“Be modest in your bearing and lower your voice, for the ugliest of all voices is the braying of asses.”
Luqman · Quran, Surah Luqman 31:19
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We commanded man to be good to his parents. His mother carried him with increasing weakness, and his weaning takes 2 years. Be grateful to Me and to your parents.
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About this quote
Meaning
This verse delivers one of the Quran's most emotionally direct calls to gratitude. It reminds the reader that the debt owed to parents is not abstract but deeply physical and personal. The description of a mother's experience during pregnancy as involving increasing weakness acknowledges real, bodily sacrifice. The detail about the two years of weaning extends that sacrifice further into early life. By naming both God and parents together as deserving of gratitude, the verse places the human relationship with one's parents within a spiritual framework, treating care for family as an act connected to one's relationship with the divine.
Context
This verse appears in Surah Luqman, a chapter of the Quran that uses the framework of a wise father advising his son to present a series of moral and spiritual teachings. The reference to a mother's physical burden is notable for how specifically it describes the experience of childbearing, lending the ethical command a grounded, compassionate quality. The verse forms part of a broader passage about gratitude and right conduct, and it reflects a consistent Quranic theme that acknowledgment of God and care for parents belong together as paired obligations.
About the author
Luqman is a celebrated figure in Islamic wisdom tradition, known not as a prophet but as a man of profound moral insight whose teachings were considered worthy of preservation in scripture. His name is given to the thirty-first chapter of the Quran, a distinction that reflects the esteem in which his wisdom was held. Classical Islamic scholars wrote extensively about him, and while accounts of his life differ, he is consistently portrayed as someone who understood both the spiritual and the human dimensions of a good life, and who conveyed that understanding with clarity and warmth.
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