The Visage of Affection: Understanding the Concept and the Instances of Benevolence in the Quran

Benevolence is one of the teachings revealed in the Quran and one of the basic and wide-range concepts therein. Most of the definitions of benevolence are not comprehensive ones due to the extensiveness of its instances and its semantic parameters as well as the overlapping meanings. The present study uses a descriptive-analytical method, in the form of interpreting the Quran through itself, aiming at careful identification of one of the key concepts of the Quran. It is seeking to investigate the concept and the various instances of benevolence, its relation to other Quranic concepts such as piety, faith, and virtuous action, goodness, infidelity, denial of Divine signs, oppression, and peaching Divine limits. An investigation of the Quranic verses shows that the Holy Quran, in view of the full familiarity of Arabs of that time with the concept of benevolence, pings 'benevolence'-which was mostly used in the realm of human relations-to a relatively new semantic domain. Although this concept is of a dominantly moral flavor, its Quranic semantic domain has depicted-in addition to a whole doctrinal framework with a system of Islamic values interwoven and inseparable-the emotional, behavioral, and verbal structure of the believers in different spheres of relationship with God, self, others, religion, and the strangers.