al-Nūr 24:15

Idh talaqqawnahū bi-alsinatikum wa taqūlūna bi-afwāhikum mā laysa lakum bihī ʿilmun wa taḥsabūnahū hayyinan wa huwa ʿinda'llāhi ʿaẓīm

"When you were taking it up on your tongues, and saying with your mouths what you had no knowledge of, and thinking it a small thing — while in God's sight it is great."

This verse describes the mechanics by which a report spreads in four verbs, and each of the four does a distinct work in the arrangement:

The four steps build a chain, and the last link of the chain is the cause of the others. I take this up at the end of the verse.

Root: ل-ق-ي. Its concrete sense is to meet, to encounter, to come upon a thing. Liqāʾ — a meeting. Talaqqī (Form V) — to receive, to take up and make one's own, to take over.

The Qurʾān uses the same form elsewhere: fa-talaqqā Ādamu min rabbihī kalimāt (al-Baqara 2/37) — "Adam received words from his Lord". There too the verb conveys the receiving of a word, its being met and made one's own.

And the most striking side of the usage here is the object of the preposition: bi-alsinatikum — "you were taking it up with your tongues".

This is an unlooked-for combination in the language. A thing is normally received with the ear. The verse binds the receiving to the tongue.

And this combination describes how a report spreads. Thus:

A report is not received by hearing and left there. The act of receiving is completed only when it is repeated. A man has not really "received" a report — he has received it the moment he says it to another. Saying is part of receiving.

The verse, that is, removes the distance between hearing and saying and joins the two in a single verb: talaqqī bi'l-lisān.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the expression itself: that the instrument of the verb "to receive" is given as the tongue stands in the wording of the text, and it is out of the ordinary.

The explanations given for this expression in the classical commentaries look in a similar direction: one man's taking the report over from another, its going from mouth to mouth, everyone taking it from the one before and giving it to the one after. I transmit these explanations as views that are transmitted.

A variant reading is transmitted in the sources: it is recorded that the word is also read تَلِقُونَهُ (talikūnahū). This reading comes from the root و-ل-ق, and the sense the lexicographers record for it is to say a thing quickly and without stopping, to keep telling it.

Both readings are transmitted in the sources; since I cannot state with certainty which reader read which, I write no names.

And the two readings complete each other: the one describes how the report comes (by being taken over), the other how it goes (by being said without ceasing). I record this complementarity as my own reading.

The verse names two organs, and both are worth noting: alsina (tongues) and afwāh (mouths).

The expression "you say with your mouths" looks at first like a needless repetition. Saying is done with the mouth in any case.

But the Qurʾān uses this expression for a definite work, and this was recorded earlier in this commentary. At al-Aḥzāb, 33/4, the same pattern occurs: dhālikum qawlukum bi-afwāhikum — "that is your word with your mouths". The context there was an ascription that had no reality.

The work of the pattern, therefore, is this, and it is explained in this direction in the classical commentaries too: the qualification bi'l-fam conveys that the word stays only in the mouth, that there is no reality behind it. It comes out of the mouth but does not rest on any knowledge.

And the verse's next clause says this outright: mā laysa lakum bihī ʿilm — "what you have no knowledge of".

The work of the two organs in the arrangement:

The verse, that is, pictures man as a pipe through which the report passes: it goes in at one end, comes out at the other, and nothing is done to it in between.

The name of what is not done is given in the verse: ʿilm.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is that the two organs are named separately and that the note of the absence of knowledge is set between them. The order stands in the wording of the text.

The expression is a pattern repeated in the Qurʾān and occurred earlier in this commentary: wa lā taqfu mā laysa laka bihī ʿilm (al-Isrāʾ 17/36) — "do not pursue what you have no knowledge of".

And the pattern here uses a language of possession: laysa lakum bihī ʿilm — "you have no knowledge of it".

Knowledge, that is, is placed as something held in the hand. For a man to be able to speak on a matter he must have something in hand. And in slander there is nothing in the hand at all — the fourth verse had already bound this to a condition: four witnesses.

And the measure recorded at al-Ḥujurāt, 49/12, works here exactly: the note there was this — "The Qurʾān does not censure supposition in itself. What it censures is the putting of an unproved assumption in the place of certain knowledge."

al-Nūr 24/15 shows how that "putting in the place of certain knowledge" comes about: as a word passes from tongue to tongue it gains no knowledge — but it gains the look of knowledge. For what is said by many people appears, by the very frequency of its being said, to have been verified.

