- Chapter: Cooperation in Righteousness and Piety
Allah the Exalted says, “And cooperate with one another in righteousness and piety” (Al-Ma’idah 5:2); and He says, “By the declining day, surely man is in loss, except those who believe, perform righteous deeds, and counsel one another to the truth and counsel one another to patience” (Al-‘Asr 103:1–3).
Imam al-Shafi‘i (d. 204 AH) said words to the effect that people—indeed most of them—are heedless of reflecting upon this surah.
[Explanation]
The author, may Allah have mercy on him, entitles this section “Chapter: Cooperation in birr and taqwa.” Cooperation (taʿāwun) means mutual assistance, that people help one another in birr and taqwa. Birr is the performance of good, while taqwa is the avoidance of evil. People act in two ways: in what contains good and in what contains evil.
Concerning what is good, cooperation means that you assist your brother in doing it and make it easy for him, whether the matter pertains to you or to someone else. As for evil, cooperation here is to warn against it, prevent it as far as you can, and advise anyone who intends to commit it to abandon it. Thus birr is to do good—together with mutual assistance in carrying it out and facilitating it for people—whereas taqwa is to avoid evil, and cooperation upon it consists in obstructing people from committing evil and cautioning them against it, so that the community may become a single, unified body.
The imperative in His saying, “and cooperate,” is an obligatory command with respect to what is obligatory and a recommended command with respect to what is recommended. Likewise with regard to taqwa: it is a mandatory command in matters that are unlawful, and a recommended command with respect to