"This day I have perfected your religion" (Al-Ma'idah 3): how Sunni and Shia scholars read it

The passage on the completion of the religion inside Al-Ma'idah 3, where it sits in the verse, and how each tradition reads it — from Tafsir al-Muyassar, Tafsir as-Safi and Tafsir al-Mizan, with the agreements before the differences.

The passage

This day those who disbelieve have despaired of [defeating] your religion; so fear them not, but fear Me. This day I have perfected for you your religion and completed My favor upon you and have approved for you Islam as religion.

Al-Ma'idah 5:3

This sits inside a long verse whose opening and closing are about forbidden foods. Two questions drive the discussion: which day is "this day"? And in what did the perfecting consist?

This article presents each tradition through the words of a tafsir this site itself serves, rather than through a characterisation of our own, and adjudicates between them nowhere. The Arabic passages are rendered into English here, since all three works are Arabic.

The context

The verse opens on a list of prohibitions — carrion, blood, swine, what was dedicated to other than God, and the rest — and after the passage above it returns to exactly where it left off:

But whoever is forced by severe hunger with no inclination to sin - then indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.

So the opening and the closing form one continuous statement about food, and between them stands a statement about religion and favour. That placement is itself one of the things the disagreement is built on, as will appear.

The Sunni reading

Tafsir al-Muyassar, published by the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Quran, glosses the passage as follows: now the hope of the disbelievers that you would turn back from your religion to polytheism has been cut off, after We gave you victory over them, so do not fear them and fear Me. This day I have perfected your religion for you — the religion of Islam — by the realisation of victory and the completion of the law; and I have completed My favour upon you by bringing you out of the darkness of pre-Islamic ignorance into the light of faith; and I have approved Islam for you as a religion, so hold to it and do not depart from it.

So al-Muyassar reads the perfecting as the realisation of victory and the completion of the law, and the completed favour as the passage from ignorance to faith. Its wording identifies neither a particular day nor a particular ruling.

What is most often named in Sunni works as the day is the Day of Arafah in the Farewell Pilgrimage. Allamah at-Tabataba'i himself reports this in Tafsir al-Mizan, citing ad-Durr al-Manthur: it is related from ash-Sha'bi that the verse "This day I have perfected for you your religion" was revealed to the Prophet while he was at Arafah.

The Shia reading

Al-Fayd al-Kashani, in Tafsir as-Safi, holds that the passage was revealed on the Day of Ghadir, and bases that on what he reports from Majma' al-Bayan: it was revealed only after the Prophet appointed Ali as a guide for the people at Ghadir Khumm, on his way back from the Farewell Pilgrimage — and, the report adds, it was the last obligation God sent down, after which no obligation was sent down again.

He then cites al-Kafi: one obligation would be sent down after another, and the wilayah was the last of the obligations, whereupon God sent down "This day I have perfected for you your religion" — meaning, no obligation will be sent down after this one; the obligations have been completed for you.

And he explains in what sense that is a perfecting: the obligations were completed by the wilayah because the Prophet passed on everything of the knowledge entrusted to him to Ali and then to his successors one after another, so that when he had established them in his place and people were able to turn to them concerning what is lawful and unlawful, the religion was complete and the favour was full.

Allamah at-Tabataba'i, in Tafsir al-Mizan, builds his case on the wording and the context before he comes to the reports. First, he argues that the passage is parenthetical: the statement "This day those who disbelieve have despaired of your religion" is an interjected statement placed in the middle of this verse, on which the wording of the verse does not depend for its meaning or its exposition.

He then argues that the two occurrences of "this day" refer to a single day: the repeated "this day" in "This day those who disbelieve have despaired of your religion" and in "This day I have perfected for you your religion" is meant as one day, on which the disbelievers despaired and on which the religion was perfected.

He then rules out reading the day as the aftermath of the conquest of Mecca: there is no way to that either, because the verse states the perfecting of the religion and the completion of the favour, and the religion was not yet perfected at the conquest of Mecca — which was in the eighth year of the Hijrah — for how many obligations were sent down after that.

And he concludes: this supports what has come in the reports, that the verse was revealed on the day of Ghadir Khumm, the eighteenth of Dhul-Hijjah in the tenth year of the Hijrah, concerning the wilayah of Ali; and on this reading the two clauses are connected in the clearest way, and none of the earlier objections applies to it.

Where they agree

That the passage states the perfecting of the religion, the completion of the favour and the approval of Islam as a religion, and that it is joined to the despair of those who disbelieve.
That it was revealed in the tenth year of the Hijrah, during the days of the Farewell Pilgrimage or just after.
That the first question in the verse is which day is meant, and that fixing the day is what settles the meaning of the perfecting.
That both the Arafah report and the Ghadir report are found in the books of both traditions. Al-Mizan itself cites the Arafah report from a Sunni collection before discussing it.

Where they differ

On which day is meant. Al-Muyassar names no day, and Sunni works most often name the Day of Arafah; as-Safi and al-Mizan name the day of Ghadir Khumm.
On what the perfecting consisted in. Al-Muyassar reads it as the realisation of victory and the completion of the law; as-Safi and al-Mizan read it as the wilayah, as the last of the obligations.
On the placement of the passage. Al-Mizan holds the passage to be parenthetical, not required by the surrounding wording, and infers from that an independent revelation; al-Muyassar reads the verse as it stands without raising the question.
On the route of proof. As-Safi rests its reading on transmitted reports; al-Mizan rests it on the wording and the context and then supports it with the reports; al-Muyassar confines itself to explaining the words.

These positions are presented as they stand in their own books; weighing them is not the business of this page.

Sources

Tafsir al-Muyassar — a panel of commentators, King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Holy Quran.
Tafsir as-Safi — al-Fayd al-Kashani.
Tafsir al-Mizan — Sayyid Muhammad Husayn at-Tabataba'i.

All three Arabic texts in full, each attributed to its author, are on the verse's own page:

Tafsir of the verse of the completion of the religion