al-Nās 114:4

Min sharri'l-waswāsi'l-khannās "From the evil of the whisperer who stealthily draws back."

The sound itself. The most striking thing about this word, before its meaning, is its sound.

In Arabic there is a class of words: four-lettered, built by the repetition of the first two letters, and imitating a sound that is heard. What in English is called onomatopoeia. Examples: washwasha (a whisper), khashkhasha (a rustle), hamhama, damdama, zalzala.

وسوسة belongs to this class. The word itself is the sound of a whisper: was-wa-sa. A twice-repeated, fricative, soft, low sound. The moment you say it, it does the thing it imitates.

In the books of the language the original sense of the word is recorded as "a hidden, faint sound"; it is transmitted that it was used of the fine sound made by ornaments and pieces of jewellery. The word thus first names a sound at the edge of hearing, and afterwards acquires the sense "a word whispered inward".

This places the definition of the concept inside the word itself. The whispering does not shout. Against something that shouts a defence is taken up; something that whispers, on the other hand, is most often taken for your own thought. The power of the whispering lies in the lowness of its volume.

A verbal noun or a noun? It is transmitted that in Arabic a distinction is drawn among words of this pattern according to their vowelling: al-waswās (with fatḥa) is a noun — that is, the whisperer himself; al-wiswās (with kasra) is a verbal noun — that is, the act of whispering. The reading in the Qurʾān is with fatḥa.

If this is accepted, what is named in the verse is not the act but the agent: the one who whispers. Indeed the next verse confirms this by saying "who whispers" — the relative pronoun (alladhī) qualifies an agent, not an act.

Even so, some exegetes have counted the word a verbal noun and understood it as "from the evil of whispering". The wording of the following verse supports the first reading.

As a verb in the Qurʾān. The root occurs in several places in the Qurʾān and its prepositions change — this is a detail worth pausing over:

Three prepositions, three distinct distances: for / towards / inside. The first is from outside and directed at a target; the second shows an approach; the third is within. The last sūra of the Qurʾān uses the innermost preposition.

I present this finding as a reading; the differences of preposition are dwelt on in the classical commentaries, but this threefold arrangement is a frame I have constructed myself.

And there is one critical verse:

"We created the human being, and We know what his own soul whispers to him (mā tuwaswisu bihi nafsuhu). We are nearer to him than his jugular vein." (Qāf 50/16)

Here the one who whispers is not the devil but the person's own soul. This verse shows that the source of the whispering is not single, and when it is read together with the last verse of Sūrat al-Nās the whole of the matter comes out. We shall return to this at verse 6.

Root: خ-ن-س. Its concrete sense: to draw back, to go backwards, to cower, to hide, to withdraw and disappear.

The most concrete use of the root is of the face: khanas is the state of the nose being drawn back into the face, of its being flat. Akhnas — flat-nosed. The name of the pre-Islamic poet al-Khansāʾ is from this root as well. At the centre of the root, then, stands the movement of drawing back, of slipping inward.

Its most important use in the Qurʾān:

"No! I swear by those that draw back (al-khunnas), those that run their course and slip into their lairs (al-jawāri'l-kunnas)…" (al-Takwīr 81/15-16)

In the classical commentaries al-khunnas is mostly explained as the stars, the planets: they are visible by night and disappear by day; or, as they advance across the sky, they appear to be going backwards and then advance again. And the word kunnas calls up the covert in which a gazelle hides (kinās) — the image of an animal that shows itself and then goes into its lair.

The link between the two verses is very apt: khunnas are beings that come out and then disappear. Khannās, for its part, is the intensive form of the same root — the faʿʿāl pattern conveys the one who does a thing much, who has become identified with that work (the same logic of pattern as naffāthāt in Sūrat al-Falaq).

So al-khannās: the one who cowers constantly, who draws back again and again, who has made vanishing his habit.

These two sides of the word are strange taken together. The whisperer both draws near (to whisper one must be close) and withdraws. In the classical commentaries this duality is explained in two ways, and the two complete one another:

1. He withdraws when God is remembered. This is the widespread explanation: when the servant remembers God the whisperer cowers, and when the servant sinks into heedlessness he comes back. Being khannās thus describes a cycle — withdrawal and return.

2. He strikes and runs; he does not show himself. He leaves the whisper and vanishes. The word that remains is now of uncertain ownership — and precisely because of that uncertainty the person takes it for his own thought.

The second explanation, to my mind, better accounts for the force of the word, and this is my preference, and it is not binding. For the matter is this: if the whisperer stayed in view, the whispering would be ineffective. If the source of a thought is known, that thought can be argued with. A thought whose source is unknown leaves one defenceless — because whoever objects to it has objected to himself.

This overlaps with the fundamental thing the Qurʾān says about the devil:

"I had no power (sulṭān) over you; I only called you, and you answered me. So do not blame me; blame yourselves." (Ibrāhīm 14/22)

"Over My servants you have no power…" (al-Ḥijr 15/42; similarly al-Isrāʾ 17/65)

The whisperer, then, holds no compelling power. The only thing in his hand is a call — an invitation, a word, a whisper. Because there is no compulsion, responsibility stays with the person. And because there is no compulsion, his weapon consists of nothing but concealment.

The meaning of the cowering follows from this: it is the tactic of an enemy who has no power. One who is strong does not hide. To be khannās is to be unable to risk open conflict.

A question stands here: is al-waswās al-khannās a name of the devil, or an attribute?

The verse uses an attribute: "the one who whispers, who cowers". It gives no proper name. And the sixth verse will say that this attribute can be found in two kinds at once. The sūra thus binds the threat not to a being but to a function.

This accords with the general method of the Qurʾān: the attribute is described, and whoever bears that attribute falls within the ruling.