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man ʿamila ṣāliḥan min dhakarin ʾaw ʾunthā wa-huwa muʾminun fa-la-nuḥyiyannahū ḥayātan ṭayyibatan wa-la-najziyannahum ʾajrahum bi-ʾaḥsani mā kānū yaʿmalūna
Whoever acts righteously, [whether] male or female, should he be faithful, We shall revive him with a good life and pay them their reward by the best of what they used to do.
— Ali Quli Qarai
Surah An-Nahl – Verse 97
97. “Whoever does a righteous deed, whether male or female, and is a believer, We shall certainly give him to live a goodly pure life and, definitely, We will pay them a recompense in proportion to the reward for the best of what they used to do.”
‘A goodly pure life’ is that a person has a restful heart, and a faithful spirit. Such a believer whose insight is furnished by the light of Allah, he will be in composed by the prayers of the angels, and he will receive the favours of Allah. The people of this kind will have neither fear nor grieve. This verse states, as a general rule, that the result of the righteous deeds of every believer and in any form that they be performed will be rewarded with the best scale of good deeds.
The verse says:
“Whoever does a righteous deed, whether male or female, and is a believer, We shall certainly give him to live a goodly pure life and, definitely, We will pay them a recompense in proportion to the reward for the best of what they used to do.”
Thus, the criterion here is ‘faith’ and the righteous acts emerged from it, and, therefore, there is no other condition for it from any point of view: neither from the point of race, gender, nor from the point of position, and social rank. The Qur’anic phrase /hay at-i-tayyibah/ meaning ‘a goodly pure life’ signifies a ‘clean’ life from every point of view; clean from all pollutions, cruelties, treasons, hostilities, capturing meanness and all sorts of anxieties including all of those things which turn the wholesome length of one’s life into a disagreeable one.
In the end, one infers from this verse that a man without faith and without good deeds is just regarded as dead.
“…and We shall certainly give him to live a goodly pure life…”