Yāsīn 36:22-24

Wa mā liya lā aʿbudu'lladhī faṭaranī wa ilayhi turjaʿūn · A-attakhidhu min dūnihī ālihatan in yuridni'r-Raḥmānu bi-ḍurrin lā tughni ʿannī shafāʿatuhum shayʾan wa lā yunqidhūn · Innī idhan lafī ḍalālin mubīn

"And why should I not serve the One who brought me into being? — and to Him you will be returned. Shall I take gods besides Him? If the Merciful wills harm for me, their intercession will avail me nothing and they cannot rescue me. Then I would indeed be in plain error."

The man does not say to his people "why do you not serve?" He builds both sentences upon himself:

• Wa mā liya lā aʿbudu — "what is it to me that I should not serve?"
• A-attakhidhu — "shall I take?"
• Innī idhan lafī ḍalālin mubīn — "then I would be in plain error."

All three sentences are in the first person singular. This is a verifiable datum of word order.

And its consequence is this: the man does not accuse his people. He does not condemn what they do, he does not lay a verdict on them. He conducts a piece of reasoning upon himself, and they listen to it.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the pronouns: had the same reasoning been built as "why do you do this?", the other side would have gone on the defensive. Built in the first person there is nothing to defend — the listener does not hear a verdict about himself, he hears a person reckoning his own account. And if the reasoning holds, the listener draws the conclusion himself.

And precisely for this reason the twenty-fourth verse is striking: "then I would be in plain error." The man uses the word "error" only of himself — and this should be compared with the place in the forty-seventh verse where those who deny will use the same word of the believers (taken up below).

And now comes the most important point of word order in the sūra.

The sentence begins in the first person singular — faṭaranī ("brought me into being"). And the same sentence ends in the second person plural — wa ilayhi turjaʿūna ("and you will be returned to Him").

In Arabic the shift in the direction of address is called iltifāt. Here the iltifāt is made inside a single sentence, with no break at all.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is this transition: the man builds the proof upon himself but leaves the conclusion to them. The subject of the sentence is "I", its target "you". And he does this not in the language of accusation but with a subordinate clause — what is said is slipped in almost like a reminder.

And these two words — وَإِلَيْهِ تُرْجَعُونَ — are the last two words of the sūra. The eighty-third verse ends with this clause. The sentence spoken by the man in the story, that is, becomes the closing sentence of the sūra. This is the clearest internal repetition in the sūra and will be taken up separately in the closing section.

The concrete sense of the root: to split, to cleave lengthwise. Faṭara — he split. Its derivatives show the direction of the root:

• فُطُور — a rift, a crack. al-Mulk 67/3: hal tarā min fuṭūr — "do you see any crack?" (treated in al-Mulk).
• إِفْطَار — to break the fast, that is, to split open a closedness.
• فِطْرَة — the state in which one is first split out; the original creation.
• فَاطِر — the one who splits out, who brings into being for the first time.

The root has occurred in al-Infiṭār, al-Mulk, al-Shūrā and al-Mursalāt; I do not repeat its basic analysis.

What belongs here is this: the man names God not by a known name but by the relation He has with him — alladhī faṭaranī, "the One who split me out / brought me into being." The proof, that is, begins with a personal datum: with his own existence.

And the sūra will repeat this at the close: in the seventy-seventh verse it will be said "has man not seen that We created him from a drop?", and in the seventy-eighth "and he has forgotten his own creation". The man in the story is the one who does not forget; the man at the close is the one who forgets. Both are looking at the same datum. I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the shared subject of the two places.

Word order: a-attakhidhu — an istifhām inkārī (a question that conveys denial): no answer is expected, an impossibility is announced.

And a condition is set up inside the sentence: in yuridni'r-Raḥmānu bi-ḍurr — "if the Merciful wills harm for me."

The choice of name is worth recording and is striking: the willing of harm is attached to the name al-Raḥmān. The man could have used "God" or some other name. He uses the name of mercy.

I record this as an observation: the sentence says, without distinguishing them, that mercy and harm belong to the same will. And this agrees with the pair al-ʿAzīz al-Raḥīm in the fifth verse of the sūra — there too the two sides were named together in a single sentence.

شَفَٰعَة — root ش-ف-ع: to make what is odd even. Shafʿ — even; witr — odd (the two occur together at al-Fajr 89/3, treated in al-Fajr). Shafāʿa — to join oneself to someone as a second, not to leave him alone.

The picture in the word is worth recording: intercession is standing beside a person. And the verse says this will not happen: lā tughni ʿannī shafāʿatuhum shayʾan — "their standing beside me will gain me nothing."

ٱلْغَنِى / تُغْنِ — root غ-ن-ي: a thing's leaving no need for anything else. Lā tughnī — "it does not meet the need, it does not suffice."

وَلَا يُنقِذُونِ — root ن-ق-ذ: to pull a thing out of danger, to rescue. Inqādh — rescue. And note: the yāʾ at the end of the verb has been dropped (yunqidhūnī → yunqidhūn), for the sake of the verse-ending. The same elision occurs in the twenty-fifth verse too (fa'smaʿūn).

A repetition inside the sūra: the same root returns in the forty-third verse — wa lā hum yunqadhūn (of those who drown). Both occurrences can be verified: one is what the man says of himself, the other what is said of those who drown at sea. In both, the absence of anyone to rescue is announced.