Nawawi Hadith 32: Do No Harm

Part One: Two Words That Carry the Weight of a Whole Legal System

Brothers,

Today’s khutbah is based on the 32nd hadith in Imam Nawawi’s 40 Hadith:

On the authority of Abu Sa'id Sa'd ibn Malik ibn Sinan al-Khudri (may Allah be pleased with him), that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: 'There should be no harm and no reciprocating harm.' (Ibn Majah & Al-Daraqutni)

This is a hasan hadith, related by Ibn Majah, Al-Daraqutni, and others, and mentioned as a well-known principle by Imam Malik in his Muwatta. Short in wording, this hadith is one of the pillars upon which an enormous portion of Islamic law rests. Scholars of usul have built entire chapters of fiqh on these two words: darar and dirar.

Part 1: Two Different Harms

The hadith does not repeat itself. It names two distinct things. Darar is to harm someone who has done nothing to deserve it, to initiate injury without cause. Dirar is different: it is to harm someone in return, but in a way that exceeds what is just, to retaliate with more damage than you received, or to inflict harm out of spite once you already have your right.

The Prophet ﷺ closed both doors in a single sentence. You may not start harm. And you may not use the excuse of having been harmed to harm without limit in return.

The reward for an evil deed is its equivalent. But whoever pardons and seeks reconciliation, their reward is with Allah. He does not like the wrongdoers. (Ash-Shura, 42:40)

Notice the precision of this verse. Justice permits an equivalent response, not an excessive one. And it holds open a door beyond justice entirely: the door of pardon, which Allah rewards Himself.

Part 2: The Limits of Retaliation

Islam does not ask you to be a doormat. If you are wronged, you retain a right. But that right has a ceiling.

If you retaliate, then retaliate with the equivalent of what you were made to suffer. But if you are patient, it is certainly better for those who are patient. (An-Nahl, 16:126)

Whoever then attacks you, then attack them just as they attacked you, and fear Allah, and know that Allah is with those who fear Him. (Al-Baqara, 2:194)

Read that phrase again: “just as they attacked you.” Not more. Not with interest. Not with humiliation added on top. Islam gives permission for justice, and immediately fences it in, because the human heart, once wronged, wants to overcorrect. It wants to make the other person feel what you felt and then some. That overcorrection is exactly what dirar forbids.

Part 3: The Case That Occasioned This Hadith

This hadith was not spoken in the abstract. A companion named Samurah ibn Jundub owned a date palm in a garden belonging to an Ansari man. Samurah would enter the man’s property without announcing himself to tend to his tree, and his visits distressed the family, since the man’s wife and children were often uncovered inside their own home.

The Ansari man complained to the Prophet ﷺ, who called Samurah and asked him to announce his arrival before entering. Samurah refused. The Prophet ﷺ offered to buy the tree from him at a fair price, and even offered a better tree in exchange in Paradise. Samurah still refused. The Prophet ﷺ then said to the Ansari man, 'Go and uproot his tree, for you have been harmed.' (Abu Dawud)

Look at what happened here. The Prophet ﷺ exhausted every gentle option first: request, purchase, an incentive beyond this world. Only when Samurah insisted on causing darar without cause did the Prophet ﷺ permit the harmed party to act. Even then, the response given, uprooting a tree, was proportionate to the harm caused. Not the man’s home burned, not his family struck. A tree for a trespass.

Part 4: Harm Between Neighbors

The scope of this hadith reaches deep into daily life, especially where people live close together and privacy is thin.

By Allah, he does not believe. By Allah, he does not believe. By Allah, he does not believe. They said, 'Who, O Messenger of Allah?' He said, 'The one whose neighbor is not safe from his harm.' (Bukhari)

Three times repeated, for emphasis that cannot be missed. Whoever lives beside you, works beside you, sleeps in the bunk beside you, has a right from you: safety from your harm. Not because he has earned it through some favor to you, but because the Prophet ﷺ tied it directly to the completeness of your iman.

This hadith, along with a small number of others, is among the foundations upon which the whole of Islamic jurisprudence turns, for every ruling concerning transactions, neighbors, and rights returns to this single principle. (Ibn Rajab al-Hanbali, Jami' al-'Ulum wal-Hikam)

Part 5: A Maxim Built Directly on This Hadith

The scholars of fiqh extracted a legal maxim directly from this hadith, one of the five great maxims that govern all of Islamic law: “al-darar yuzal,” harm must be removed. This single sentence became the foundation for rulings across worship, transactions, marriage, neighbors, and public welfare. Whenever a scholar is asked whether something should be stopped, permitted, or reversed, this maxim is often the first principle he reaches for.

