The Debate (Al-Mujaadalah)
In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful
۞ God has certainly heard the words of the woman who disputed with you about her husband and who (after not having received a favorable response from you) complained to God. God was listening to your argument. He is All-hearing and All-aware. 1 Those of you who say, regarding their wives, 'Be as my mother's back,' they are not truly their mothers; their mothers are only those who gave them birth, and they are surely saying a dishonourable saying, and a falsehood. Yet surely God is All-pardoning, All-forgiving. 2 Those who put away their wives by equating them with their mothers, and then wish to go back on what they have said, must set free a slave before the couple may touch one another again. This is what you are exhorted to do. God is fully aware of what you do, 3 But whosoever finds not the means, then let him fast two successive months, before the two of them touch one another. And if any man is not able to, then let him feed sixty poor persons -- that, that you may believe in God and His Messenger. Those are God's bounds; and for the unbelievers there awaits yet a painful chastisement. 4 Verily, those who contend against God and His Apostle shall be brought low even as those [evildoers] who lived before them were brought low after We had bestowed [on them] clear messages from on high. And [so,] for those who deny the truth there will be shameful suffering in store 5 On the Day when Allah will resurrect them all together (i.e. the Day of Resurrection) and inform them of what they did. Allah has kept account of it, while they have forgotten it. And Allah is Witness over all things. 6