al-Ḥujurāt 49:14

Qālati'l-aʿrābu āmannā, qul lam tuʾminū wa lākin qūlū aslamnā wa lammā yadkhuli'l-īmānu fī qulūbikum, wa in tuṭīʿu'llāha wa rasūlahū lā yalitkum min aʿmālikum shayʾā, inna'llāha ghafūrun raḥīm

"The bedouin said, 'We have believed.' Say: You have not believed; but say 'we have submitted'. For faith has not yet entered your hearts. If you obey God and His Messenger, He will not diminish anything of your deeds. God is Forgiving, Merciful."

This verse is one of those on which the most mistaken rulings have been built. For that reason one must begin from the first word.

The word ٱلْأَعْرَاب (al-aʿrāb) does not mean "the Arabs".

Aʿrāb is not the plural of ʿarab; it is a separate word and states a way of living: nomadic, dwelling in the desert, outside the settled order. A city-dwelling Arab is, in respect of language, ʿarab, but he is not aʿrābī.

The verse, that is, is not speaking of an ethnic group; it is speaking of a form of life and of a community living within that form.

This is a point that deserves to be dwelt on separately, and its proof is the Qurʾān itself.

In Sūrat al-Tawba, two verses apart, there are two different rulings about the same word:

"The bedouin are more severe in denial and hypocrisy…" (al-Tawba 9/97) "And among the bedouin there are those who believe in God and the Last Day…" (al-Tawba 9/99)

The same word, two verses apart, two opposite rulings.

And between them stands 9/98, which also describes a part of the bedouin. The Qurʾān, that is, relates this community by dividing it: some are thus, some are otherwise.

The consequence of this is plain and coincides exactly with the general measure of this commentary: what the verse describes is a quality, not an identity. Whoever carries that quality is who the verse is speaking of; whoever does not carry it, it is not speaking of. That the word is the name of a community does not change this, because the Qurʾān itself has divided that community in two.

And in this verse too there is a qualification: the verse does not say "all the bedouin"; it says "qālati'l-aʿrāb" — it records a particular incident and the group that spoke in it. The account of the occasion of revelation speaks of a particular delegation as well.

For fourteen verses the sūra has proceeded by direct address. Here it turns to a sentence of narrative: "They said."

And what they said is: āmannā — "we have believed."

The word order of the sentence is worth recording: āmannā is in the perfect and states a completed act. They are speaking, that is, not of a process but of a closed condition: the thing is done, belief has been given.

The answer comes directly: lam tuʾminū — "you have not believed."

And the hardness of the refusal must be seen. The verse does not soften the sentence, does not say "not entirely", does not say "incompletely". It negates directly.

But immediately afterwards it points to a place: wa lākin qūlū aslamnā — "but say 'we have submitted'."

The refusal, that is, is not an exclusion but a correction of place. The verse does not take them out of one category and put them nowhere; it places them in another category. And that category is not a negative one — islām is a positive word of the Qurʾān.

This agrees with the general character of the sūra: after every heavy sentence a place is left.

This verse is the central text of the whole classical debate on the difference between the two words. This verse was named with that description in the section on al-Dhāriyāt, and the table given there was this:

Now let us open out the concrete senses of the roots.

أ-م-ن. Its root sense is fearlessness, being in safety, tranquillity. Amn — safety. Amān — a guarantee of safety. Amāna — what is left in trust. Muʾmin — one who both trusts and gives trust. And among God's names al-Muʾmin is from this root too.

At the centre of the root there is an inward state: the going of fear, the settling of the heart. Faith, by its root, is not an "accepting" but a trusting. And trusting is something that cannot be produced by command.

س-ل-م. Its root sense is to be sound, to be without defect, to be complete. Salāma — soundness. Salām — peace. Silm — peace. Taslīm — to hand a thing over complete.

At the centre of the root there is an operation: handing a thing over to the other party in sound condition. Islām is in Form IV: to hand oneself over.

The difference between the two roots follows from this:

The last line is the finest detail of the word order and is generally skipped.

Islām is related with a verb: aslamnā — "we have submitted". The subject is the human being; a thing has been done.

Faith, on the other hand, is related with an entering: yadkhuli'l-īmānu fī qulūbikum — "let faith enter your hearts". And here faith is the subject, not the human being. The person does not do faith; faith enters the person.

The two words, that is, stand in two different grammatical positions: the one a work the person does, the other something that comes to the person. This establishes the difference between them by word order before any definition.

