What does "taqwa" mean in the Quran?
Taqwa is a shield, not bare fear. What al-Muyassar, as-Safi and al-Mizan each make of it, where the Quran says it lies, what "its due" means, and a corrected count of every place the word occurs.
Taqwa is usually translated "fear of Allah", sometimes "righteousness" or "piety", and none of those carries the whole of it. The word comes from wiqayah — a shield, something placed between you and what you fear. So the first question is not what feeling it names but what it is a shield against, and the three commentaries this site serves answer that with some precision.
This site serves three commentaries. The Sunni reading below is al-Tafsir al-Muyassar, from the King Fahd Complex. The Shia reading is Tafsir as-Safi by al-Fayd al-Kashani and Tafsir al-Mizan by al-Tabataba'i. All three are Arabic; the renderings into English are mine.
The word itself
Al-Mizan takes it to ar-Raghib for both halves of the pair the Quran sets it against.
Fujur, its opposite, is the tearing of the veil of religion. On that definition a divine prohibition is a screen hung between a person and the act — and committing the act is tearing the screen open.
Taqwa is placing the self in a shield from what it fears. By the contrast with fujur in the verse where the two appear together, it means avoiding fujur and guarding against what harms — and, al-Tabataba'i adds, it has been explained in narration as scrupulousness towards what God has forbidden.
So the pair is not fear against boldness. It is a screen kept intact against a screen torn.
Where the Quran says it lies
And [by] the soul and He who proportioned it
And inspired it [with discernment of] its wickedness and its righteousness,
This is the verse the word's meaning turns on, because it puts both fujur and taqwa inside the soul and says God inspired them there.
Al-Muyassar reads the inspiration as God making the way of evil and the way of good plain to the soul.
As-Safi sharpens it into a sequence: He made it known to it and inspired it, then gave it the choice — and it chose. From Imam as-Sadiq in al-Kafi, in six words: He made clear to us what to do and what to leave.
Al-Mizan asks the harder question: why does the verse attach the inspiration to its fujur and its taqwa rather than to the acts themselves? Because inspiration here is the casting of practical forms into the soul, and what is made known is the description of the act — that this one is taqwa and that one is fujur — over and above knowing the bare act under a title that would fit either. His example is exact: consuming property is a title shared between consuming an orphan's property and consuming your own. Knowing the act is not knowing which of the two it is. That second knowledge is what the verse says was inspired.
Put the three together and you get a clear claim: the knowledge of which side an act falls on is given, and the choosing is not.
"Its due" — the question usually left open
Two verses are read against each other. The first:
O you who have believed, fear Allah as He should be feared and do not die except as Muslims [in submission to Him].
And the second:
So fear Allah as much as you are able and listen and obey and spend [in the way of Allah]; it is better for your selves.
Most short treatments stop at "commentators have reconciled these in several ways". Al-Mizan does not, and his answer is the most useful passage on taqwa in the three works.
Ordinary taqwa of God, he says, is avoidance of His punishment, and that is realised only by acting on what He wants: carrying out His commands, stopping at His prohibitions, thanking Him for His favours, and being patient under His trial — the last two coming back to gratitude in the sense of putting a thing where it belongs. Summed up: that He be obeyed and not disobeyed, and that one submit to Him in what He gives and what He withholds.
But taken as its due — taqwa unmixed with any falsehood of its own kind — it becomes pure servanthood with no self-assertion and no heedlessness in it: obedience without disobedience, gratitude without ingratitude, remembrance without forgetting. That, he says, is true submission at its highest degree — which is why the same verse goes on to say and do not die except as Muslims.
So the two verses are not in tension on this reading. One names the ceiling; the other names the duty of whoever is below it.
What actually reaches God
Their meat will not reach Allah, nor will their blood, but what reaches Him is piety from you. Thus have We subjected them to you that you may glorify Allah for that [to] which He has guided you; and give good tidings to the doers of good.
Al-Muyassar: nothing of the flesh of these sacrifices nor of their blood reaches God; what reaches Him is sincerity in them, and that what is intended by them is the face of God alone.
As-Safi reads "reach" as attain His pleasure and fall where He accepts it — the flesh and blood do not, as flesh and blood; what reaches Him is what accompanies them of the taqwa of your hearts, which is what calls you to God's command, to magnifying Him, to drawing near and to sincerity. It adds an occasion: in the days of ignorance they would smear the House with blood after slaughtering, and when the Muslims made the pilgrimage some wanted to do the same — and the verse came down. And from al-Ilal, asked the reason for the sacrifice, Imam as-Sadiq gave one that bears directly on the word: so that God may know who fears Him unseen — then pointed at the oldest instance of the principle: look how God accepted the offering of Abel and rejected the offering of Cain.
Two offerings, materially alike; one accepted. That is the whole of the verse's argument in a single example.
"Nearer to taqwa" — taqwa as a direction
Two verses use a comparative, and they are the places this word stops being an abstraction.
On a divorce before consummation, where the husband may remit the dower or the wife may forgo her half:
And to forego it is nearer to righteousness. And do not forget graciousness between you.
And on judging between people, even one's enemies:
...and do not let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just. Be just; that is nearer to righteousness.
