Sūrah 107 · Āyāt 4–7

The verses. “So woe to those who pray — those who are heedless of their prayer — who show off, but withhold al-māʿūn.” The threat (wayl) falls not on prayer but on a hollow prayer, and the indictment ends on the smallest of refusals: withholding al-māʿūn.

“Woe to those who pray.” The sources insist the curse is conditional. al-Ṭabarsī (in his iʿrāb) notes that “woe to those who pray” is not taken at face value; the weight rests on the relative clause that follows. al-Ṭūsī makes it explicit: the verse is “a threat against the one who prays by way of show (riyāʾ) and reputation-seeking (sumʿa).” al-Mīzān ties the clause back to vv. 1–3 through the fāʾ al-tafrīʿ: the heedless worshippers are an application of “the one who denies the Religion,” for “they deny the Religion in deed while they make a show of belief” — i.e., they are not free of hypocrisy.

“Heedless of their prayer.” A point common to al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī is the preposition: the verse says heedless ʿan (“of/about”) the prayer, not fī (“in”) it. On this Anas’s remark is preserved verbatim by both — “praise be to Allah who said ‘of their prayer’ and not ‘in their prayer’” — meaning the involuntary lapse within prayer is not punished; the censure is heedlessness about it. The glosses then fan out, and the Shīʿī sources weight them: delaying prayer past its time (Ibn ʿAbbās, Masrūq); not caring whether one prays (Qatāda); praying only for show (al-Ḥasan); abandoning it (al-Ḍaḥḥāk); botching its bowing and prostration (Abū al-ʿĀliya). al-Mīzān, al-Qummī, and al-Burhān foreground the Imāmī narrations: from al-Ṣādiq, “abandoning it and being slack about it” and “neglecting it and leaving off praying it at the first of its time”; from al-Kāẓim, “it is squandering (al-taḍyīʿ)”; and from the Commander of the Faithful (via al-Ṣadūq), the warning that “no deed is more beloved to Allah than prayer, so let nothing of this world distract you from its times.” al-Mīzān reads sāhūn plainly as ghāfilūn — heedless of whether the prayer escapes them entirely or merely loses its time of excellence (faḍīla).

Meccan or Medinan? The panel diverges, instructively. Because “woe to those who pray” targets hypocrites, al-Ṭūsī infers the surah “is Medinan, because there was no hypocrisy at Mecca.” al-Mīzān holds the question open — “the surah admits of being Meccan or Medinan; and it is said, half Meccan and half Medinan.” The Enlightening Commentary reports that “many commentators believe this Surah was revealed at Mecca,” judging by its short, eschatological cadence.

“And withhold al-māʿūn.” Here the sources record a real lexical fork. By origin, al-Ṭabarsī and al-Ṭūsī derive māʿūn from al-maʿn, “the little,” so it is “the thing of little value in which there is benefit,” buttressed by the verses of al-Aʿshā and al-Rāʿī (the two transmit al-Rāʿī’s line with a textual variant — al-Ṭabarsī’s “nor neglected the tahlīl [declaration of oneness]” against al-Ṭūsī’s “nor neglected the tanzīl [Revelation]”). The interpretations: (1) the obligatory zakāt — ʿAlī, Ibn ʿUmar, al-Ḥasan, Qatāda, al-Ḍaḥḥāk, and a report from al-Ṣādiq (al-Ṭabarsī, al-Ṭūsī, al-Burhān); (2) everyday lent necessities — bucket, axe, cooking-pot, water and salt, or (in al-Qummī and al-Burhān) “the lamp, fire, and leaven” (Ibn Masʿūd, Ibn ʿAbbās, Saʿīd ibn Jubayr); (3) the comprehensive narration of Abū Baṣīr from al-Ṣādiq, carried by al-Ṭabarsī, al-Burhān, and al-Mīzān — “the loan you lend, the kindness you do, the household goods you lend out — and of it is the zakāt” — even licensing one to withhold from neighbors who habitually break what they borrow; and (4) “kindness (maʿrūf) altogether” (al-Kalbī). al-Mīzān synthesizes the whole: al-māʿūn is “everything that assists another in meeting a need of life,” under which “the various things by which it has been explained” all fall. al-Ṭūsī preserves ʿIkrima’s sharp qualification — woe is not for withholding māʿūn alone, but for combining heedless, ostentatious prayer with withholding it — and the Enlightening Commentary draws the moral: since action is judged by intention, the hypocrite who “does for show whatever is for Allah, and refuses whatever is for people” has severed himself from both.