al-Muʾminūn 23:71

wa lawi'ttabaʿa'l-ḥaqqu ahwāʾahum la-fasadati'l-samāwātu wa'l-arḍu wa man fīhinn, bal ataynāhum bi-dhikrihim fa-hum ʿan dhikrihim muʿriḍūn

"If the truth had followed their desires, the heavens and the earth and all in them would have gone to ruin. No — We brought them their own reminder, and they turn away from their own reminder."

The exegetes differ over what al-ḥaqq, the subject of the sentence, is, and the difference changes how the proof works:

I pass the disagreement on; I do not impose a preference.

And in all four the logic of the proof is the same, and this must be recorded: an order subject to desire ceases to be an order. For desires are many and contradict one another; they cannot all be followed at once.

The root ف-س-د: to spoil, to lose one's order. Fasād — the falling apart of an order; ifsād — corrupting. The word was treated at al-Baqara 2/11-12 and at Ṣād 38/28.

Another proof built with the same verb was treated at al-Anbiyāʾ 21/22: law kāna fīhimā ālihatun illā'llāhu la-fasadatā, "had there been in the two of them gods besides God, the two would have gone to ruin." I rely on that treatment.

The two proofs can be compared:

The difference must be recorded: the proof of al-Anbiyāʾ is built against shirk, that of al-Muʾminūn against hawā. And the sentence in al-Anbiyāʾ ends with subḥāna'llāhi rabbi'l-ʿarshi ʿammā yaṣifūn; in al-Muʾminūn the same sentence of tanzīh will come twenty verses later, in the ninety-first verse.

And al-Muʾminūn's own counterpart will come in the ninety-first verse: law kāna maʿahū min ilāhin idhan la-dhahaba kullu ilāhin bimā khalaqa wa la-ʿalā baʿḍuhum ʿalā baʿḍ. The sūra, that is, builds two hypothetical proofs: one by way of hawā (71), the other by way of multiplicity (91). This is a pairing that can be verified within the sūra.

The root was treated in detail at al-Jāthiya 45/23 (a-fa-raʾayta mani'ttakhadha ilāhahū hawāh) — where the two readings of the construction ilāhahū hawāh were tabulated. And the same sentence was taken up again at al-Furqān 25/43, where the analysis in al-Jāthiya was relied on. I do not repeat it here.

The summary of the root is this: ه-و-ي: to fall, to go down; and to feel desire. Both branches are recorded.

What belongs here is that the word comes in the plural: ahwāʾ.

I record this as my own reading, its ground being this plural: in al-Jāthiya hawāh was singular — the desire of one person. Here it is plural: the desires of a community. And the working of the proof depends precisely on this plural: a single desire can be followed; desires that contradict one another cannot all be followed at once. This is the ground of the ruin.

Three occurrences, the same root, the scale growing. This is a series that can be verified from the three texts.

And the second half of the sentence sets a separate question.

ذِكْرِهِمْ — the possessive pronoun must be recorded: "their reminder". It does not say the Qurʾān or the revelation.

The exegetes differ over the sense of the construction:

I pass the disagreement on; I do not impose a preference.

The second reading is worth recording, because it sharpens the sentence: if what is brought is their own standing, then what they turn away from is what is in their favour.

And here another verbal weave of the sūra is completed.

In the third verse the item of the list ran: wa'lladhīna hum ʿani'l-laghwi muʿriḍūn — "those who turn away from idle speech". The same pattern returns here unchanged: fa-hum ʿan dhikrihim muʿriḍūn.

Exactly the same word order, the same active participle, two different objects. This is a repetition that can be verified within the sūra, and it was recorded at the third verse as well.

I give this as my own reading: the sūra takes a pattern from its own list of attributes and uses it for the other side — and changes the object. The verb is the same; what settles the verdict is what is being turned away from.