Heard together with: al-Waliyyal-Ḥamīd (42:28); al-Mawlā (not on list)
Researchers pooled 148 studies of more than 300,000 people in 2010. Those with strong friendships and family ties were about 50% more likely to survive over the study periods than those without. Friendship, it turns out, is good for the body as well as the spirit.
Al-Waliyy means the Protecting Friend: the ally who stands with you. It asks what kind of friend never leaves.
Start with what we know
Start with something we know. Then take away everything it needs. What is left is not a bigger version of us: it is the Name.
Episode 1
In us
A friend who stands by you changes everything. The 2010 review by Julianne Holt-Lunstad and colleagues, published in PLOS Medicine, found that strong social relationships raised the odds of survival by around half. That is an effect on health comparable to giving up smoking. In wars and disasters people have hidden neighbours of other faiths at great risk to themselves. But even the best friend is sometimes away, asleep or busy. They may not know what you need until you tell them. They may let you down without meaning to. Human friendship protects us some of the time.
Episode 2
In nature
On coral reefs small cleaner wrasse set up 'cleaning stations' where large fish queue to have parasites picked off their skin and even from inside their mouths. It is a real alliance: the client gets cleaned, the cleaner gets fed. But the cleaner would rather eat the client's protective mucus than its parasites, and sometimes it cheats with a bite. A 2006 study in Nature by Redouan Bshary and Alexandra Grutter found that cleaners behave better when other fish are watching. Nature's friendships are real, and mixed with self-interest.
Episode 3
At our best
For years Jupiter was described as Earth's shield, a giant planet whose gravity sweeps away dangerous comets. When astronomers Jonathan Horner and Barrie Jones ran computer models in 2008, they found the story was more complicated. Depending on its size and position, a giant planet can “enhance the impact rate of asteroids on the Earth significantly”. Jupiter may protect us from some objects and send others our way. Even our best-known guardian in space is a mixed blessing, protector and threat at once.
Episode 4
The Break
Friends are sometimes absent, allies need something back, and some protectors are also a danger. Beyond them all is a Friend who is never away, who knows what you need before you ask, and whose protection is not mixed with harm. Al-Waliyy is not the best of our allies. Every alliance we have is a shadow of His. “Allah is the Protecting Guardian of those who believe. He bringeth them out of darkness into light. As for those who disbelieve, their patrons are false deities. They bring them out of light into darkness. Such are rightful owners of the Fire. They will abide therein.” (Qur'an 2:257, Pickthall).
When the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (peace be upon him) left Mecca for Medina in 622, he and his friend Abū Bakr hid for three days in a cave on Mount Thawr, south of the city. Search parties were combing the hills, and a reward had been offered for their capture.
At one point the searchers came so close that Abū Bakr could see their feet at the cave mouth. He whispered: if any of them looks down at his feet, he will see us.
The Prophet answered him with a question: “What do you think, Abū Bakr, of two when God is the third?” (Bukhari 3653). The Qur'an remembers the moment: “If ye help him not, still Allah helped him when those who disbelieve drove him forth, the second of two; when they two were in the cave, when he said unto his comrade: Grieve not. Lo! Allah is with us.” (9:40, Pickthall).
They were not found. A little later they hired an expert guide, who was not a Muslim, to lead them by back roads to Medina. The story holds both kinds of friendship: Abū Bakr's loyalty, which put his own life at risk, and the deeper company the Prophet named. Abū Bakr was the best friend a man could have, and even he was afraid. The Third in the cave was not.
The most loved Jewish picture of God as companion is Psalm 23, attributed to David. God is a shepherd who leads, feeds and protects, and who is with you even in the darkest valley.
Jewish tradition also calls Abraham the friend of God: “Abraham My friend”, as Isaiah 41:8 puts it. Psalm 23 itself is sung at the third meal of the Sabbath and read at many Jewish funerals.
Christianity
“But I have called you friends, for everything that I heard from my Father, I have made known to you.”
In John's Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples on his last night with them that he no longer calls them servants but friends. Christians understand God's friendship as something offered, not earned.
Christians also speak of the Holy Spirit as the Comforter or Advocate, the one who stands beside believers. Christians root this in their understanding of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Joseph Scriven's hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” (1855) is still one of the best-loved in Britain, sung in Methodist chapels, Black-majority Pentecostal churches and parish churches alike.
Islam
“Allah is the Protecting Guardian of those who believe. He bringeth them out of darkness into light. As for those who disbelieve, their patrons are false deities. They bring them out of light into darkness. Such are rightful owners of the Fire. They will abide therein.”
Al-Waliyy appears often in the Qur'an. One verse joins it to rain. “And He it is Who sendeth down the saving rain after they have despaired, and spreadeth out His mercy. He is the Protecting Friend, the Praiseworthy.” (42:28, Pickthall). Another asks why people take other protectors: “Or have they chosen protecting friends besides Him? But Allah, He (alone) is the Protecting Friend. He quickeneth the dead, and He is Able to do all things.” (42:9, Pickthall).
The same root gives awliyāʾ, the 'friends of God', a word Muslims use for the deeply devout. A hadith qudsi says that when a servant draws near to God, God becomes “the hearing with which he hears and the sight with which he sees” (Bukhari 6502).
Same and different
All three traditions picture God as one who stays close, protects and guides, and all three name Abraham the friend of God. Isaiah 41:8 says it in Hebrew, and the Qur'an calls him khalīl, ‘Who is better in religion than he who surrendereth his purpose to Allah while doing good (to men) and followeth the tradition of Abraham, the upright? Allah (Himself) chose Abraham for friend.’ (4:125, Pickthall). Jews and Muslims describe that friendship directly between God and the believer; Christians also understand it through Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
A moment to reflect
Who has stood by you when it cost them something?
What is the difference between a friend and an ally?
Is there someone in your neighbourhood who might need a friend who stays?
Watch
A cleaner fish works inside a shark's mouth: a reef alliance captured by BBC Earth.
Starlings flying together, each watching its nearest neighbours: protection in company.
Do it together
schools / familiesThe friendship map
Each person draws circles with themselves in the middle and the people who help them around it. Who protects you? Who do you protect? Add one person you could reach out to this week.
faith groups / neighboursShelter stories
Share true stories of people who sheltered neighbours of another faith, such as Muslim Albanians who hid Jews in the Second World War (the code of besa). Read Psalm 23, John 15:15 and Qur'an 9:40 together.
neighbours / faith groups / familiesThe friend who visits
Visiting the sick, bikur cholim, is a Jewish commandment, and Jesus counted “I was sick, and you visited me” (Matthew 25:36) among the marks of his followers. Arrange a visit to someone housebound or in hospital, take something small, and mostly listen.
Episode 1
