Unfamiliar Terms

1. aṣ-Ṣāliqa: the woman who raises her voice at a calamity, wailing and shrieking.
2. al-Ḥāliqa: the woman who shaves or plucks out her hair out of intense grief and panic.
3. ash-Shāqqa: the woman who tears her collar or garment in displeasure at Allah’s decree.
4. daʿwā al-Jāhiliyyah (“the cry of the Age of Ignorance”): lamenting the dead and eulogising him with phrases such as “the slayer of enemies, the refuge of the clan, the guardian of orphans,” and the like; likewise the vocative laments “Yā sanadāh!” (“O my support!”) or “Inkitaʿa ẓahrāh!” (“His back has been broken!”)—indeed, every statement that conveys discontent and panic at Allah’s decree and wisdom.
5. Ḍarb al-khudūd (“striking the cheeks”): i.e., slapping them; it appears in the plural to match what follows.
6. al-Jayyib (the collar-opening): the part of a garment that is slit so the head can pass through.

Comprehensive Meaning
Whatever Allah takes belongs to Him, and whatever He gives likewise belongs to Him; in that lies perfect wisdom and the most judicious management. Whoever objects to this behaves as though he were opposing Allah’s decree and predestination, which are the very essence of benefit and wisdom and the foundation of justice and righteousness.

Hence the Prophet ﷺ stated that anyone who greets Allah’s decree with resentment and panic is not upon his praiseworthy way nor his sought-after sunnah. Such people have drifted to the condition of those who, when adversity touches them, fall into agitation and alarm because they are attached to this worldly life and do not hope, through patience, for Allah’s reward and pleasure.

He therefore disavowed those whose faith is weak, who could not endure the blow of calamity, and were driven to verbal discontent through wailing and lamentation, or to physical acts such as plucking hair and tearing garments—reviving the customs of the Age of Ignorance.

His true allies are only those who, when struck by a calamity, submit to the divine decree and say, “Innā lillāh wa-innā ilayhi rājiʿūn (Surely we belong to Allah, and surely to Him we shall return). Such people are the ones upon whom descend blessings and mercy from their Lord, and it is they who are rightly guided.”

Lessons Derived from the Hadith

1. The prohibition of showing resentment at painful divine decrees and of manifesting that through wailing, lamentation, shaving, tearing, or other acts such as throwing dust upon the head.
2. The prohibition of imitating the Age of Ignorance in practices that the Lawgiver has not approved, among them their false cries at times of calamity.
3. These words and acts constitute major sins, for the Prophet ﷺ declared himself free of anyone who performs them, and he would only disavow those guilty of a grave sin.