al-Fatḥ 48:23

Sunnata'llāhi'llatī qad khalat min qabl; wa lan tajida li-sunnati'llāhi tabdīlā

"The way of God, which has run its course before. And you will find no change in the way of God."

The concrete sense of the root has to be dwelt on, because the word's common use has drifted far from its root.

The verb at the centre of the root: سَنَّ — to make a thing even, flowing, smooth.

Uses:

Two ideas meet in the root: smoothing by friction, and flowing along an even channel.

From this sunna is born: a road opened by much repetition, made smooth, its track worn plain. The English expressions to blaze a trail, a beaten path, a well-worn track carry the same image.

So sunna is not "tradition" or "custom". In the logic of the root there is a repetition and a channel opened by that repetition. If water always runs in the same place it cuts a bed; after that it does not run elsewhere — because it has a bed.

The construction occurs in several places in the Qurʾān, and in all of them it conveys the same thing: a working that does not change.

And the word occurs in the plural too: "Ways have passed away before you; so travel the earth and see how the end of those who denied came about" (Āl ʿImrān 3/137).

Āl ʿImrān 3/137 defines the concept. There the ways are presented as things that can be observed in history: "travel the earth and see". Sunnat Allāh, that is, is not a hidden law but a regularity that can be traced.

Which way is spoken of in this verse is understood by looking at the preceding one:

"Had those who disbelieve fought you, they would surely have turned their backs and fled. Then they would have found neither protector nor helper." (22) "The way of God, which has run its course before." (23)

The way recounted, then, is this: a structure that persists in an unjust position is in the end left without support, and breaks up. This is not an event that happened once but a working that repeats.

And the verse says that this has happened before: allatī qad khalat min qabl — "which has passed away before".

خَلَتْ — root خ-ل-و: to be emptied, to pass away. Khalā (it was empty), khālī (empty), khalwa (being alone). Used of time it means "it has passed, it is behind us". The Qurʾān uses it often: "That was a community that has passed away" (al-Baqara 2/134, 141).

The word comes in the accusative: sunnata'llāh. This is a point the grammarians dwell on, and it is explained in two ways:

Both explanations bring the sense to the same place and require no preference between them: the sentence is not a piece of news but the statement of a rule.

لَنْ — absolute negation directed at the future: "you will never find".

تَجِدَ — a singular address. This is striking: the preceding verse addressed a plural (qātalakumu), and here it returns to the singular. The rule is being stated to a single person — or, on one of the classical explanations, "you" here answers to any person at all: "whoever looks will not find it."

تَبْدِيل — root ب-د-ل, which occurred in the fifteenth verse.

And the link between the two verses is one of the strongest weaves in the sūra:

The same root eight verses apart, at two opposite poles. In one a human will, in the other the limit of that will.

I record this as my own reading, but the shared root and the position of the two verses are data that can be verified.

The concept of sunnat Allāh is the core of the Qurʾān's view of history, and it calls for careful speech.

What the concept says: events are not random; particular behaviours have particular consequences, and that relation is not arbitrary.

What the concept does not say: which event is the application of which way. The Qurʾān gives examples for the past; but it grants no authority to name an event happening now.

This distinction must be preserved. For this is where the concept is most often abused: looking at the outcome of an event and framing a retrospective verdict — "so the way of God worked thus, so that side must have been in the wrong". This is the very manner of thinking the sūra itself rejects.

For the event the sūra recounts is exactly the opposite: the outcome as it appears is a step backwards, yet the sūra calls it a fatḥ. By its own subject matter, that is, the sūra shows that judging by outcomes can go wrong.

I record this as my own reading: sunnat Allāh is a measure given for understanding the past; it is not an authority given for judging the present. The command in Āl ʿImrān 3/137 is "travel and see" — not "pass judgement".

And this commentary does not enter current politics. The application of this concept to contemporary events is a field that Method explicitly leaves outside.