I record this as my own reading.

This is one of the strongest sentences in the sūra and deserves separate treatment.

هَيِّن — root ه-و-ن. Its concrete sense is lightness, ease, smallness of weight. Hawn — softness, not being heavy. Hīn / hāʾin — counted worthless. Ihāna — to make light of a man, to devalue him. The Turkish hain comes from this root, though its sense has drifted.

The word is used in the Qurʾān of God's power as well: huwa ʿalayya hayyin (Maryam 19/9) — "that is easy for Me". The word, then, is not negative in itself; it conveys a measure of weight.

And what the verse builds is a contrast of measures:

The relation of the root ع-ظ-م with ʿaẓm (bone) was recorded in al-Ḥāqqa. The picture that appears when the two roots are set side by side is this: lightness on the one hand, a skeleton on the other.

And what the sentence does is to make a diagnosis.

The verse does not say that those who spread the slander were of ill intent. What it says is finer and far more common: they held the measure wrongly.

The importance of this diagnosis lies here, and I record it as my own reading:

A man doing something he knows to be wrong feels he must defend himself. But doing something he supposes to be of no importance he offers no resistance at all — for in that case there is not even a decision.

And this is exactly what makes the mechanics of a report's spread possible. The crowd that spread the slander was not, taken one by one, doing a great evil: each of them was only saying a sentence. And each one's own share was, in his own eyes, hayyin.

But the verse had said in the eleventh that the shares are divided: li-kulli'mriʾin minhum ma'ktasaba mina'l-ithm. The text, that is, establishes this: the share may be small; but to have a share is not to be exempt from a share.

And it is said who holds the measure: ʿinda'llāh. The qualification is the same as in the thirteenth verse: there too the ruling was given with the qualification ʿinda'llāh.

The contrast of measures the verse builds has one further side, and I record it as my own reading.

There is a reason for supposing it hayyin: in a report that spreads, no one sees the whole of it.

The one who first says it does not see where it will go. The link in the middle does not know through how many people it has already passed. The last link does not know the first source. Every link sees only its own share, and its own share really is small.

But the harm is the sum of the shares, and no one sees the sum.

And the verse's qualification ʿinda'llāh sits exactly at this point: the party that sees the sum is the party that holds the measure.

I record this reading as my own reading; its ground is that the verse has set the qualification ʿinda'llāh between hayyin and ʿaẓīm.

These two sūras are the texts in the Qurʾān that treat the ethics of report and of speech in the greatest detail, and they complete each other. Relying on the discussions of al-Ḥujurāt 49/6 and 49/12, I record the comparison:

What the two sūras build together is this, and I record it as my own reading:

al-Ḥujurāt regulates what is to be done with a report; al-Nūr fixes what an accusation is.

In al-Ḥujurāt the report may turn out to be true, and if it does one acts. In al-Nūr the matter is different: a claim about the privacy of a person is not even a thing whose truth is to be looked into, so long as it is not proved by four witnesses.

The shared backbone of the two sūras, however, is the same: the word is stopped before it goes into circulation. al-Ḥujurāt does this by waiting, al-Nūr by closing the door.

One. There is no such thing as the innocence of the middleman.

The verse's four verbs — to receive, to say, not to know, to count light — describe not a source but a carrier. And the text takes the carrier as its addressee.

This is the distinction most often lost in today's terms. There is a difference of degree between the man who first puts a claim about and the man who passes it on — the eleventh verse already recorded this (alladhī tawallā kibrahū). But a difference of degree is not an exemption.

Two. The diagnosing of "thinking it a small thing".

The most useful side of the verse is that it diagnoses not a behaviour but an error of appraisal. And the symptom of that error can be recognised: not having stopped to think at all before saying a word.

A man hesitates when he says something he thinks weighty. If there is no hesitation, that word is for that man hayyin. The verse gives a measure, and the measure can be read from within.

Three. And a limit: this verse does not forbid speaking.

What the verse forbids is the saying of what one has no knowledge of; not the saying of words. In the twelfth verse the saying of a sentence was commanded. The sūra asks not for silence but for the saying of what one has in hand.