiation: freeing a slave, or else fasting two consecutive months, or else feeding sixty poor people (58:2–4).
• God's knowledge of every secret: "there is no private conversation of three but He is their fourth" (58:7); secret counsels for sin are forbidden, those for righteousness allowed (58:8–10). Aisha reported, in Muslim, that verse 8 came down about people who greeted the Prophet with "death be upon you".
• Etiquette in gatherings: make room for others and God will make room for you; God raises in rank those who believe and those given knowledge (58:11). The Prophet forbade making a man rise from his seat to take it (al-Bukhari and Muslim).
• The hypocrites, "the party of Satan" (58:14–19), and the believers who give no loyalty to God's enemies, even among their own kin: "those are the party of God" (58:22).

Related surahs

It follows Al-Hadid and precedes Al-Hashr. See also Al-Hujraat on community etiquette.