ألم تر إلى الذين أوتوا نصيبا من الكتاب يشترون الضلالة ويريدون أن تضلوا السبيل · والله أعلم بأعدائكم وكفى بالله وليا وكفى بالله نصيرا · من الذين هادوا يحرفون الكلم عن مواضعه ويقولون سمعنا وعصينا … ولو أنهم قالوا سمعنا وأطعنا واسمع وانظرنا لكان خيرا لهم وأقوم
A-lam tara ila'lladhīna ūtū naṣīban mina'l-kitābi yashtarūna'l-ḍalālata wa yurīdūna an taḍillu'l-sabīl · Wa'llāhu aʿlamu bi-aʿdāʾikum wa kafā bi'llāhi waliyyan wa kafā bi'llāhi naṣīrā · Mina'lladhīna hādū yuḥarrifūna'l-kalima ʿan mawāḍiʿihī …
"Have you not seen those who were given a share of the Book? They buy error and want you to lose the way… Some of them shift words from their places and say 'we hear and we disobey'… Had they said 'we hear and we obey, listen, and look upon us', it would have been better for them and more upright."
Per the method (Method) a record is entered, and this record holds for all the discussions running from the forty-fourth verse to the hundred and sixty-second.
| Wording | What it says |
|---|---|
| Alladhīna ūtū naṣīban mina'l-kitāb | "Those given a share of the Book" — an indefinite section |
| Mina'lladhīna hādū | Min — "some of them"; a particle stating a part |
| End of 4/46: fa-lā yuʾminūna illā qalīlā | A qualification of exception |
| 4/162: lākini'l-rāsikhūna fi'l-ʿilmi minhum | A section is set apart from within the same community |
The verses themselves, that is, make a division. And what is at issue in this commentary are attributes; whoever bears the attribute is included in it. No general ruling is made about any religious, ethnic or national group.
"The root حرف: an edge, a tip, a border. Not the middle of a thing but its rim… On this reckoning taḥrīf, in the word's own logic, is: to bend a thing at its edge. Not to tear the text down the middle, but to pull it slightly at the rim, to shift its direction. A slight crookedness produces a great deviation at a distance."
What belongs here is this: in the expression in al-Nisāʾ there is an addition — ʿan mawāḍiʿihī ("from their places").
م-و-ض-ع: the place in which a thing has been set. The verse, that is, describes distortion as a displacement: the word is not destroyed, it is moved from its place.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the use of the two words together: when ḥarf (edge) and mawḍiʿ (the place in which a thing is set) come side by side, the picture that emerges is this — the word stands; the place where it stands changes.
The verse relates one utterance, then gives the utterance that could have taken its place. Setting the two side by side is the verse's own doing.
| What is said | What could have been said |
|---|---|
| Samiʿnā wa ʿaṣaynā — we hear and we disobey | Samiʿnā wa aṭaʿnā — we hear and we obey |
| Wa'smaʿ ghayra musmaʿin | Wa'smaʿ |
| Rāʿinā | Unẓurnā |
In all three items what changes is small; and the verse qualifies this with the word aqwam (more upright, more erect).
Aqwam — the elative from the root ق-و-م. The root occurs in this sūra at the fifth verse (qiyāmā), at the thirty-fourth (qawwāmūn) and here; it will return once more at the hundred and thirty-fifth (qawwāmīna bi'l-qisṭ). The root's four occurrences in the sūra will be set out in a table in the concluding section.
وَلَىًّۢا بِأَلْسِنَتِهِمْ — layy: root ل-و-ي, to twist, to bend. And the word carries the picture of distortion over into the tongue: as the words are shifted from their places, so the tongue too is twisted.
I record this as an observation about word order: the verse uses two verbs in the same place — yuḥarrifūn (to shift) and layyan bi-alsinatihim (twisting with their tongues). Both are verbs that state crookedness.