On 12 April 1955, the world learned that Jonas Salk's polio vaccine worked. That evening a television interviewer asked him who owned the patent. Salk seemed surprised. “Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
al-Wahhāb is the Giver of gifts: the One who gives freely, without being asked, without needing anything back. The shape of the word means giving again and again. This episode looks at the most generous giving we know, and at the small catch in each.
Start with what 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
In 2017, nine-year-old Keira Ball died after a car crash in Devon. Her family agreed to donate her organs, and her heart went to a boy of the same age, Max Johnson, who had been in hospital for months. Max lived. In 2020 England's new organ donation law, which presumes consent unless people opt out, was named Max and Keira's Law (NHS Blood and Transplant). One donor can save up to nine lives. It is one of the greatest gifts a family can give. But it comes through grief, it needs a match, a team of surgeons and an intensive-care bed, and we can only give what we were given.
Episode 2
In nature
A flower gives away sugar. Nectar costs a plant a real share of the energy it makes from sunlight, and bees, butterflies, bats and birds drink it freely. Around three-quarters of the world's leading food crops benefit from these visitors (Klein and others, 2007). Without them, our tables would be bare. It looks like pure generosity. But it is a trade: the nectar pays for pollen to be carried to another flower. When the visitors stop coming, many plants stop making it. Nature is wonderfully generous, and almost always expects something back.
Episode 3
At our best
Salk's vaccine was a gift to the world, and the American public paid for it: millions of people sent dimes to the March of Dimes to fund the research and the 1954 trial in which about 1.8 million children took part (Science History Institute). Polio, which once paralysed hundreds of thousands of children a year, is now almost gone. Yet lawyers had already advised that the vaccine probably could not be patented, the companies that made it still sold it, and the gift reached the world only through money, factories and freezers. Our best giving still runs on supply chains.
Episode 4
The Break
Take away the grief behind the gift, the trade with the bee, the dimes and the factories, the stock that runs down, the hope of thanks. Every giver we know gives from what was given to them, at a cost. al-Wahhāb is not a bigger giver; He gives with nothing lost and nothing needed in return. The believers pray: “Our Lord, do not let our hearts swerve after You have guided us, and grant us mercy from Yourself; You are the Giver of gifts” (Qur'an 3:8, our rendering).
Read: Q 3:8; 38:35 Solomon (peace be upon him): (Q 38:35); 42:49-50 He gives daughters, sons, or both
From the tradition: al-Ghazālī: the true giver gives with no aim of return and no benefit to Himself. James 1:17 'Every good gift… from above, coming down from the Father of lights'
On screen
In Destiny the Traveler's gift has a price someone must pay. al-Wahhāb's gifts were never a loan.
The Qur'an tells of Zechariah (peace be upon him), a priest in the Temple in Jerusalem and the guardian of the young Mary (peace be upon her). He was old; his hair was white and his bones were weak; and his wife had never had a child.
One day he went into Mary (peace be upon her)'s prayer room and found food there that no one had brought. “Mary, where did this come from?” She said: “It is from God. God provides for whom He wills without measure” (3:37).
It moved him to pray, quietly, in a voice no one else could hear. “My Lord, my bones have grown weak and my head is white with age, but I have never been disappointed in calling on You. So grant me (hab lī) from Yourself an heir” (19:4-6). The word he used, hab, comes from the same root as al-Wahhāb.
God gave him a son, John (peace be upon him), whom the Qur'an calls Yaḥyā (peace be upon him).
The Qur'an also says plainly that God gives children to some and not to others (42:49-50), and Muslim teachers stress that a gift not given is never a judgement on anyone's worth. The story is about something else: an old man who asked in secret, as if to a friend, because he had never found the Giver unwilling to listen.
What each faith says
Judaism
“But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of Thee, and of Thine own have we given Thee.”
When King David (peace be upon him) gathered gifts for the Temple, he refused to take credit for them. His prayer is still said in the morning service: everything people give back to God was His to begin with.
Jewish tradition teaches that the right response to gifts is a blessing. There are blessings for food, for new clothes, for a rainbow, for hearing good news: each one a way of noticing that something has been given.
Christianity
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation, nor turning shadow.”
The letter of James calls God “the Father of lights”, the source of every good gift, who does not change. In Athens, Paul told the philosophers that God needs nothing from human hands, “seeing he himself gives to all life and breath, and all things” (Acts 17:25).
For Christians the greatest gift is Christ himself, and the word ‘grace’ means a gift that is free and undeserved.
al-Wahhāb appears three times in the Qur'an (3:8; 38:9; 38:35), always in prayer: the believers asking for steady hearts, and Solomon (peace be upon him) asking for a kingdom. al-Ghazālī defined a true gift as one given with no aim of return and no benefit to the giver; in that full sense, he said, only God truly gives.
The Qur'an reminds people: “Whatever blessing you have, it is from God” (16:53). For Muslims, the human share of this Name is to give without expecting thanks, and to notice what has been given.
Same and different
Judaism, Christianity and Islam all teach that every good thing is a gift, that God needs nothing in return, and that the right response is gratitude and generosity. Judaism expresses this through blessings over everyday gifts. Christianity speaks of grace and of Christ as God's greatest gift. Islam calls God al-Wahhāb and teaches that true giving expects nothing back. They differ on what the greatest gift is; they agree on Who gives it.
A moment to reflect
What is the best gift you have ever received that cost you nothing?
Is it possible to give without wanting anything back, even thanks?
What have you been given that you have never thought of as a gift?
Watch
Watch on YouTube ↗ · plays here on the live site; YouTube without tracking until you press play
BBC News on how Keira's heart saved Max: the ‘In us’ rung.
Watch on YouTube ↗ · plays here on the live site; YouTube without tracking until you press play
Retro Report on Jonas Salk and ‘Could you patent the sun?’: the hook and ‘At our best’ rung.
Watch on YouTube ↗ · plays here on the live site; YouTube without tracking until you press play
From The Green Planet: flowers, insects and the trade behind nectar.
Do it together
families / schoolsThe blessing walk
Take a short walk and stop at five things you did not make and did not pay for: the air, a tree, rain, birdsong, sunlight. At each one, say thank you in whatever words you use.
faith groups / neighboursHave the conversation
Organ donation is an act of giving many faiths support. Invite a specialist nurse from NHS Blood and Transplant's faith engagement team to a community meeting to explain the law and answer questions, so families can talk and decide for themselves.
Episode 1
