Reconciling Between People in Islam: Better Than Fasting, Prayer and Charity
Most of us measure our religion by what passes between us and Allah: the fasts we keep, the prayers we stand in, the charity we hand over. These are the visible pillars of a believer’s life, and we assume — reasonably — that nothing outranks them. Yet the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ once gathered his companions’ attention with a question that rearranged that assumption. There is a work, he told them, that is more excellent in degree than fasting, prayer and almsgiving — and it is not a work a person does alone with his Lord. It is a work he does between two other people: putting things right between them.
Reconciliation sounds modest beside the pillars. It has no fixed time, no rows of worshippers, no public mark. It is a conversation carried from one estranged brother to another, a grievance untangled, a fair word spoken at the right moment. But in the texts of the Quran and the Sunnah, this quiet work carries a rank that startles: above the fast, above the prayer, above the charity — and its opposite, the spoiling of relations between people, is given one of the most frightening names in all the hadith.
This article stays entirely with four texts: the hadith of Abu Dawud that makes the comparison, the hadith of al-Bukhari that counts justice between people as a daily charity, and two verses of the Quran — one that grounds reconciliation in brotherhood, and one that promises its doer a great reward. Together they tell us what reconciliation is, what destroys it, how often it is owed, and what the one who does it can hope for.
1. A Question That Reorders Our Priorities
Abu Dawud narrated from Abu al-Darda’ that the Prophet ﷺ opened the subject with a question — the way a teacher does when he wants the answer to be remembered:
“Shall I not inform you of something more excellent in degree than fasting, prayer and almsgiving (sadaqah)?” (Sunan Abu Dawud 4919 — Sahih)
Look at the three works he chose for the comparison. Fasting is the shield of the believer and the pillar that Allah rewards without measure. Prayer is the first thing a servant will be asked about. Almsgiving purifies wealth and extinguishes sin. If the Prophet ﷺ had wanted a weak comparison, he could have named lesser deeds. Instead he named the summit of personal devotion — and then announced something above it in degree.
The companions understood the weight of the offer:
“The people replied: Yes, Prophet of Allah!” (Sunan Abu Dawud 4919 — Sahih)
And then came the answer, in a single sentence that holds both the height of the deed and the horror of its opposite:
إِصْلاَحُ ذَاتِ الْبَيْنِ وَفَسَادُ ذَاتِ الْبَيْنِ الْحَالِقَةُ
“It is putting things right between people, spoiling them is the shaver (destructive).” (Sunan Abu Dawud 4919 — Sahih)
That is the whole hadith, and this whole article is an attempt to sit with it. Putting things right between people: more excellent in degree than fasting, prayer and charity. Everything else the Quran and Sunnah say on this subject is a commentary on why that can be true.
2. What “Putting Things Right Between People” Means
The Arabic of the narration is islah dhat al-bayn — putting right “that which is between” people. Relationships are a thing with a state: they can be sound or spoiled, whole or torn. Reconciliation is the repair of that in-between — the space between two hearts, two families, two partners, two neighbours — until what passes between them is right again.
Notice that the hadith does not say “putting things right between Muslims” or “between friends.” It says between people. The deed is defined by the repair, not by the category of the repaired. Wherever two people are estranged — an inheritance quarrel between brothers, a cold silence between spouses’ families, a business partnership curdled by suspicion, neighbours who have not spoken since a boundary dispute — the one who steps in to put things right is doing the deed this hadith crowns.
And notice what the deed is not. It is not taking a side. It is not carrying tales from one party to the other. It is not forcing a handshake over an open wound. The Quran’s own word for the work, as we will see, is reconciliation joined to justice and fairness — a settlement both sides can stand inside without a buried grievance. The reconciler’s raw materials are listening, fairness, patience and the truth, carried back and forth until two people who could not look at each other can live beside each other again.
This also explains the rank. A fast benefits the faster. A prayer benefits the one who prays. But a reconciliation benefits everyone it touches and everyone around them: the two parties, their families, their children, their street, their mosque. One repaired relationship quietly removes a hundred future sins — the backbiting, the boycotting, the plots and counter-plots that enmity breeds daily. The Prophet ﷺ weighed the deed by what it carries, and it carries a whole community’s peace.
3. The Shaver: What Spoiled Relations Destroy
The hadith does not praise reconciliation and then stop. In the same breath it names the opposite deed, and the name it gives is terrifying in its simplicity:
“…spoiling them is the shaver (destructive).” (Sunan Abu Dawud 4919 — Sahih)
A shaver — a razor — does not wound a thing or bend it. It removes it completely, leaving the surface bare where something used to grow. That is the Prophet’s ﷺ image for the one who spoils what is between people: the tale-carrier who ferries words from house to house until friendship is bald; the one who hears of a reconciliation and undermines it; the partisan who keeps a quarrel alive because the quarrel serves him. His work does not merely damage relations. It strips them away entirely — and with them, the worship that enmity makes impossible to offer with a clean heart.
