al-Baqara 2:166-169 — The ties that snap and the footsteps of Satan

"When those who were followed disown those who followed them; when they see the punishment and the ties between them are cut… Those who followed say: 'If only we had a return, that we might disown them as they have disowned us.' Thus does God show them their deeds as regrets for them. And they will not come out of the fire.

O people! Eat of what is lawful and good on the earth; and do not follow the footsteps of Satan. He is a plain enemy to you. He commands you only evil and indecency, and that you say about God what you do not know."

At verse 165 association of partners was described not as an error of belief but as a matter of love: "loving them as God is loved."

Verse 166 shows the end of that love. And the manner of the showing is striking: it is not said that the love was mistaken; it is shown that it was unreturned.

There are two sides in the scene, and the act is not mutual but one-directional: those who were followed disown those who followed them. The attachment turns out to have been one-sided.

تَبَرَّأَ — root ب-ر-أ: to strip oneself of, to separate from, to be cleared. From the same root come barāʾa (acquittal) and Bāriʾ (the one who brings into being from nothing — who separates from matter and gives form). The root has occurred in several sections of this commentary; the pattern here is Form V and states an effort: to separate oneself, to cut the relation deliberately.

The passive–active arrangement of the verbs also builds the scene: alladhīna uttubiʿū (those who were followed — passive) and alladhīna ittabaʿū (those who followed — active). One side, that is, is in a passive position: it was followed, it was not the one who wanted to follow. This also explains the disowning that comes after.

أَسْبَاب — the plural of the root س-ب-ب. And the concrete sense of the root separates the word from its present-day use: a sabab is first of all a rope.

More particularly: the cable used for going down into a well or climbing up somewhere. The Qurʾān confirms this sense itself: "Then let him stretch a rope to the sky, then let him cut it" (al-Ḥajj 22/15) — here the word can be nothing but a rope thrown to a ceiling.

The abstract sense — the reason for a thing — is derived from this concrete one; Turkish has borrowed the word in exactly that abstract sense (sebep). A cause is the rope that binds to a result. Arabic, that is, has pictured causality as a bond — as English does when it speaks of a causal tie or of the thread of an argument.

Now return to the sentence in the verse: taqaṭṭaʿat bihimu'l-asbāb — "the ties, the ropes, were cut with them."

تَقَطَّعَتْ — root ق-ط-ع: to cut. The pattern is again Form V and here states multiplicity and repetition: not breaking at one point but breaking in pieces, at every point.

The picture is complete: at the edge of a cliff, all the cables they were holding snapping at once. And from whom were the ropes cut? From both sides: the rope binding the followers to those they followed, and the rope that would save those followed from the reckoning.

I record this as my own reading: the two senses of the word work together here. What is cut is both the connection (the relationship) and the reason. Both the person one held on to and the ground on which one could say "this was why I acted so" go at the same time.

كَرَّة — root ك-ر-ر. This root was treated in the discussions of al-Mulk (67/4) and al-Nāziʿāt (79/13); I do not repeat it. Its summary: the root's proper place is the battlefield — in the tactic of karr wa farr (charge and withdraw), to turn to the attack again after withdrawing. From this the sense "a time, an occasion" arose.

What is wanted, then, is not simply "to go back"; in the word's own logic it is the chance to repeat a charge. To try once more.

The particle لَوْ is used here for wishing the impossible. In Arabic law states an unrealised condition; when it comes with a wish it also carries within it the wish's being without return.

And the content of the wish is worth recording. What is wanted is not to believe, to put things right, to make amends: "that we might disown them." What is wanted, that is, is to be able to do the same thing to the other side.

I record this as an observation: the wish shows that the attitude has not changed. The regret is felt not for the thing done but for the other side's having acted first.

