(And covet not the thing in which Allah hath made some of you excel others…) [4:32] Isma‘il ibn Abi al-Qasim al-Sufi informed us> Isma‘il ibn Najid> Ja‘far ibn Muhammad ibn Sawwar> Qutaybah> Sufyan ibn ‘Uyaynah> Ibn Abi Najih> Mujahid who reported that Umm Salamah asked: “O Messenger of Allah! [how is it that] the men go out in military conquests and we do not; and how come we have half of the inheritance”. And so Allah, exalted is He, revealed this verse (And covet not the thing in which Allah hath made some of you excel others). Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz informed us> Muhammad ibn al-Husayn> Muhammad ibn Yahya ibn Yazid> Ishaq ibn Ibrahim> ‘Attab ibn Bashir> Khusayf> ‘Ikrimah who reported that the women asked about Jihad, saying: “We wish that Allah had prescribed military conquest for us so that we acquire the same reward that men do”, and so Allah, exalted is He, revealed this verse (And covet not the thing in which Allah hath made some of you excel others). Said Qatadah and al-Suddi: “When the words of Allah (… unto the male the equivalent of the share of two females…) [4:176], the men said: ‘We hope that we shall be preferred over women through our rewards in the Afterlife just as we were preferred over them in the division of estate so that our reward is double the reward of women’. The women, on the other hand, said: ‘We hope that our onus will be half that of men in the Afterlife just as our share of estate is half that of men in this world’. And so Allah, exalted is He, revealed (And covet not the thing in which Allah hath made some of you excel others)”.
Asbab Al-Nuzul by Al-Wahidi , trans. Mokrane Guezzou
