Riḍā in the Qurʾan

In the Qurʾan, riḍā is never a favor that merely descends from above: God is pleased with His servants and they are pleased with Him. It is a contentment that outlasts fear and hope, and one that walks beside striving rather than replacing it.

By Dr. Ahmed Muhammad Ali Abouseif, President of the American Imams Academy (AIA)

The Qurʾan describes the soul's crossing over to its Lord in one of its most tender scenes: ﴿يَا أَيَّتُهَا النَّفْسُ الْمُطْمَئِنَّةُ ارْجِعِي إِلَىٰ رَبِّكِ رَاضِيَةً مَرْضِيَّةً﴾ — “O tranquil soul, return to your Lord, well-pleased and well-pleasing” (89:27-28). The call does not say merely “come back” to the soul, but “return” (irjiʿī), as though this were a homecoming to an original dwelling and not a journey to a new place. Then the two attributes arrive together in a single phrase: rāḍiyah, pleased with her Lord, and marḍiyyah, one with whom her Lord is pleased. These are two attributes facing in opposite directions, not one. This very doubling is the doorway through which the present article enters the Qurʾanic concept of riḍā.

The Word and Its Count

The root r-ḍ-w occurs in the Qurʾan seventy-three times, in eleven forms. The most frequent is the verb raḍiya in its various forms (forty-one occurrences across the simple verb and its intensive and reciprocal forms), followed by the noun riḍwān (thirteen times) and the verbal noun marḍāt (five times). Two further forms deserve notice for their particular sense. The verb irtaḍā (three times) describes God's choosing and electing of His messengers («إِلَّا مَنِ ارْتَضَىٰ مِنْ رَسُولٍ» — “except whom He has approved of a messenger,” 72:27), a meaning proper to divine election and not to riḍā in general. The verbal noun tarāḍin (twice) describes the commercial consent between buyer and seller («تِجَارَةً عَنْ تَرَاضٍ مِنْكُمْ» — “a trade by mutual consent among you,” 4:29), a juristic term with its own place in the law of sales. The subject of this article is the wider field: riḍā in its general sense of faith, uniting God's pleasure in His servant with the servant's pleasure in his Lord.

The Central Structure: Mutual, Not One-Directional

Nothing discloses the nature of this riḍā more eloquently than the fact that the Qurʾan repeats a single phrase word for word four times, in four suras whose contexts are entirely different: ﴿رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنْهُمْ وَرَضُوا عَنْهُ﴾ — “God is pleased with them, and they are pleased with Him” (5:119; and in the same form 9:100, 58:22, 98:8). This fourfold verbatim repetition is no stylistic coincidence but a deliberate stress on a structure that runs in two directions. The Qurʾan never says merely “God is pleased with them,” as though riḍā were a bounty descending from above to be received in silence. It always adds “and they are pleased with Him,” establishing that true riḍā is a relationship with two directions: God is pleased with His servant when the servant obeys Him, and the servant is pleased with his Lord when he submits to His decree and sees good in all that comes to him from Him, even if at first glance it appears otherwise. This departs from a common view that reduces riḍā to one direction: either seeking God's pleasure alone, with no regard for the servant's contentment with His decree, or speaking of “contentment with the decree” without ever linking it to God's pleasure in the servant.

Riḍā Never Leaves Its Possessor, Unlike Fear and Hope

A sign of how high riḍā stands among the stations of the heart is that Ibn al-Qayyim, in Madārij al-Sālikīn, assigns it a distinction that it does not share with its sister stations on the wayfarer's road. Fear and hope accompany the servant in this world and then leave him when he reaches their goal. He writes that fear and hope leave the people of Paradise once they have attained what they hoped for and are secure from what they feared, whereas riḍā “does not leave its people in this world, nor in the grave, nor in the Hereafter”^[1]. One who feared God's punishment and hoped for His mercy in this world, and then entered Paradise, secure from punishment and in possession of mercy, no longer has need of fear or hope in the same sense. But one who is content with his Lord has a contentment that is a settled trait, accompanying his heart in every state, in this world and the next, because it is not the awaiting of an outcome but a tranquility with what is. Ibn ʿAṭāʾ defines riḍā as “the heart's tranquility with what God chose for the servant from eternity: that He chose the best for him, and so he is content with it”^[2]. This definition accords perfectly with the twofold structure uncovered here, for the heart at rest in God's choice is the very heart described at the outset as “the tranquil soul … well-pleased.”