Al-Muyassar glosses the first as mutual forbearance being nearer to fearing God and obeying Him. Note what the grammar does: taqwa is something one act can be nearer to than another. It is not a line crossed once but a direction — and in both verses the act that moves you toward it costs you something: money you were owed, or the satisfaction of ruling against someone you dislike.
God as the one entitled to it
And they will not remember except that Allah wills. He is worthy of fear and adequate for [granting] forgiveness.
Al-Muyassar: He is worthy that He be feared and obeyed, and worthy to forgive whoever believed in Him and obeyed Him.
As-Safi glosses it as deserving that His punishment be guarded against and deserving to forgive His servants — and then reports, in at-Tawhid from Imam as-Sadiq, God speaking in the first person: I am worthy to be feared — that My servant associate nothing with Me; and I am worthy, if My servant associates nothing with Me, to admit him to the Garden.
That report does something the lexicon cannot: it fixes the minimum content of taqwa at not associating anything with God. Taqwa, on that reading, begins at tawhid rather than at scrupulosity.
The same identification appears on the Sunni side at the treaty verse, where al-Muyassar glosses the word of taqwa as "there is no god but God", which is the head of all taqwa:
When those who disbelieved had put into their hearts chauvinism - the chauvinism of the time of ignorance. But Allah sent down His tranquillity upon His Messenger and upon the believers and imposed upon them the word of righteousness, and they were more deserving of it and worthy of it. And ever is Allah, of all things, Knowing.
Hearts tested for it
Indeed, those who lower their voices before the Messenger of Allah - they are the ones whose hearts Allah has tested for righteousness. For them is forgiveness and great reward.
Al-Muyassar: God tested their hearts and made them sincere for His taqwa. As-Safi adds a verb worth having: He tried their hearts for it and trained them to it — habituation, not a single examination. On both readings taqwa is something a heart is brought to, not only something a person decides.
What the Quran attaches to it
Each of these is a conditional, and the condition is the same one:
- A criterion — if you fear Allah, He will grant you a furqan (Al-Anfal 8:29), which al-Mizan divides into telling truth from falsehood in belief, in action and in judgement.
- A way out, and provision from where you do not expect (At-Talaq 65:2-3).
- The outcome — and the outcome belongs to taqwa (Taha 20:132), which al-Muyassar reads as the good outcome in this world and the next belonging to the people of taqwa.
- Guidance from the Book, which is the first thing the Quran says of itself after Al-Fatihah: a guidance for those of taqwa (Al-Baqarah 2:2).
- And more taqwa — and He gives them their taqwa (Muhammad 47:17). The thing asked for is also the thing given.
Where the three agree
- Taqwa is conduct, not sentiment: obeying a command, avoiding a prohibition. All three gloss it that way wherever it appears.
- Its content at the minimum is tawhid — al-Muyassar calls there is no god but God the head of all taqwa; as-Safi's report has God naming it as associating nothing with Him.
- In 91:8 the knowledge is given and the act is the person's; none of the three reads the inspiration as determining the choice.
- In 22:37 what is accepted is not the outward act but what stood behind it.
- It is something God grants more of (47:17) as well as something He commands.
Where each goes its own way
- Al-Muyassar gives a steady working gloss — fearing God and obeying Him — and identifies the word of taqwa with the testimony of faith.
- As-Safi supplies the sequence in 91:8 (made known, then chosen), the first-person report fixing taqwa at tawhid, the "trained to it" reading of 49:3, and the Abel-and-Cain comparison for 22:37.
- Al-Mizan defines the term and its opposite from the lexicon, explains why the inspiration attaches to the description of the act rather than the act, and answers the question about "its due" rather than leaving it open.
Counted on the site's own text
These counts were remade from the mushaf this site serves, and two of them correct the earlier version of this article.
- The noun taqwa, in every form it takes — at-taqwa, taqwa, lit-taqwa, bit-taqwa, taqwaha, taqwahum — occurs in seventeen verses: Al-Baqarah 197 and 237; Al-Ma'idah 2 and 8; Al-A'raf 26; At-Tawbah 108 and 109; Taha 132; Al-Hajj 32 and 37; Muhammad 17; Al-Fath 26; Al-Hujurat 3; Al-Mujadila 9; Al-Muddaththir 56; Ash-Shams 8; Al-Alaq 12.
- The people of taqwa — al-muttaqin and al-muttaqun, with and without prefixes — occurs forty-nine times, in forty-nine verses.
- The imperative ittaqu in its three written forms occurs eighty-eight times, across eighty-four verses.
The shape of the count is the point: the Quran asks for taqwa far more often than it describes it, and twice as often as it names its people.
What the word claims, and what it does not
- It names a guard kept up, not a mood. The shield is the root image, and both as-Safi and al-Mizan keep it.
- It is not a state one arrives at. Two verses use a comparative — one act is nearer to taqwa than another — and one verse has God giving more of it to those already guided.
- It is not only acquired from outside: 91:8 puts the knowledge of it in the soul. But none of the three reads that as removing the choice.
- "Its due" is not a demand to do the impossible. On al-Mizan's reading it names the highest degree, and 64:16 states the obligation for everyone below it.
- The above are commentators' positions, presented as they stand rather than adjudicated. Their full texts are on each verse's own page.
Read:
Related: