The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'ân,: 58. al-Mujadilah: She Who Pleaded

This is Surah 58 (al-Mujadilah, "She Who Pleaded") from the Quran, in M.M. Pickthall's early 20th-century English translation — a chapter of Islamic scripture in the classical tradition of divine address and legal-moral instruction. The surah opens by acknowledging a specific woman who complained to the Prophet Muhammad about her husband's use of a pre-Islamic divorce formula (zihar, declaring a wife "as one's mother"), and proceeds to abolish the practice while imposing graduated penances — freeing a slave, fasting two months, or feeding sixty needy people — for those who retract such pronouncements and wish to resume the marriage. The middle portion addresses the ethics of private counsel and assembly, warning believers against conspiring for wrongdoing, commanding courteous conduct in gatherings, and briefly instituting (then quickly lifting) a charitable prerequisite for private audience with the Prophet. The surah closes with a sharp distinction between two camps: those who ally with enemies of God and the Prophet — hypocrites whose oaths are false and whose wealth will not save them — and true believers in whose hearts God has inscribed faith and who will be rewarded with paradise. A thread running throughout is God's omniscience: the claim that no private conversation occurs without God as a participant, making hypocrisy and conspiracy ultimately futile. The chapter is notable for grounding abstract theological authority in a concrete individual grievance, using one woman's legal complaint as the occasion for sweeping social and doctrinal pronouncements.

The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'ân,: 58. al-Mujadilah: She Who Pleaded

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