and we seek Allah’s protection from that.
Yet our discussion is about the upright Muslim society: whatever people there recognize as an act of keeping the ties is deemed keeping them, and whatever they regard as severing them is truly severance.
In the first report from Abū Hurayrah it is stated that Allah guarantees the womb-relations: He will maintain the one who maintains them and He will cut off the one who cuts them off. This ḥadīth urges and encourages the nurturing of kinship bonds. Therefore, if you wish Allah to maintain you—and every human being longs for his Lord’s care—then maintain your family ties. If, on the other hand, you wish Allah to cut you off, then cut off your kin; it is a perfectly just recompense. The more diligently a person attends to his relatives, the more closely Allah attends to him; and the more he falls short, the smaller his share will be—Allah wrongs no one.
The author—may Allah have mercy on him—also cited the Almighty’s words:
“Would you then, if you were given authority, spread corruption in the land and sever your ties of kinship? Such are the ones whom Allah has cursed, making them deaf and blinding their eyes” (Qur’an 47:22–23).
Here Allah makes it clear that those who spread corruption on earth and cut their family ties are accursed—excluded and banished from His mercy. Allah has rendered them deaf, meaning they do not hear the truth, and even if they were to hear it, they would derive no benefit. He has blinded their eyes so that they cannot perceive the truth, and even if they were to see it, they would not profit from it. Thus every avenue of good is blocked for them, because hearing and sight are the channels by which information reaches the heart; once those channels are sealed, no good can reach the heart—may Allah protect us.
The scholars have included financial support of relatives among the acts of maintaining kinship. They say that if a person has needy relatives while he himself is wealthy and stands to inherit from them, he is obliged to spend on them—such as a full brother with his full brother. If that brother would inherit him were he to die, then the heir must provide for his brother so long as he is affluent and his brother is poor and unable to earn a living.