al-Shūrā 42:38

Wa'lladhīna'stajābū li-rabbihim wa aqāmu'ṣ-ṣalāta wa amruhum shūrā baynahum wa mimmā razaqnāhum yunfiqūn

"And those who answer their Lord, and uphold the prayer, and whose affair is consultation among themselves, and who spend of what We have provided them."

The verse that gives the sūra its name.

This root is analysed here for the first time in the corpus, and it needs to be given in detail.

The concrete sense of the root is plain in the lexicographers' descriptions, and it comes from an unexpected place:

شَارَ الْعَسَلَ (shāra'l-ʿasal) — he drew the honey out of the hive, he took it.

Honey is inside the hive; it is unseen, it is closed in, and getting it out calls for both labour and care. The verb shāra is to take that honey from there and set it out.

The root's other derivatives carry the same core:

The shared core is this, and it is settled by the lexicographers' own descriptions: to take a thing out of where it is and set it out.

Now I make the link between this concrete sense and consultation. I give it as my own reading; its ground is the lexicographers' description of the root.

The honey is in the hive and no one sees it. Without opening the hive, how much there is and what it is like is not known. Without the work of drawing it out, the honey, while it exists, is as though it did not.

That the name of consultation is this word says this: within a community there are opinions, but until they are drawn out there are none.

And this says three things at once:

And the ishāra branch completes this: ashāra is to point with the hand — to make visible what is not seen. The same root both draws out the honey and points with the finger.

I give this as an analysis of a word. I do not claim that this sense of the root is a deliberate choice; what I record is the picture that stands beneath the word.

And here is the most overlooked side of the verse.

Shūrā is a noun on the pattern fuʿlā — like bushrā (good news), dhikrā (a reminder), ḥusnā (goodness). It is a verbal-noun pattern.

And the sentence is: wa amruhum shūrā baynahum.

There is no verb in the sentence, that is. It is a nominal sentence.

This yields three consequences, and I record all three:

First: not a command but a description. The sentence does not say "consult"; it says "their affair is consultation". And this accords with the list as a whole — what has been running since the thirty-sixth verse is a list of attributes.

Second: continuity. In Arabic a nominal sentence conveys fixity and continuity; a verbal sentence occurrence and renewal. This distinction was recorded in al-Ikhlāṣ: "a nominal sentence conveys fixity and continuity… not an event but a state."

Consultation, that is, is described not as a procedure resorted to in extraordinary situations but as the community's continuing state.

Third: the owner of the affair is the community. Amruhum — "their affair". And baynahum — "among themselves". Both pronouns point to the community.

The sentence says that the authority to be consulted is not outside.

The root occurs in this sense in three places in the Qurʾān, and in three different patterns. This is a verifiable fact:

Comparing the three occurrences is instructive:

• In al-Baqara 2/233 the consultation is between two people — mother and father. And the subject is a concrete decision about a child's care. The word, that is, holds at the smallest unit as well.
• In Āl ʿImrān 3/159 it is a command, and the one addressed is a single person: shāwirhum — "consult them". One who has the authority to decide, that is, is commanded to consult.
• In al-Shūrā 42/38 it is neither a command nor singular; it is the attribute of a community.

I record this as my own reading: the three occurrences show the word working at three different scales — family, leadership, community. And in none of them is an institution, a procedure or a method described.

This last point matters and must be written plainly: the verse does not describe a form of government. Neither how those to be consulted are determined, nor whether the outcome is binding, nor any procedure is stated. These are things the verse does not say, and to present what is unsaid as said is not done in this commentary, per the method (Method).

The sūra's being Meccan supports this too: as recorded in the section on the occasion of revelation, the word comes as the attribute of a community that has as yet no state, no army and no treasury.

And now I come to the most striking structural feature of the verse.

The expression shūrā has been set in the middle of the verse, between two acts of worship.

This table shows two things, and both can be verified from the text:

First — position. Shūrā stands between prayer and spending. And these two are the two acts of worship most often named together in the Qurʾān (yuqīmūna'ṣ-ṣalāta wa mimmā razaqnāhum yunfiqūn — in al-Baqara 2/3 and in many places). The sūra, that is, separates a pair that customarily comes together and sets consultation between them.

This is a verifiable fact of arrangement.

Second — pattern. Three of the four elements are verbal sentences, one a nominal sentence. And the nominal one is exactly in the middle.

I record this as my own reading, and it is not binding: a nominal sentence set between two verbs breaks the rhythm of the list. And the break comes exactly where the community's own affair is reached. The other three are things they "do"; this is what they "are".

One further comparison can be added, and it too is verified by the text: the same list will continue in the thirty-ninth verse with a verbal sentence (hum yantaṣirūn). The nominal sentence, that is, stands alone in the list.

min twice: mimmā = min mā. This pattern was treated in al-Ḥadīd at 57/7: min conveys partiality — "some of it". Not the whole.

And razaqnāhum — "what We have provided". The source of what is spent is not the one who spends. In al-Ḥadīd this was treated in detail by way of the word mustakhlafīn, and I do not repeat it.

What belongs here is this: all four of the elements contain a "giving".

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the shared structure of the four elements: four things a person has in hand are enumerated in the list, and all four are passed to the other side. And shūrā is, in this series, the turn of "speech".

What the verse states is not a procedure but a habit. And this distinction matters in practice: a procedure is set up and operated; a habit is noticed in its absence.

For a community's "affair to be consultation" does not mean holding consultative meetings. The measure the verse sets is simpler and rests on the word amruhum: whose affair is the affair counted to be? If within a community the affair is counted the affair of one person or one circle, then even if consultation takes place it is not shūrā; if the affair is counted the community's own, the form may vary.

And here the picture of the root works once more: the honey is in the hive. Honey not drawn out is honey that is not there. So too an opinion not spoken within a community — it exists and yet does not.