Surah Al-Mujadilah, The Woman Who Argues

Surah 58 · 22 verses · revealed at Medina

Al-Mujadilah is named after a woman who came to the Prophet to argue about her husband and would not accept the answer she was given.

Her husband had used an old formula of divorce that left a wife neither married nor free. She put her case, and when the Prophet told her he had no instruction about it, she kept pressing and then complained aloud to God. The surah opens by saying that God has heard the words of the woman who disputes with you about her husband and complains to God, and that God hears the two of you talking.

The custom was then abolished, with a set of specific remedies put in its place. A'ishah is reported to have said that she could hear some of the woman's words and not others, but that God heard all of them.

The rest of the surah deals with secret conversations, and with people who were holding them in Medina in a way calculated to unsettle the community. It also gives the instruction to make room for one another in gatherings, and says that God raises in rank those of you who believe and those who have been given knowledge.

It is one of the clearest cases in the Qur'an of a law being changed because one person refused to let a matter drop, and it has been cited on that ground ever since.

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