وَلْتَكُن مِّنكُمْ أُمَّةٌ يَدْعُونَ إِلَى ٱلْخَيْرِ · وَلَا تَكُونُوا۟ كَٱلَّذِينَ تَفَرَّقُوا۟ وَٱخْتَلَفُوا۟
Wa'ltakun minkum ummatun yadʿūna ila'l-khayri wa yaʾmurūna bi'l-maʿrūfi wa yanhawna ʿani'l-munkari wa ulāʾika humu'l-mufliḥūn · Wa lā takūnū ka'lladhīna tafarraqū wa'khtalafū min baʿdi mā jāʾahumu'l-bayyināt, wa ulāʾika lahum ʿadhābun ʿaẓīm
"Let there be among you a community calling to the good, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong. Those are the ones who prosper. · Do not be like those who split apart and fell into division after the clear proofs had come to them. For them there is a great punishment."
The lexicographers differ over the function of the particle min in the verse, and the disagreement is not to be concealed:
| Reading | What minkum means | Consequence |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tabʿīḍ — "some of you" | The duty lies on a group (read as a collective obligation, farḍ kifāya) |
| 2 | Bayāniyya — "be so, that community being you" | The duty lies on all of them |
But one datum of the text can be recorded, and I record it: the same three attributes will be laid six verses later, at verse 110, on the whole community (taʾmurūna bi'l-maʿrūfi wa tanhawna ʿani'l-munkar) — and there the particle min is absent. This is the difference of word order between the two verses, and they can also be read as completing each other.
| # | Verb | Direction |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yadʿūna ila'l-khayr | Calling — positive, the widest |
| 2 | Yaʾmurūna bi'l-maʿrūf | Enjoining — the good that is known |
| 3 | Yanhawna ʿani'l-munkar | Forbidding — what is rejected |
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the order of the verbs: the list opens with the positive and closes with the negative. And the first verb (daʿwa) carries no compulsion at all — it only calls.
- مَعْرُوف — root ع-ر-ف: known, recognised. A passive participle.
- مُنكَر — root ن-ك-ر: not recognised, found strange. A passive participle.
Both are built on the axis of recognition, and both are in the passive pattern. That is, the good is named "what is known" and the evil "what is found strange".
| Verse | Subject | Who |
|---|---|---|
| 104 | Ummatun minkum | A community from among you |
| 110 | Kuntum khayra ummatin | The whole of the community addressed |
| 114 | Ummatun qāʾima min ahli'l-kitāb | A community standing upright from among the People of the Book |
Three occurrences, three separate subjects — and the third is from the People of the Book. This is a fact verifiable within the sūra and settles directly how verse 110 is to be read. We shall return to it below.
This construction was treated at verse 19, and a table of five places was drawn up there. I rely on al-Baqara 2/213, al-Shūrā 42/14 and al-Jāthiya 45/17 and do not repeat them.
One. The word that comes here is al-bayyināt, not al-ʿilm. At verse 19 of the sūra al-ʿilm came. That is, the sūra uses the same pattern twice with two different words.
| Verse | Pattern | What comes |
|---|---|---|
| 19 | Min baʿdi mā jāʾahumu'l-ʿilm | Knowledge |
| 105 | Min baʿdi mā jāʾahumu'l-bayyināt | The clear proofs |
Two. In the other occurrences this sentence is a statement; here it is the ground of a prohibition. Wa lā takūnū ka'lladhīna… — "do not be like them". That is, a sentence said about others is turned into an example for the one addressed.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the mood of the sentence: the sūra tells this here not as a piece of history but as a possibility. It is assumed that the same thing may happen to the one addressed. And indeed the sūra will record at verse 152 that something like it did happen.
The two occurrences of the root ف-ر-ق in the sūra must be recorded: wa lā tafarraqū (103) — ka'lladhīna tafarraqū (105). One a prohibition, the other an instance of its breach; two verses apart. This was recorded in the table in the introduction.