لَا يُسْـَٔلُ عَمَّا يَفْعَلُ وَهُمْ يُسْـَٔلُونَ
And this verse must be read by its word order alone. First I record the form of the verbs, because most of the debate begins and ends here.
| Clause | Verb | Aspect | Is its subject stated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lā yusʾalu ʿammā yafʿal | Imperfect, passive, negative | Continuous | No |
| Wa hum yusʾalūn | Imperfect, passive, affirmative | Continuous | No |
This is the most easily missed side of the verse and must be recorded: the sentence does not say "He questions them". On neither side is the questioning party put into words. What is said is only who is the one questioned.
I record this as my own reading, its ground being that both verbs come in the passive: the verse does not set up a scene of interrogation. It separates two positions from one another.
I record as my own reading, and its ground is this: the twenty-second verse had established that there is a single centre of governance. The twenty-third says that above that centre there is no further authority. That is, the sentence is not a declaration of privilege but a note about a chain: the chain of reckoning stops somewhere, and where it stops is not the place of those questioned but of the one not questioned.
| View | Who hum is |
|---|---|
| 1 | Those taken as gods in the twenty-first verse — it is they who will be held answerable |
| 2 | Human beings — the community addressed |
| 3 | All created things — angels included |
I transmit the disagreement and do not impose a preference. I enter only a note about word order: those named with a plural pronoun in the preceding verse were the ones who say yaṣifūn; that is the nearest referent.
I draw a boundary here per the method (Method), because this verse has often been used torn from its context.
The verse does not say that no reason is given. The evidence for this is the sūra itself, and it is read wholly from the text:
| Verse | What it does |
|---|---|
| 16-17 | Explains why the creating is not play |
| 31 | Says why the mountains were set: an tamīda bihim |
| 35 | Says why the testing is: fitna |
| 107 | Says why the messengership is: raḥmatan li'l-ʿālamīn |
The same sūra gives a ground in four separate places. That is, the twenty-third verse does not say "there is no ground"; it says that there is no authority from which a ground may be extracted on demand.
And the verse has one further link within the sūra: in the thirteenth verse those destroyed were told, by way of mockery, laʿallakum tusʾalūn. The same root, the same passive pattern. The sūra uses the verb "to be questioned" first in a scene and then in a ruling.