al-Nisāʾ 4:122-126

Wa'lladhīna āmanū wa ʿamilu'ṣ-ṣāliḥāti sa-nudkhiluhum jannātin tajrī min taḥtiha'l-anhār … · Laysa bi-amāniyyikum wa lā amāniyyi ahli'l-kitāb, man yaʿmal sūʾan yujza bihī wa lā yajid lahū min dūni'llāhi waliyyan wa lā naṣīrā · Wa man yaʿmal mina'ṣ-ṣāliḥāti min dhakarin aw unthā wa huwa muʾminun fa-ulāʾika yadkhulūna'l-jannata wa lā yuẓlamūna naqīrā · Wa man aḥsanu dīnan mimman aslama wajhahū li'llāhi wa huwa muḥsinun wa'ttabaʿa millata Ibrāhīma ḥanīfā, wa'ttakhadha'llāhu Ibrāhīma khalīlā

"Those who believe and do righteous deeds We shall admit into gardens beneath which rivers flow… It goes neither by your vain hopes nor by the vain hopes of the People of the Book. Whoever does an evil will be repaid for it, and will find for himself no protector or helper besides God. And whoever does righteous deeds, male or female, and is a believer — these enter the Garden and are not wronged by so much as the groove of a date-stone. And who is finer in religion than one who surrenders his face to God, does good, and follows the way of Abraham (Ibrāhīm) as a ḥanīf? God took Abraham as a friend."

This sentence is one of the plainest textual grounds for the method's rule that "no sweeping ruling is made about a group", and it must be recorded separately.

The sentence counts both parties at the same time:

And the structure of the sentence must be recorded: the same rejection, in the same word, is applied to both parties at once.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the sentence is built twice: the verse says that a belonging does not by itself produce a return — and it says this while taking in the very community it is addressing.

The same measure was treated at al-Baqara 2/62, where the section was headed: "A label does not save." I rely on that treatment.

And the continuation of the verse ties the measure to an act: man yaʿmal sūʾan yujza bih — "whoever does an evil will be repaid for it." The measure is not a name but an act.

The hundred and twenty-fourth verse ties the return plainly to both parties: min dhakarin aw unthā wa huwa muʾmin.

And this happens for the third time in the sūra.

In all three verses the same structure: in the counting of a right or a return, the two parties are named separately. This is a weave that can be verified within the sūra, and it will be tabled again in the concluding section.

Naqīr — the small hollow on the back of a date-stone. And the word is the third "smallest measure" word in the sūra:

Three separate small measures in three verses, and all three state the absence of injustice. This is a countable fact.

The root خ-ل-ل: the gap between things, an interval. Khilāl — an interval; khalal — a gap, a deficiency. And khalīl — according to what the lexicographers record, the friend whose friendship has worked its way into a person's inner gaps.

This concrete sense of the word is worth recording: friendship is drawn as something that fills the gaps.

And the word ḥanīf must be recorded: the root ح-ن-ف — to incline towards one direction, to lean. The root was treated at al-Rūm 30/30 and in al-Baqara. I rely on those treatments.