al-Aḥzāb 33:36

Wa mā kāna li-muʾminin wa lā muʾminatin idhā qaḍa'llāhu wa rasūluhu amran an yakūna lahumu'l-khiyaratu min amrihim, wa man yaʿṣi'llāha wa rasūlahu fa-qad ḍalla ḍalālan mubīnā

"When God and His Messenger have decided a matter, it is not for a believing man or a believing woman to have a choice in that matter of theirs. And whoever disobeys God and His Messenger has strayed into a manifest straying."

This verse is a principle placed before the account in the thirty-seventh verse. The method of the sūra is visible once more here: first the principle, then the application.

The fourth and fifth verses had abolished the ascription of the adopted son; the thirty-sixth verse says that the right of choice falls away in the face of a decision; and the thirty-seventh will recount the concrete event where these two intersect.

Immediately after the thirty-fifth verse, the man-woman pair is used once more.

And here the function of the repetition is different: in verse 35 it was a list of recompense, here it is an obligation. The Qurʾān says both in the same dual form.

I record this as a datum of the text: on the same page the sūra names both the right and the obligation separately for the two sexes.

Since it comes indefinite and in a negative context it conveys generality: "for no believing man and no believing woman".

The right of choice, preference. From the same root as khayr (good).

This duality of the root is worth noting: in Arabic khayr means "what is good"; and ikhtiyār, "to choose what is good". That is, the word for choice carries a value judgement in its root.

And the word al-khiyara occurs in two places in the Qurʾān: here and at al-Qaṣaṣ 28/68 (mā kāna lahumu'l-khiyara — there too it is said that the authority of choice is not with people).

This note is important and is generally skipped. The verse does not say "they have no right of choice in anything". It speaks of a field bounded by a conditional clause: idhā qaḍa'llāhu wa rasūluhu amran — "when they have decided a matter."

That is, the right of choice is not abolished in general; it is said that in a matter about which a decision has been made, one cannot set oneself against that decision.

And the word amr occurs twice in the verse: qaḍa'llāhu… amran and min amrihim. The same word, once the subject of the decision, once the affair of the people. The word order shows the place where the two coincide.

To complete a matter, to settle it by a decision, to finish it. It occurred in the twenty-third verse as qaḍā naḥbah.

In the root of the word there is a finishedness and it agrees with the logic of the verse: if a decision has been made, the matter is closed.

ضَلَّ — root ض-ل-ل. To lose the way, to stray; and the concrete sense of the root is to be lost inside something: ḍalla'l-māʾu fi'l-laban — the water was lost in the milk.

Again a cognate accusative: ḍalla ḍalālan mubīnā. The fourth reinforcement in the sūra.

The measure of the verse regulates the order between decision and objection.

And what is striking is this: the verse takes as its subject not objection itself but its timing. The discussion before a decision is made is not the subject of the verse. The subject is the claim of choice that begins after the decision has been made.

Its present-day form holds for any process of shared decision: to object before a decision is taken is a part of the process; to say "I do not go along" after it has been taken annuls not the decision but the process.

I record this as my own reading, and I do not confuse the religious context of the verse with this general observation.