The verses that get used against you

Three pieces of text turn up in this conversation constantly and each of them is being made to say something it does not say.

Wealth and children are the adornment of the life of this world. This gets used to suggest that wanting a child is a slightly worldly appetite you should be embarrassed by. Adornment is not a term of disparagement in the Qur'an. And read fairly, the verse gives a bereaved parent something rather than taking something away, because what it says endures is the other category, and you still have access to that.

Your wealth and your children are but a trial. This gets used to suggest the child was a burden that has now been lifted. The same word is used of wealth, and nobody has ever concluded that wealth is a bad thing. It means that through which a person is examined, and it says nothing about the worth of what was lost.

And with hardship comes ease, twice over. That is not a timetable, and the popular reading turns it into one. Nothing in it promises that the ease arrives by any particular point, and being told it will be soon is not the same as being told anything.

The report below is a separate matter and it needs saying plainly. It is sound. It is guidance at the point of choosing a spouse. It is also, routinely, quoted at a woman who is already married and already grieving in order to suggest she was a defective choice, or quoted at a man to push him towards remarrying. The text is not the problem. That deployment of it is, and it is a misuse rather than an application.