Set the two halves of the sentence side by side and the whole moral architecture appears. Putting things right between people: above fasting, prayer and charity. Spoiling things between people: the razor. The same territory — what is between human beings — holds both the summit of degree and the depths of destruction. Nothing in the hadith suggests this territory is a side-issue of religion. It is the ground on which religion’s greatest work and its greatest ruin both happen.
This is why the believer guards the ties he already has with such care — upholding the ties of kinship, visiting, gifting, overlooking — because every tie left unrepaired is an invitation to the razor, and every tie repaired is the deed the Prophet ﷺ placed above the pillars.
4. A Sadaqa for Every Joint: Justice Between People, Every Day
If the first hadith gives reconciliation its rank, a second hadith — in Sahih al-Bukhari — gives it its rhythm. Abu Huraira reported that Allah’s Messenger ﷺ said:
كُلُّ سُلاَمَى مِنَ النَّاسِ عَلَيْهِ صَدَقَةٌ، كُلَّ يَوْمٍ تَطْلُعُ فِيهِ الشَّمْسُ يَعْدِلُ بَيْنَ النَّاسِ صَدَقَةٌ
“There is a Sadaqa to be given for every joint of the human body; and for every day on which the sun rises there is a reward of a Sadaqa (i.e. charitable gift) for the one who establishes justice among people.” (Sahih al-Bukhari 2707 — Sahih)
The picture is one of a daily debt of gratitude. The human body is a weave of joints, each one a functioning mercy, and for each of them a sadaqa is owed. The debt renews with every sunrise. And among the ways that debt is paid — the narration names this one — is a person establishing justice among people.
The wording deserves attention: establishes justice among people. The reconciler of the first hadith and the just settler of this one are the same figure seen from two sides. Reconciliation that is not just is merely pressure — the weaker party squeezed into silence — and it does not hold. The deed Allah counts as a daily charity is the settlement built on fairness: each party’s right recognised, each grievance answered with what is actually due, no one’s claim buried for the sake of a quick peace. That is why the two hadiths belong together. Abu Dawud’s tells us that putting things right is the greatest of works between people; al-Bukhari’s tells us that the instrument of that work is justice, and that it is owed not once in a lifetime but every day the sun rises.
It also means the opportunity never runs out. A man with no wealth can pay this sadaqa. A woman with no platform can pay it. Every family has its frictions, every workplace its misunderstandings, every circle of friends its two members who have stopped speaking. The sunrise that renews the debt also renews the chance to pay it — by a fair word, a mediated meeting, a message carried honestly between two people who could not carry it themselves.
5. Brothers First: The Quran’s Foundation for Reconciliation
The Quran grounds the whole work in a single sentence — a sentence so complete that it gives the reconciler his relationship to the parties, his task, his inner state, and his hope, all at once:
إِنَّمَا ٱلْمُؤْمِنُونَ إِخْوَةٌ فَأَصْلِحُوا۟ بَيْنَ أَخَوَيْكُمْ ۚ وَٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تُرْحَمُونَ
“All believers are but brothers, therefore seek reconciliation between your two brothers, and fear Allah, so that you may be blessed with mercy.” (Quran 49:10)
The verse begins not with a command but with a fact: all believers are but brothers. Reconciliation is not the manufacture of a relationship that does not exist; it is the repair of one that already does. The two disputing parties are not strangers the peacemaker is gluing together — they are brothers whose brotherhood has been interrupted, and the command “seek reconciliation between your two brothers” is addressed to everyone around them. The dispute of two believers is, by this verse, the business of all believers.
Then the verse watches the peacemaker himself — “and fear Allah” — for the one who steps between two parties holds a dangerous position — he hears both sides’ secrets, he can favour the one he loves, he can settle for the outcome that costs him least. So the verse binds his work to taqwa: Allah is watching the reconciler even when the parties are not. And it ends with the fruit: “so that you may be blessed with mercy.” The community that reconciles its members is the community that is shown mercy. Peace between brothers is not merely a social good in the Quran’s eyes — it is a cause of Allah’s mercy descending on everyone involved, the reconciler first of all. This is the deep soil of brotherhood in Islam: not a sentiment, but a structure of mutual repair.
6. Whisperings Worth Having: The Private Counsel of the Reconciler
Reconciliation rarely happens in public. It happens in private — in the quiet conversation, the confidential visit, the words spoken to each party alone before they can be spoken together. The Quran has a verdict on exactly this kind of private talk, and it places the reconciler’s whisperings in the smallest and most honoured category of speech:
۞ لَّا خَيْرَ فِى كَثِيرٍ مِّن نَّجْوَىٰهُمْ إِلَّا مَنْ أَمَرَ بِصَدَقَةٍ أَوْ مَعْرُوفٍ أَوْ إِصْلَـٰحٍۭ بَيْنَ ٱلنَّاسِ ۚ وَمَن يَفْعَلْ ذَٰلِكَ ٱبْتِغَآءَ مَرْضَاتِ ٱللَّهِ فَسَوْفَ نُؤْتِيهِ أَجْرًا عَظِيمًا
“There is no good in most of their whisperings, unless one bids charity or a fair action, or reconciliation between people.” (Quran 4:114)
Most private talk, Allah says, holds no good. But three kinds of whispering are excepted: urging to charity, urging to a fair action — and islah bayn al-nas, reconciliation between people, the very phrase of the hadith. The reconciler’s confidential rounds, the careful words he carries in private, are not gossip sanctified by good intentions after the fact; they are named by the Quran itself as one of the three kinds of private speech that contain good.
