al-Māʿūn 107:3

Wa lā yaḥuḍḍu ʿalā ṭaʿāmi'l-miskīn "And does not urge the feeding of the needy."

The whole force of this verse lies in what it does not say.

The verse could have said the following:

• "He devours the property of the needy" — the heaviest accusation.
• "He does not feed the needy" — the expected accusation.
• "He does not give to the needy" — the reasonable accusation.

It says none of them. What it says is: he does not urge others to feed.

That is, the accusation is not "you do not give" but "you do not even want it to be given". The threshold has been drawn down as far as it will go. Why?

Because urging costs nothing at all. To give, you must have property; to urge, you need have nothing. Even a poor person can call others to feed someone. Your word, your look, a sentence you might say at a table — these are free.

The meaning of this is: the sūra catches not the man's hand but his intention. A person who does not give can say "I had no means". But for a person who does not even urge there is no such excuse. If he does not urge, the matter is not means but not wanting. Deep down he finds the feeding of the needy unnecessary.

There is a second layer of meaning too: urging takes the matter out of the individual and makes it social. The alms one person gives feeds one person; a widespread conviction that it ought to be given changes the system. The verse asks for something beyond individual acts of help: that the feeding of the needy should be a normal, expected, spoken-of thing in society. The person who does not do this is not merely subtracting one meal; he is obstructing the establishing of a norm.

This is an accusation the sūra directs at silence. Not doing evil is not counted as enough; not being the voice of good is entered into the record too.

لَا يَحُضُّ (lā yaḥuḍḍu) — Root ح ض ض. This too is a doubled verb, just like yaduʿʿu in the preceding verse. There is a link between the two verses framed through sound: yaduʿʿu / yaḥuḍḍu. Both are on the same pattern, both end with a hard doubled consonant. The ear notices that the two sentences are two faces of the same man before it has even worked out the meaning.

The meaning of the verb ḥaḍḍ: to urge insistently, to incite, to try to move someone to act. There is a compulsion in it, a prodding. Not a gentle piece of advice.

The verb is negated and in the imperfect: he does not do it continually. He has not simply forgotten once; this is his settled state.

عَلَىٰ (ʿalā) — "Upon". The verb ḥaḍḍ takes its object with this letter: to push towards something, to direct towards that side. The letter shows that the urging is directed and has a target.

طَعَام (ṭaʿām) — Root ط ع م: to taste, to eat. Ṭaʿām can mean both "food" (the substance) and "feeding" (the act, the verbal noun). This double possibility will determine how the construction is to be read.

الْمِسْكِين (al-miskīn) — Root س ك ن: sukūn, immobility, stillness, settledness.

Miskīn, by the structure of the word, means "the person whom poverty has left motionless". Close to what we mean in English by "the destitute", but more technical: the one who cannot stir. Poverty has wedged him into such a place that he has become unable to move.

This is a very exact description of poverty. Poverty is not merely "having little money"; it is the absence of options. What the poor person really loses is the capacity to move: he cannot change his job, cannot move house, cannot wait, cannot take a risk, cannot afford to fall ill. The word describes this paralysis.

The difference between faqīr and miskīn. The two are counted separately in the Qurʾān (al-Tawba 9/60, the heads of expenditure of the alms-tax), so they are not the same thing. But on which of the two is the more needy, the schools of law give opinions in opposite directions: according to the Ḥanafīs the miskīn is the more needy, according to the Shāfiʿīs and Ḥanbalīs the faqīr. This is a technical question of jurisprudence to do with the distribution of the alms-tax; no side is taken here, I content myself with transmitting it.

An interesting datum from within the Qurʾān: in al-Kahf 18/79 people who work at sea and own a boat are spoken of as "masākīn" (the needy). That is, the miskīn is not necessarily one who has nothing at all; he is the one who cannot stand on his feet with what he has, the fragile one. In present-day terms: he has property but no security.

The most heavily loaded construction of the sūra is here. Two readings are possible:

The first reading — a verbal-noun construction: Ṭaʿām is here in the sense of "feeding". The construction then means "the feeding of the needy". Simple and fluent.

The second reading — a construction of possession: Ṭaʿām is in the sense of "food" (the substance), and the construction conveys ownership: "the food that belongs to the needy."

The second reading, once accepted, changes the understanding of property from the ground up. Because then the verse would be saying: the food given is already not the giver's but the needy person's. The one who gives is not bestowing a favour; he is handing over another's property to its owner.

This reading has very strong support from within the Qurʾān:

• Al-Dhāriyāt 51/19: "And in their wealth there was a right for the one who asks and for the one who is deprived."
• Al-Maʿārij 70/24-25: "And in whose wealth there is a determined right for the one who asks and the one who is deprived."

In both verses the word used is a right — not a favour, not a bounty, not a gift. And that it is called "determined" (maʿlūm) shows that this is not an arbitrary amount but a defined share.

The consequences of this are serious:

1. The superiority of the giver disappears. A man who pays his debt expects no gratitude. This is why the Qurʾān counts the throwing of charity in the face (menn) as something that annuls the charity (al-Baqara 2/264). 2. The shame of the receiver disappears. One who takes what is his by right has not held out his hand. 3. Not giving becomes not "failing to be generous" but "withholding a right". One passes from a moral deficiency to a legal violation.

The classical exegetes mention both readings and most prefer the first (the verbal-noun) reading; the second is also entirely valid linguistically and is the ordinary sense of the construction. In my judgement the two readings do not exclude one another: to feed the needy is to hand over what belongs to him. This is a preference and it is not binding.

The expression of this verse occurs almost word for word in two further places in the Qurʾān:

• Al-Ḥāqqa 69/33-34, where the person in Hell is described: "For he did not believe in God the Most High and did not urge the feeding of the needy." Two clauses, joined by "and". Faith and urging, side by side in the same list. The whole claim of the sūra rests on that conjunction.
• Al-Fajr 89/18: "And you do not urge one another to the feeding of the needy." Here the verb is on the taḥāḍḍūna pattern — the mufāʿala/tafāʿul form, which conveys reciprocity. That is, not merely "urge others" but "urge one another". The social dimension is expressed openly.

And the most comprehensive is al-Muddaththir 74/42-46. Those in Hell are asked: "What brought you into Saqar?" The answer is four items:

1. "We were not among those who prayed." 2. "And we did not feed the needy." 3. "And we used to plunge into vain talk along with those who plunged." 4. "And we used to deny the Day of Judgement."

Note this list: prayer, feeding the needy, denying the Day of Judgement. The three main elements of Sūrat al-Māʿūn are together, in the reverse order, in al-Muddaththir. The two texts say the same thing; one as a confession from the mouths of those in Hell, the other as a diagnosis made while still in this world.