يَكفُّ عنهُ ضيعتَه ويحوطُه من ورائِهِ

[zj73]

In the hadith

المؤمنُ مرآةُ المؤمنِ والمؤمنُ أخو المؤمنِ يَكفُّ عنهُ ضيعتَه ويحوطُه من ورائِهِ

why is it not المؤمنُ مرآةُ المؤمنِ والمؤمنُ أخو المؤمنِ كفّ عنهُ ضيعتَه وحاطه من ورائِهِ

The past tense expressed general truths, I think. So it would have been more appropriate here.

 

[SunSpring]

In Arabic, the present tense is mostly used to express general truths.

 

[Ali Smith]

Are you sure? What about المسلم من سلم المسلمون من لسانه ويده?

It’s not يَسْلَمُ but سَلِمَ.

 

[Ali Smith]

I may be mistaken, but I feel that it is only in relative clauses (صلة الموصول) that الفعل الماضي is used to express a general truth. Have you ever seen it used to express a general truth in a non-relative clause?

 

[Mahaodeh]

The past tense is generally used to express general truths, but in this particular sentence يَكفُّ عنهُ ضيعتَه ويحوطُه من ورائِهِ is not really expressing a general truth. It’s more like an explanation or an additional detail.

 

[brustad]

Yes, Mahaodeh, the past tense is generally used to express general truths but only in a relative clause. So, here it makes sense that it is not used (because it's not a relative clause). That is the real reason.

 

[analeeh]

Is that true? I've been reading quite a bit of classical stuff recently, and my sense is that the maadi form is quite frequently used to express general truths. It just coexists with the more normal modern use of the simple mudaari3, which is also used for overall truth assertions. Of course, I might simply be misinterpreting this, but that's my impression.

If anything, I would say that من سلم is an entirely different usage. In this sort of structure, it's not so much a generalisation in itself as similar to other conditional structures like اذا or ان: 'whoever', 'whenever', 'however', etc. This is different, I think, from the usage people often describe in the Qur'an and hadith of the maadi form being used to express generalities (or the future).