ٱلَّذِينَ يُؤْمِنُونَ بِٱلْغَيْبِ وَيُقِيمُونَ ٱلصَّلَوٰةَ وَمِمَّا رَزَقْنَٰهُمْ يُنفِقُونَ
Alladhīna yuʾminūna bi'l-ghaybi wa yuqīmūna'ṣ-ṣalāta wa mimmā razaqnāhum yunfiqūn "Those who believe in the unseen, who keep up the prayer, and who spend of what We have provided them."
Who the "muttaqīn" named in the previous verse are is now described. Three items are listed and their order carries meaning: inner world → body → property. From belief to what is done with the body, and from there to letting go of what one owns. More concrete at every step, and harder.
Root ʾ-m-n. The primary sense of the root is trust and safety. Look at what comes from the same root: amān (a guarantee of safety), amāna (a trust), amīn (trustworthy), āmin (one who is safe).
This separates īmān from the English "to believe". In English, believing has more to do with knowledge — accepting a proposition as true. The Arabic root, by contrast, sets up a relationship: to trust, to commit oneself, to feel safe.
Indeed one of the names of God is al-Muʾmin: the one who gives safety. The same word covers both the believer and the giver of security. Faith is not a one-way acceptance but a bond of mutual trust.
Root gh-y-b: to disappear from sight, to be covered. The setting of the sun is called ghaybūba. The unseen is not what does not exist but what is not visible. This distinction is critical and is often confused.
One point must be said plainly: knowledge that rests on the unseen is not something irrational; most human knowledge is of this kind. No one has seen an electron; it is known from its effects. No one has gone down to the earth's core; it is inferred from seismic waves. No one sees the past; it is built from its traces. No one can directly observe another person's consciousness; it is inferred from behaviour.
The principle "I believe only what I see", applied consistently, takes away nearly everything a human being knows. Faith in the unseen is not a leap without evidence; it is trust in a domain reached by evidence but not directly observable. Nor is what the Qurʾān asks for an acceptance with the eyes shut — the same Qurʾān says constantly "look", "will you not think", "travel the earth and see".
I do not write this in the sense that the Qurʾān is doing science; I say only that the principle "trust in what is unseen" is not out of keeping with the general working of human knowledge.
The verse does not say "they perform the prayer". It says "they keep the prayer standing", and the difference matters.
Iqāma is from the root q-w-m — the same root as mustaqīm in al-Fātiḥa. Its sense: to raise something to its feet, to set it up, to make it straight, to hold it standing. Like raising a post.
Arabic could have used the verb adāʾ for "to discharge the prayer"; it is not used. The difference is this: adāʾ is the discharging of a debt — it is done and finished. Iqāma is holding something upright — it requires continuity, it requires maintenance, one has to keep it from falling.
The meaning that follows: the prayer is not a duty struck off a list but a structure held standing. On time, according to its conditions, continuously and with its inside filled. Elsewhere the Qurʾān describes the reverse of this — those who pray and are heedless of their prayer (al-Māʿūn 107/4-5). That is exactly the difference between performing and keeping up.
The root of the word صلاة is disputed; some lexicographers attach it to the root meaning to pray, others to the ṣalā region on either side of the lower back (connecting it with the movement of bowing). The first is more widespread.
First: "what We have provided as sustenance." The sentence states from the outset the source of the property to be given. The one who spends is not giving out of his own property; he is giving out of what has been given to him. This cuts the sense of superiority in the act of giving off at the root — what you hold in your hand was never yours.
Second: the particle "min". The verse does not say "they spend what We have provided", it says "of what We have provided". Here min in Arabic states the partitive: a portion of it. It is not being asked that one distribute everything. Elsewhere the Qurʾān sets this balance out plainly: "Do not keep your hand chained to your neck, nor open it out altogether" (al-Isrāʾ 17/29).
Third: the word infāq itself. Root n-f-q. The first sense of this root is to be used up, to run out, to pass away; nafaqa is a thing's going out of one's hand, coming to an end. From this comes nafaqa — what is spent and consumed for maintenance.
The same root has one further interesting relative: nafaq, an underground tunnel. And from this, nifāq — hypocrisy. The field mouse has a burrow with two mouths; it enters by one and, when danger comes, leaves by the other. The hypocrite gets his name from here: the one with two exits.
The same root, then, names both the letting go of one's property and the keeping of a hidden way out for oneself. Infāq is the closing of one's exit — accepting that what is given will not come back. Nifāq is always keeping an escape tunnel in reserve. That the sūra will speak at length of the hypocrites in the verses ahead makes this contrast more meaningful still.
Note: infāq does not mean only zakāt; zakāt is the obligatory minimum portion, whereas infāq is spending in the way of God in general, in its entirety.