Surah Mujadilah




God has heard the statement of she who brings her dispute to you concerning her husband and makes her complaint to God. And God hears both your sides in an argument, for God is all-hearing, all-seeing.
- Thomas Cleary
If any of you divorce their wives by saying “You are to me like my mother’s back,” they are not their mothers; for their mothers are only those who gave birth to them. Yet they surely make a statement that is objectionable and false. But God is truly magnanimous, very forgiving indeed.
- Thomas Cleary
As for those who divorce their wives by saying, “You are to me like my mother’s back,” but then go back on their word, they are to free a slave before the couple touch each other. This you are instructed; and God is well aware of whatever you do.
- Thomas Cleary
Now whoever hasn’t the means is to fast two months in a row before the couple touch; but whoever is unable to do this is to feed sixty of the destitute. That is to evince your faith in God and God’s messenger; for those are ordinances of God, and there is a painful punishment for those who refuse,
- Thomas Cleary
for those who oppose God and the messenger of God will be restrained as those before them were restrained, as We have already sent down clear signs. And there is a degrading punishment for the scoffers,
- Thomas Cleary
on the day that God resurrects them all and tells them what they did; God has kept account of it, even if they have forgotten it, for God is witness to all things.
- Thomas Cleary
Haven’t you seen that God knows what is in the heavens and what is on earth? There is no private conference of three but God is their fourth; and none of five but God is their sixth; nor are there fewer than that or more but God is with them wherever they are. Then on the day of resurrection God will tell them what they did; for God knows everything.
- Thomas Cleary
Haven’t you seen those who were forbidden from secret conferences but reverted to what they were forbidden, holding secret conferences among themselves in error and enmity and defiance of the messenger? When they come to you, they greet you with what God does not greet you, while they say to themselves, “Why doesn’t God punish us for what we say?” All they deserve is hell, where they will burn; and what a miserable destiny!
- Thomas Cleary
Believers, when you hold private conferences, do not confer in error and enmity and defiance of the messenger; confer with innocence and conscience, being conscious of God, to whom you will be gathered.
- Thomas Cleary
Secret conferences are from Satan, to grieve those who believe; but he cannot harm them at all, except by leave of God. So let the believers trust in God.
- Thomas Cleary