A Model Revealing the Worth of Riḍā: Greater Than Paradise Itself

In the context of God's promise of Paradise to the believers there comes a verse that sets riḍā above even sensory bliss: ﴿وَعَدَ اللَّهُ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ وَالْمُؤْمِنَاتِ جَنَّاتٍ تَجْرِي مِنْ تَحْتِهَا الْأَنْهَارُ خَالِدِينَ فِيهَا وَمَسَاكِنَ طَيِّبَةً فِي جَنَّاتِ عَدْنٍ وَرِضْوَانٌ مِنَ اللَّهِ أَكْبَرُ﴾ — “God has promised the believing men and women gardens beneath which rivers flow, abiding therein, and goodly dwellings in gardens of Eden; but the pleasure of God is greater” (9:72). Having enumerated the delights of Paradise, rivers and dwellings, the Qurʾan seals the list by declaring that a pleasure from God (riḍwān) is greater than all of it together. This ordering shows that in the Qurʾanic scheme riḍā is not a further reward added to bliss but the very end of bliss. The highest thing the believer attains is not sensory delight but the certainty that God is pleased with him.

Another Model: Riḍā as the Measure of Pure Giving

The Qurʾan uses the verbal noun marḍāt to describe giving that is free of every aim but the Face of God: ﴿وَمَثَلُ الَّذِينَ يُنْفِقُونَ أَمْوَالَهُمُ ابْتِغَاءَ مَرْضَاتِ اللَّهِ وَتَثْبِيتًا مِنْ أَنْفُسِهِمْ كَمَثَلِ جَنَّةٍ بِرَبْوَةٍ﴾ — “And the likeness of those who spend their wealth seeking God's pleasure and to strengthen their souls is that of a garden on high ground” (2:265). “Seeking God's pleasure” is here a criterion that distinguishes accepted giving from the rest, and not a mere embellishing phrase. Whoever gave seeking divine pleasure alone, his giving bore fruit like a garden on fertile high ground; whoever gave for any other purpose did not reach this likeness, however large his gift.

A Cautionary Model: Contentment with the Wrong Object

The Qurʾan does not simply praise riḍā wherever it occurs. It uses the same root to describe a blameworthy contentment when it is directed to the wrong object: ﴿إِنَّ الَّذِينَ لَا يَرْجُونَ لِقَاءَنَا وَرَضُوا بِالْحَيَاةِ الدُّنْيَا وَاطْمَأَنُّوا بِهَا﴾ — “Those who do not hope for the meeting with Us, and are content with the life of this world and at rest in it” (10:7). Their contentment is blameworthy not because it is contentment, but because its object is wrong: they rest satisfied with worldly life in place of striving toward the meeting with God. This reveals a subtle point. In the Qurʾan, riḍā is not an absolute virtue in itself but a virtue conditioned by the soundness of its object. Contentment with God's decree is a virtue; contentment with this world in place of the Hereafter is a vice, though they share one and the same linguistic root.

A Model from the Prophetic Biography: Riḍā as a Condition of Intercession

The Qurʾan uses the same root for a precise condition of intercession on the Day of Resurrection: ﴿وَلَا يَشْفَعُونَ إِلَّا لِمَنِ ارْتَضَىٰ﴾ — “And they intercede only for one with whom He is pleased” (21:28). Even the angels brought near, for all their rank, intercede only for the one whom God has approved, and not for whomever they themselves might wish to plead. This confirms from another angle that riḍā in the Qurʾanic scheme is not a passing feeling but a governing criterion, which determines even the finest details of the reckoning on that Day, including those for whom intercession is accepted and those for whom it is not.

A Model Linking Riḍā to the Pledge

Among the clearest historical applications of divine riḍā is the Pledge of Riḍwān beneath the tree. The Companions pledged themselves to the Prophet ﷺ to fight to the death if need be, after a report (later found to be untrue) that ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān (may God be pleased with him) had been killed on his mission to Quraysh. Then this verse was revealed: ﴿لَقَدْ رَضِيَ اللَّهُ عَنِ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ إِذْ يُبَايِعُونَكَ تَحْتَ الشَّجَرَةِ﴾ — “God was indeed pleased with the believers when they pledged allegiance to you beneath the tree” (48:18). The pledge took its name, “the Pledge of Riḍwān,” from this very verse, and it embodies the central meaning of this article. God's pleasure with the Companions was not the fruit of an outward result they had achieved, but of their inner readiness to keep faith even unto death, before it had even become clear to them that matters had not come to the point of battle.

