إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ يَرْمُونَ ٱلْمُحْصَنَٰتِ ٱلْغَٰفِلَٰتِ ٱلْمُؤْمِنَٰتِ لُعِنُوا۟ فِى ٱلدُّنْيَا وَٱلْءَاخِرَةِ وَلَهُمْ عَذَابٌ عَظِيمٌ
Inna'lladhīna yarmūna'l-muḥṣanāti'l-ghāfilāti'l-muʾmināti luʿinū fi'l-dunyā wa'l-ākhirati wa lahum ʿadhābun ʿaẓīm
"Those who cast a charge at chaste, unsuspecting, believing women are cursed in this world and in the hereafter; and for them there is a great punishment."
| Attribute | Root | Its sense | What it looks at |
|---|---|---|---|
| ٱلْمُحْصَنَات | ح-ص-ن | Protected — like a fortress | The actual condition |
| ٱلْغَٰفِلَات | غ-ف-ل | Unsuspecting, to whom it never even occurred | The state of mind |
| ٱلْمُؤْمِنَات | أ-م-ن | Believing | The condition in belief |
The second attribute is one of the most affecting words in the sūra and deserves separate treatment.
Root: غ-ف-ل. Its concrete sense is to be unaware of a thing, not to hold it in mind, to have it escape one's notice. Ghafla — inattention; ghufl — bearing no mark upon it, unbranded (used of a piece of land or of a camel).
The second sense of the root is interesting: ghufl is what bears no trace or mark upon it. An unbranded camel, a stretch of land with no track across it. At the centre of the word, then, there is also the idea of "bearing no mark".
And in the verse's context this builds a picture: the party slandered is the party upon whom there is no mark at all. And slander is an attempt to set a mark where there is none.
And the attribute has another side: ghāfilāt means "those to whom such a thing never even occurred". The attribute conveys, that is, not only that the act was not done but that there was not even a thought of it in the mind.
And the tense is perfect. The ruling is announced not as something to be given in the future but as already given.
The root ل-ع-ن occurred in the sixth and seventh verses in the discussion of liʿān: laʿnatu'llāhi ʿalayh. The same word, in two different places:
| Verse | Who says it | Upon whom |
|---|---|---|
| 7 | A man — about himself, on a condition | Upon himself, if he is lying |
| 23 | The text — as a ruling | Upon those who cast the charge |
What a man calls down upon himself conditionally in the seventh verse is announced as a ruling in the twenty-third. This is an observation about the word order, and the places of the words stand in the text.
| 24/4 | 24/23 | |
|---|---|---|
| Verb | yarmūna'l-muḥṣanāt | yarmūna'l-muḥṣanāti'l-ghāfilāti'l-muʾmināt |
| Outcome | A worldly sanction — eighty strokes, the rejection of testimony | A ruling of the hereafter — a curse, a great punishment |
| Condition | The failure to bring four witnesses | — |
| A note of repentance | Present (24/5) | — |
The two verses give the counterpart of the same act on two different planes. And the increase in the attributes (three of them) shows that the second verse takes as its subject a narrower case — the case in which innocence is certain.