Al-Mujadila, "She Who Pleads," is the fifty-eighth surah — 22 verses revealed in Medina.1 It opens with a woman's complaint: "Certainly has Allah heard the speech of the one who argues with you, [O Muhammad], concerning her husband and directs her complaint to Allah. And Allah hears your dialogue."
What it is about
Her husband had pronounced zihar, an old Arabian oath that treated a wife as forbidden like one's mother while leaving her unable to remarry. The surah answers her directly: such wives "are not [consequently] their mothers... they are saying an objectionable statement and a falsehood." A husband who wants to go back on the oath must first free a slave, or fast two consecutive months, or feed sixty poor people.2
The surah then turns to the manners of a community. God is present in every private conversation — "There are not three in a private conversation but that He is the fourth of them" — so secret talk must be "about righteousness and piety," not sin and conspiracy.3 In gatherings: "when you are told, 'Space yourselves' in assemblies, then make space; Allah will make space for you... Allah will raise those who have believed among you and those who were given knowledge, by degrees."4
Why it matters
Al-Mujadila begins with God answering a woman's plea from heaven and overturning a custom that wronged her — one of the Quran's clearest demonstrations that no one's complaint is too small to be heard. It ends by describing the "party of Allah," who will not give their loyalty to those who oppose God and His Messenger even if they are their own kin.5 To read Al-Mujadila in Arabic with translations and recitation, open it on Quran.com.