And the verse closes by fixing the reconciler’s intention and his wage:
“The one who does this, to seek Allah’s pleasure, We shall give him a great reward.” (Quran 4:114)
The condition is woven into the promise itself: it belongs to the one who acts “to seek Allah’s pleasure”. The reconciler is not building his own reputation as the family’s wise elder or the office’s indispensable diplomat. The moment the work becomes a stage for the self, it leaves the category the verse is describing. Done for Allah’s pleasure, though, the promise is unqualified: “We shall give him a great reward.” Allah does not call it a small reward, or a reward like the reward of a fast or a prayer — though the first hadith already told us the degree of the deed. Here He simply calls it great, and leaves its greatness to Himself.
7. The Reconciler’s Working Principles
Drawn only from these four texts, the reconciler’s method assembles itself:
Begin from brotherhood, not neutrality between strangers. The two parties are “your two brothers” (Quran 49:10). You are not an arbitrator hired between aliens; you are a brother restoring brothers, which means your aim is not a verdict but a restored relationship — one in which forgiveness can actually happen.
Let justice carry the settlement. The deed counted as daily sadaqa is for “the one who establishes justice among people” (Sahih al-Bukhari 2707 — Sahih). Hear both sides fully. Name each party’s right honestly. A settlement that requires one side to swallow a genuine wrong will not survive the month.
Guard your own intention and conduct. The command “and fear Allah” (Quran 49:10) stands in the middle of the reconciliation verse itself, and the reward of Surah al-Nisa’ is tied to doing it “to seek Allah’s pleasure” (Quran 4:114). Carry no tales that would re-open the wound, favour no party in secret, and let gentleness govern every sentence — these are among the rights of one Muslim over another that the reconciler is, in practice, defending for both sides at once.
Treat it as a daily readiness, not a rare emergency. The sadaqa of justice is owed “for every day on which the sun rises” (Sahih al-Bukhari 2707 — Sahih). Small frictions settled early are the training ground; the believer who habitually puts small things right is the one a community turns to when big things break.
8. The Work Above the Pillars
Gather the four texts and look at what they have said about a single deed. The Prophet ﷺ ranked it above fasting, prayer and almsgiving in degree, and named its opposite a razor. Al-Bukhari’s narration counts its justice as a charity owed by every joint, every sunrise. The Quran founds it on the brotherhood of all believers, binds it to the fear of Allah, and makes it a cause of His mercy. And the Quran promises the one who does it for Allah’s pleasure — in a verse that finds no good in most of mankind’s private talk — a great reward.
Few of us will be remembered for our fasting or our night prayers; those are between us and Allah. But the brother who speaks again because of you, the family that eats together again because of you, the partners who trade fairly again because of you — those are deeds written in other people’s lives, renewed every day their reconciliation holds. That is what the Prophet ﷺ was pointing at when he asked his question. The next time you hear of two people whose in-between has spoiled, you are not looking at someone else’s problem. You are looking at the deed that outranks the pillars — and at a sadaqa your joints are waiting to pay.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1: What did the Prophet ﷺ rank above fasting, prayer and charity? Putting things right between people — reconciliation. Abu al-Darda’ reported that the Prophet ﷺ said: “Shall I not inform you of something more excellent in degree than fasting, prayer and almsgiving (sadaqah)?” and then answered: “It is putting things right between people, spoiling them is the shaver (destructive).” (Sunan Abu Dawud 4919 — Sahih)
Q2: What is “the shaver” in the hadith of reconciliation? It is the name the Prophet ﷺ gave to the opposite of reconciliation — spoiling what is between people: “spoiling them is the shaver (destructive).” (Sunan Abu Dawud 4919 — Sahih) Just as a razor strips hair away completely, spoiling relations strips away the connection itself, which is why the one who carries tales and keeps quarrels alive does such deep damage.
Q3: How is establishing justice between people a charity? Because the body owes a sadaqa for every joint, every day — and one way that debt is paid is by fair dealing between people. The Prophet ﷺ said: “There is a Sadaqa to be given for every joint of the human body; and for every day on which the sun rises there is a reward of a Sadaqa (i.e. charitable gift) for the one who establishes justice among people.” (Sahih al-Bukhari 2707 — Sahih)
Q4: What does the Quran command when two believers are in dispute? It commands the believers around them to reconcile them, on the foundation that all believers are brothers: “All believers are but brothers, therefore seek reconciliation between your two brothers, and fear Allah, so that you may be blessed with mercy.” (Quran 49:10)
Q5: What reward is promised to the one who reconciles between people? A great reward — on the condition that he does it seeking Allah’s pleasure: “The one who does this, to seek Allah’s pleasure, We shall give him a great reward.” (Quran 4:114) The same verse counts the private counsel of reconciliation among the only whisperings that contain good.