ذَٰلِكَ بِأَنَّ ٱللَّهَ مَوْلَى ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَأَنَّ ٱلْكَٰفِرِينَ لَا مَوْلَىٰ لَهُمْ
The third occurrence of the sūra's dhālika bi-anna pattern. And this is the most striking use of the pattern.
The two previous grounds showed something the addressee had done: they followed falsehood (3), they disliked (9). Here the ground is not something the addressee has done; it is who God is.
That is, the sentence finds the cause of a destruction not in a human act but in the presence or absence of a relationship.
Root: و-ل-ي. And this root possesses one of the widest families of meaning in Arabic. Its primary sense: nearness, adjacency, standing side by side with nothing else in between. Waliya'sh-shayʾ — he adjoined that thing, he came right after it.
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| وَلِيّ (walī) | The one who is near; friend; protector; the one who takes charge of a matter |
| وِلَايَة (walāya) | The authority of taking charge of a matter |
| مَوْلَى (mawlā) | Taken up separately below |
| تَوَلَّى (tawallā) | To take charge of a matter; and also: to turn away and go |
| أَوْلَى (awlā) | Nearer, more deserving |
The two opposite senses of the verb تَوَلَّى are interesting, and both will occur in this sūra: in verse 22 in tawallaytum, in verse 38 wa in tatawallaw. How the word carries the senses of "to turn towards" and "to turn away" together I shall take up at verse 22.
And the word mawlā is one of the most discussed words in Arabic; because it stands close to the class of aḍdād (words that carry opposite meanings together).
- The master — the one who frees his slave.
- The freedman — the one who is freed.
- A helper, a friend, a supporter.
- A cousin, a kinsman.
- The one who takes charge of a matter, the one responsible.
That is, the word can name both parties to a relationship. The common core is the relationship itself: a bond established between two people with no one in between.
In this verse the word is in the sense of "helper, the one who takes a person's part, the one who takes charge" and the context determines this: over against it stands lā mawlā lahum.
The first side: ٱللَّهَ مَوْلَى ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ The structure: noun + construct. "God is the mawlā of those who believe."
The second side: ٱلْكَٰفِرِينَ لَا مَوْلَىٰ لَهُمْ The structure: لَا + indefinite noun + adverbial. "As for the deniers: there is no mawlā at all for them."
And the لَا here is called in grammar lā al-nāfiya li'l-jins (the lā that negates the genus). This particle announces that not one individual of a thing is present — not "there is not one" but "there is none of the kind".
That is, the sentence does not say: "the mawlā of the deniers is not God". It says: "the deniers have no mawlā at all."
The difference is large. The first sentence would have rejected a relationship; the second says that the position is empty.
In the tenth verse a destruction was recounted: dammara'llāhu ʿalayhim. And the eleventh verse gives the cause of that destruction.
This joins with the following verse as well: in verse 13 it will be said fa-lā nāṣira lahum — "and they had no helper". The same pattern, two verses apart, with two different words:
| Verse | Expression | Word |
|---|---|---|
| 11 | lā mawlā lahum | و-ل-ي — the one who takes a person's part |
| 13 | fa-lā nāṣira lahum | ن-ص-ر — the one who helps |
Both are built with the lā al-nāfiya li'l-jins. The sūra marks the same emptiness twice, with two different words.
And this connects directly with the central question of the section al-Ḥashr: that sūra asked from beginning to end "what are you relying on?" and counted off the collapsing securities one by one. These two verses ask the same question from the other side: who is behind you?