Give Full Measure and Full Weight

Qāla yā qawmi-ʿbudū Allāha mā lakum min ilāhin ghayruh, qad jāʾatkum bayyinatun min rabbikum. Worship Allah; you have no other god but Him. Qad jāʾatkum bayyinatun min rabbikum: you have a clear sign from Allah. Fa-awfū al-kayla wa-l-mīzāna wa lā tabkhasū al-nāsa ashyāʾahum: so give full measure and full weight, and wrong not men in their things.

Madyan was on the trade route of the Ḥijāz and al-Shām. It was a financial centre, and the people of Madyan were rich. Their job — their work, or their trade — was business. But they were unfair in their business dealings, and they used to cheat, and they would not give full measure. Sayyidunā Shuʿayb (peace be upon him) said: awfū al-kayla wa-l-mīzān, give full measure and full weight. Wa lā tufsidū fī al-arḍ: and do not cause corruption in the land.

And the people of Shuʿayb, even though they were wealthy, were still cheating, thinking that this is their source of rizq. And that is taṭfīf al-mīzān. So you would put a weight and tell the person: this is one pound — but it's not; it's less than that. And they would also cheat in transactions.

We find that every Nabī came with the same message, and that is lā ilāha illā Allāh: there is no god but Allah. But then the details of the message were different according to the situation of the people. Last night, when we talked about the people of Lūṭ — their disease and illness was their lust. So we find that Lūṭ was dealing with that problem. The people of Madyan: their problem was in their business transactions, in their muʿāmalāt. They were cheating. When it comes to money, they did not follow the law of Allah (swt). And with the people of ʿĀd, they had certain diseases; with the people of Thamūd, they had certain diseases. With Mūsā, and the story of Mūsā (peace be upon him), we find that he was dealing with the dictatorship and the oppression of Firʿawn on one side, and then he was dealing with the problems of his own ummah — the Muslims of that time, Banū Isrāʾīl — on another hand.

Allah (swt) mentions to us these stories in the Qur'an because we are going to need every one of them, because we are going to run into similar situations. That's why Allah (swt) is mentioning these stories in the Qur'an. So we are going to deal with problems similar to the problems that Lūṭ faced — and these are the lust, and the sexual desire put in places where it shouldn't be. We are going to run into situations where people are cheating in business. We are going to run into situations of oppressive governments, like Firʿawn. We are going to run into the problem of dealing with our own Muslim brothers who are not keeping the rule of Allah (swt), just like Mūsā was dealing with Banū Isrāʾīl. And we are going to run into problems similar to every other story of the anbiyāʾ mentioned in the Qur'an. Allah (swt) is mentioning these stories for us, for us to learn the lessons of how to deal with these particular situations.