تَنزِيلُ ٱلْكِتَٰبِ مِنَ ٱللَّهِ ٱلْعَزِيزِ ٱلْحَكِيمِ · إِنَّآ أَنزَلْنَآ إِلَيْكَ ٱلْكِتَٰبَ بِٱلْحَقِّ فَٱعْبُدِ ٱللَّهَ مُخْلِصًا لَّهُ ٱلدِّينَ · أَلَا لِلَّهِ ٱلدِّينُ ٱلْخَالِصُ
"The sending down of this Book is from God, the Mighty, the Wise. We sent the Book down to you with the truth; so serve God, making religion unmixedly His. Know well: unmixed religion belongs to God alone."
The root خ-ل-ص: a thing's separating out from what has been mixed into it and coming clear. Khalaṣa — it was delivered, it was set apart, it stayed pure. Khulāṣa — the essence itself.
The concrete use of the word is worth recording: the straining of oil or of milk, its separation from its dregs, is described with this root. That is, ikhlāṣ is not adding something — it is sorting out.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the root itself: what the verse asks is not that a quality be added to service, but that what has been mixed into it be taken out.
And it must be recorded that the word comes in the first three verses of the sūra in two different patterns:
| Verse | Word | Pattern | To whom it belongs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Mukhliṣan | Active participle — one who makes unmixed | Man's work |
| 3 | Al-Khāliṣ | Adjective — that which is unmixed | Religion itself |
In the second verse there is a command, in the third a ruling: man is to make it unmixed, because religion already belongs to God as something unmixed.
The verse relays the other side's reasoning from its own mouth — and the reasoning is worth recording.
I record this as an observation: in the words relayed, God is not denied. On the contrary: the goal is to draw nearer to Him. The dispute is not over existence but over the intermediary.
زُلْفَىٰ — root ز-ل-ف: to draw near, nearness. The root was treated in al-Wāqiʿa and in Qāf at 50/31 (uzlifati'l-jannatu li'l-muttaqīn); I rely on that treatment.
And the verse's answer does not argue with the reasoning — it states the ruling: inna'llāha yaḥkumu baynahum fī mā hum fīhi yakhtalifūn. That is, the matter is named as a disagreement, and its ruling is counted as deferred. This lies on the same line as the thread of disagreement treated in al-Jāthiya at 45/17 and in al-Baqara at 2/213.