Forgiveness and Mercy in Islamic Teaching

Abu Hurairah (RA) reported the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ saying that Allah divided mercy into a hundred parts – keeping ninety-nine with Him and sending down only one part to the earth. That single part, the hadith continues, is what accounts for every act of mercy creation shows itself: it is why a mare lifts her hoof away from her foal rather than trample it. Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim both preserve the report, and scholars treat the ratio itself as the point – whatever mercy human beings manage toward one another, however large it feels, is a fraction of what Allah holds in reserve.

Mercy That Outpaces Anger

A related hadith qudsi, also recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, has Allah stating that He has written in a book kept with Him, above His Throne, that His mercy prevails over His anger. Scholars treat this as one of the more direct theological claims in the hadith literature about how Allah’s own attributes relate to each other, with mercy given structural priority rather than balanced evenly against wrath. Among the ninety-nine names by which Allah is described, ar-Rahman and ar-Rahim, the Entirely Merciful and the Especially Merciful, open nearly every surah of the Quran – the attribute the Quran reaches for, chapter after chapter, before almost anything else.

The Mother Who Would Never Throw Her Child in the Fire

The Prophet ﷺ once watched a captive woman search frantically among a group of prisoners until she found her child, then hold him close and nurse him. Turning to his companions, he asked whether they thought she would ever throw that child into a fire. Told no, he explained that Allah is more merciful to His servants than that mother is to her child – a comparison drawn from Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, chosen from ordinary maternal instinct precisely because it needed no further explanation to an audience that had all watched a mother behave exactly that way.

Forgiving Others as the Price of Being Forgiven

“Let them pardon and overlook. Would you not like that Allah should forgive you?” Surah an-Nur asks believers directly (24:22), tying a person’s willingness to forgive others to their own hope of forgiveness. The same logic is built into the structure of the daily prayer itself: Surah al-Fatihah’s request to be forgiven “as we forgive those who trespass against us” is recited by every praying Muslim several times a day, whether or not they pause to notice the condition embedded in it.

Choosing Pardon Over Retaliation

Islamic legal teaching preserves qisas, the right to retaliation for grave harm, but consistently ranks forgiveness above exercising it. Surah al-Baqarah states that whoever forgoes retaliation as an act of charity, it is an expiation for himself (2:178). Hadith describe the Prophet ﷺ repeatedly steering victims and their families toward pardon over punishment wherever reconciliation was possible – treating the choice to forgive, even where justice would clearly permit otherwise, as the spiritually preferred outcome rather than a departure from justice.

Mercy Beyond the Human

Two hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim extend the same principle to animals. One describes a woman forgiven and granted Paradise for giving water to a thirsty dog she found panting near a well, climbing down herself to fill her shoe and carry the water up. The other describes a woman punished for locking a cat away without feeding it or letting it find its own food. Scholars cite the pair together as evidence that mercy in Islamic teaching is not confined to human relationships or ritual worship, but is expected to reach the whole of creation.

Ta’if: Mercy With No Power Behind It

Seerah accounts preserve an episode often cited alongside the amnesty at the conquest of Mecca, though the circumstances could hardly have been more different. Traveling to Ta’if for support after the death of his uncle and protector Abu Talib, the Prophet ﷺ was rejected, mocked, and driven from the city, its children and slaves set on him to pelt him with stones until his feet bled. Afterward, hadith record, an angel appeared and offered, with Allah’s permission, to crush the city between its two surrounding mountains if he wished it. He declined, saying instead that he hoped Allah would bring forth from their descendants people who would worship Him alone. What distinguishes Ta’if from the pardon at Mecca is exactly the absence of power: no army, no city, nothing but physical injury and personal rejection, which is why classical commentary treats it as the purer test of the two – mercy chosen not from strength, but from weakness. It sits alongside the same current running through Islamic teaching on Adl: Justice as an Islamic Value, where mercy and justice are treated less as opposites than as two demands answered together.