Consider how wide this reaches. It governs why a defective product must be returned, why a nuisance between neighbors must be resolved, why a contract that harms one party unfairly can be voided, and why public authorities may act to prevent harm before it happens, not only after. All of it traces back to two words spoken by the Prophet ﷺ in a single sentence: no harm, no reciprocating harm.

And do not keep them, intending harm, to transgress ˹against them˺. And whoever does that has certainly wronged himself. (Al-Baqara, 2:231)

Even within a marriage, even in the most intimate of relationships, Allah forbids using your position to cause harm. If harm is forbidden there, in the closest of bonds, how much more is it forbidden between strangers, cellmates, and companions who share nothing but proximity and circumstance.

Part Two: Refusing to Become the Second Wrongdoer

Brothers,

Part 6: The Trap of Justified Retaliation

Here is where this hadith becomes dangerous to ignore. Almost every act of dirar in this world begins with a legitimate grievance. The man who spreads a rumor about someone who wronged him first feels justified. The man who strikes back twice as hard feels he is only balancing the scale. But the hadith does not care how you started. It cares what you do next. Being wronged does not grant you a license to become a wrongdoer yourself. Two wrongs, in the sight of this hadith, remain two wrongs.

Part 7: Inside These Walls

Brothers, few environments test this hadith as constantly as this one. You are confined with the same men, day after day, in tight quarters, under pressure, with tempers worn thin by conditions none of you chose. Disputes here are inevitable: a comment taken the wrong way, a borrowed item not returned, a shove in a line, a look held too long. In a place like this, the instinct to reciprocate harm with harm, and to reciprocate it harder, so that no one dares try you again, is powerful.

This hadith asks something harder of you than silence and harder than passivity. It asks for proportion. If a brother wrongs you, you are not commanded to smile and accept it as though nothing happened. You have a right. But you are commanded to stop your response exactly where justice ends and vengeance begins. Take your grievance to those with authority to resolve it, whether staff, chaplain, or the elders among you, rather than settling it yourself with an escalation that turns a small conflict into a lasting feud, a documented incident, or worse, a lost year added to your time.

Ask yourself, before you respond to any harm here: am I restoring a right, or am I feeding my ego? The first is permitted. The second is dirar, and the Prophet ﷺ forbade it by name.

Part 8: Choosing the Higher Door

Remember that above the door of equal retaliation sits a higher door, the one Allah Himself rewards: pardon and reconciliation. Every time you let go of a harm you had every right to answer, you are not weak. You are choosing the reward Allah reserved for Himself to give, not for people to calculate.

This hadith establishes that harm is to be removed, that no one may benefit himself by harming another, and that whoever is wronged may seek his right through legitimate means, without exceeding what justice permits. (Imam al-Nawawi, Sharh al-Arba'in)

Practice this in small moments first: the brother who takes your seat, the comment made behind your back, the slight that stings your pride. Practice restraint there, so that when a larger test comes, your heart already knows the shape of proportion, and you do not become the second man at fault in a conflict that began without you.

Think of it this way. Every time you are wronged, Allah opens two doors in front of you. The first door is justice, an equal response, no more than what you suffered. That door is permitted. The second door is pardon, letting go of even that right for His sake alone. That door is rewarded. There is no third door. The door of excess, of striking harder than you were struck, of humiliating a man beyond the wrong he caused you, does not exist in this hadith. Close it in your own heart before circumstance ever tempts you to open it.

O Allah, protect us from being the cause of harm to anyone, in speech or in action.

O Allah, if we are wronged, grant us the wisdom to seek our right without exceeding it.

O Allah, remove from our hearts the desire for vengeance beyond what justice allows.

O Allah, make us people whose neighbors and companions are safe from our tongues and our hands.

O Allah, grant us the strength to choose pardon when pardon is the greater good.

O Allah, resolve the disputes among us through justice, not through further harm.

O Allah, protect this place from cycles of retaliation, and replace them with reconciliation.

O Allah, let us leave every conflict having repaired more than we damaged.