“If You Wish, Be Patient, and Paradise Is Yours”

Among the most eloquent witnesses to true riḍā in the Sunnah is what Ibn ʿAbbās (may God be pleased with them both) related when he said to ʿAṭāʾ ibn Abī Rabāḥ: «ألا أُريك امرأةً من أهل الجنة؟» — “Shall I not show you a woman of the people of Paradise?” He pointed to a black woman who suffered from seizures. She had come to the Prophet ﷺ and said: “I suffer seizures, and in them I become uncovered; pray to God for me.” He ﷺ said to her: «إن شئتِ صبرتِ ولكِ الجنة، وإن شئتِ دعوتُ الله أن يُعافيَك» — “If you wish, be patient, and Paradise is yours; and if you wish, I shall ask God to heal you.” She said, “I shall be patient,” and then asked him to pray that she not be uncovered when the seizure took her, and he prayed for her^[3]. This woman did not ask for the affliction to be lifted altogether. She chose to remain with it, content, in exchange for Paradise, asking only that one of its consequences be removed and not its root. Here is riḍā in its most exact practical form: not an inability to seek well-being, nor despair of it, but a conscious choice of what God has chosen, once it became clear to her that in submitting to it lay a deferred good outweighing the immediate comfort of its removal.

The Prophetic Witness

Saʿd ibn Abī Waqqāṣ (may God be pleased with him) related, and Muslim recorded in his Ṣaḥīḥ, that the Prophet ﷺ said: «من قال حين يسمع المؤذّن: ... رضيتُ بالله ربًّا، وبالإسلام دينًا، وبمحمدٍ رسولًا، غُفِر له ذنبُه» — “Whoever says, on hearing the muezzin: … I am content with God as Lord, with Islam as religion, and with Muhammad as Messenger, his sin is forgiven”^[4]. The hadith makes the declaration of riḍā, and not merely the inward feeling of it, a daily remembrance renewed with every call to prayer, as though riḍā were a virtue requiring continual renewal and reaffirmation and not a state won once and kept forever. In joining contentment with God as Lord, Islam as religion, and Muhammad as Messenger, it shows that complete riḍā in faith embraces three circles: submission to the One who is worshipped, submission to the way of worship, and submission to the one who conveyed it. Nor does the hadith stop at some distant reward in the Hereafter; it ties this daily declaration to the forgiveness of sin, as if renewing one's contentment each day at the call to prayer were a recurring purification and not a verbal acknowledgment that passes without trace.

A Maqāṣidī Reading

A number of scholars connect the twofold structure of riḍā (God is pleased with them and they are pleased with Him) to a station higher than patience, mentioned by some of the early generations in the books on spiritual conduct. Patience is the bearing of a painful decree with inward aversion; riḍā is submission to the decree with the heart at peace with it, and not merely bearing it. On this view, the verse that calls the soul “well-pleased and well-pleasing” upon its return to its Lord describes the goal of the entire journey of faith: that the servant reach a state in which he does not merely endure God's decree but is truly content with it, with a contentment that leaves his heart at rest and not in turmoil, and that this inward contentment be joined, at the same moment, to God's pleasure in him and not severed from it.

The Contemporary Application

Many confuse riḍā with passive surrender, imagining that “contentment with the decree” means ceasing to strive or not grieving over what is lost. The twofold structure disclosed here proposes a different measure. True riḍā unites the heart's tranquility with what God has allotted and continued striving in seeking His pleasure, and does not abandon it. One who is satisfied with what God has given him, without forsaking lawful effort to better his condition, joins inward contentment to outward action. And the criterion of “seeking God's pleasure,” by which the Qurʾan described pure giving, becomes a practical instrument for testing intention in any work a person undertakes: is the true motive the seeking of God's pleasure, or some other aim concealing itself behind that name?

The principle of mutuality also serves as a measure of the health of human relationships founded on contentment, and not of our relationship with God alone. In marriage, partnership, and friendship, it is not enough that one party be pleased with the other while the second remains indifferent or aggrieved. A sound relationship, on the pattern of the Qurʾanic structure disclosed here, requires a contentment that is shared by both parties, and not one that descends from a single side while the other is asked to be satisfied with enduring it.

This also connects with what was established in another article of this series, on tawakkul: entrusting the matter to God does not mean suspending effort but accompanies it. Likewise riḍā does not mean that the heart ceases from lawful ambition; it comes with a tranquility that does not allow that ambition to turn into anxiety or resentment if the desired outcome does not arrive at once.

Conclusion

From a soul summoned to return to its Lord well-pleased and well-pleasing, to a phrase repeated four times that speaks of a mutual contentment and not a single direction, to a woman who chose contentment over well-being and was promised Paradise, to giving that God accepts only when His Face is sought through it, the Qurʾan and the Sunnah trace for riḍā one unchanging meaning: a relationship with two directions between the servant and his Lord, which does not leave its possessor in this world, nor in the grave, nor in the Hereafter. It is neither a favor descending from above to be received in silence, nor a passive surrender that waits without striving.

And God knows best; He is the One whose help is sought, and in Him is all reliance.