حَسْرَة — root ح-س-ر. This root was treated in the discussions of al-Mulk (67/4) and al-Ḥāqqa; I do not repeat it. Its summary: the idea beneath the root is opening, stripping, the taking off of what is on top — the collapse of an exhausted animal and the lifting of a covering are told with the same root. Ḥasra is therefore not longing but regret with its covering removed: the truth appearing naked.

The word order of the verse uses this sense exactly: يُرِيهِمُ ٱللَّهُ أَعْمَٰلَهُمْ حَسَرَٰتٍ — "God shows them their deeds as regrets."

What is shown is not a punishment but their own works. The torment, that is, is not brought as something separate; the covering over the deed is lifted and the deed is seen as it is. No transformation between deed and regret is recounted; it is said that the two are the same thing.

And the word is plural (ḥasarāt): not a single regret but one for every deed.

At verse 168 the address changes: يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ — "O people."

This is a widening that stands out in this stretch of the sūra. After the matter of association of partners and attachment has been discussed, the first ruling about food is given to all people. And four verses later the same command will be repeated, this time to believers alone:

In the second the clause ḥalāl has dropped and only ṭayyib remains. This difference will be taken up at verse 172.

حَلَال — root ح-ل-ل: to untie, to open a knot; from the same root come ḥall (a solution) and ḥalāl (the unloading of a burden in order to halt). Ḥalāl, in the word's own logic, is that whose knot has been untied. Its opposite is ḥarām: what has been tied, made inviolable.

طَيِّب — root ط-ي-ب: pleasant, clean, good. The word covers both what is pleasant to the senses and what is clean in its own substance.

The two adjectives together set two distinct measures: one looks to the ruling (is it permitted?), the other to the quality (is it good?). That a thing is not forbidden does not mean that it is good.

And the command itself is worth recording: the sentence begins not with a prohibition but with a permission. What is on the earth is left free; the boundary comes afterwards. This is in the same line as verse 29 of the sūra: "He created for you everything on the earth."

The root خ-ط-و: to take a step. Khuṭwa — the distance of one step; the space between two feet.

This expression occurs twice in the sūra: here and at verse 208. The finding recorded at 208 holds here too, and its proper place is here: the word is not "leap" but "step". A road is covered not by a single decision but by small steps following one another.

That the word comes in the plural reinforces this: khuṭuwāt — steps. Not a single step is named; a series is named. And each step looks reasonable if the one before it has been taken.

I record this as my own reading: the placing of the prohibition on the steps belongs to the same family as "do not approach the tree" at verse 35 of the sūra and "do not approach the bounds" at verse 187. In all three the prohibition begins not with the act itself but with the distance that leads to it.

And a detail: the verb is lā tattabiʿū — "do not follow", that is, do not become a follower. The same root had been used two verses earlier (166-167) for those who followed and those who were followed. Here the sūra turns the same word into a warning: do not enter the relation of following whose end you have just seen.

Verse 169 enumerates in three items where the "steps" come out, and the order grows heavier.

ٱلسُّوٓء — root س-و-أ: to be bad, to become ugly. It is a general word; it covers evil of every kind.

ٱلْفَحْشَآء — root ف-ح-ش. Treated in the discussion of al-Najm: fuḥsh — an ugliness that passes the bound, excess; a fāḥisha is a deed whose ugliness is open. The second item is thus a heavier degree of the first: evil in its state of having passed the measure.

وَأَن تَقُولُوا۟ عَلَى ٱللَّهِ مَا لَا تَعْلَمُونَ — "and that you say about God what you do not know."

The third item differs in kind from the first two. The first two have to do with conduct; the third with speech. And its being placed last in the list is in Arabic generally the mark of the heaviest.

This item is the name of an act the sūra has described at three earlier places:

All four recount the same thing: presenting a word whose source is oneself as though its source were God.

And its being counted among the commands of Satan fixes its position. The verse places this act not as an error of knowledge but as the furthest item of evil. The rule of method laid down at the very beginning of this commentary — not to ascribe to a source what one is not sure of — finds its ground here.