I record this as my own reading; the subjects of the verbs are in the wording of the verse.

In the classical sources the relation of these two words has been debated at length and no single conclusion has been reached. As was recorded in the section on al-Dhāriyāt too, the two words are found used for one another in some places.

The main tendencies recorded:

I impose no preference, and this is a question debated among the schools as well; I issue no juristic or theological ruling. The sentence recorded in the section on al-Dhāriyāt holds here too: "The relation between the two words cannot be settled without taking the whole of the Qurʾān into account."

But the distinction this verse makes within itself is clear and independent of the debate: here islām is placed as a more outward category than īmān.

This is the finest and most important word in the verse.

In Arabic there are two particles that negate the past, and there is a difference between them:

The two differences the grammarians record are these:

One. Continuity. Lammā states that the negation has continued unbroken up to the moment of speaking. In lam this is not a condition.

Two — and the more important: expectation. Lammā implies that what is negated is expected to happen. Its exact counterpart in English is "not yet".

This is the difference between "he did not come" and "he has not come yet": the second says that his coming is expected.

Now let us look at the sentence of the verse.

The verse uses two negations, and the two with different particles:

قُل لَمْ تُؤْمِنُوا۟ — "you have not believed" (lam) ولَمَّا يَدْخُلِ ٱلْإِيمَٰنُ فِى قُلُوبِكُمْ — "faith has not yet entered your hearts" (lammā)

Two different particles have been used in the same sentence. This cannot be a coincidence.

The first negation refuses the claim: lam tuʾminū — what you say is not true.

The second negation describes the condition and leaves the door open: lammā yadkhul — it has not entered yet.

The distance between "it has not entered yet" and "it will not enter" is the whole mercy of this verse.

The verse does not close a door. It describes a process: faith is something expected to enter the heart; at this moment it has not entered; but it is expected.

And the word order supports this: the sentence that follows immediately is a conditional sentence — wa in tuṭīʿu'llāha wa rasūlah — "if you obey God and His Messenger…" A way, that is, is being shown.

Seeing this difference of particle determines how the verse is to be read. Had lammā not been used, the sentence would have been an exclusion. With lammā it becomes a statement of a condition and an invitation.

I record this as a reading resting on the difference of particles the grammarians record; that lammā implies expectation is a settled note in Arabic grammar.

دَخَلَ — root د-خ-ل. To enter. And the verb sets up a conception of place: the heart is somewhere that is entered.

This is consistent with the Qurʾān's general language about the heart: the heart is sealed (al-Baqara 2/7), locked (Muḥammad 47/24), it holds a sickness within it (al-Baqara 2/10), there is rust upon it (al-Muṭaffifīn 83/14). All of these are conceptions of a closed volume.

And here too there is an intersection with the sūra's name. A ḥujra is an enclosed volume; so is the heart. The sūra began by preserving the boundary of the chambers outside; at the very end it stands at the door of the chamber within.

I record this intersection as my own reading; the text does not say that it sets up such a link.

لَا يَلِتْكُم — root أ-ل-ت. This root was treated in the section on al-Ṭūr and this verse was named there. The sense recorded: to diminish, to lessen, to cut short what is due.

The same root occurred at al-Ṭūr 52/21: wa mā alatnāhum min ʿamalihim min shayʾ — "We diminished nothing of their deeds."

The pattern: mā/lā … min shayʾin — an absolute negation. The min is redundant (zāʾida) and gives the sense of "nothing at all".

A note on the variant readings: it is transmitted that the word is also read in the form لَا يَأْلِتْكُمْ (with hamza, yaʾlitkum). Both readings go back to the same root and the sense does not change. I give no imam's name.

The work of the sentence is this: the verse has placed those it addresses in a lower category. This could have produced the anxiety that what they had done would be counted worthless. The sentence cuts this off: if you obey, nothing of your deeds will be diminished.

The difference of category, that is, does not mean a deduction from the return for a deed.

And this is the most just side of the verse, and I stress it as my own reading: the verse on the one hand refuses the claim, and on the other gives what has been done its due. It does not confuse the two operations. A person's claim may be excessive; that does not require that what he has done should go unrequited.

إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ — And the verse closes, as in the fifth verse of the sūra, with a verse-ending of forgiveness.

One. The difference between joining and believing.

The distinction the verse sets up holds for anyone who joins any structure: to join an institution, a movement, a community is one thing, and to believe in what it carries is another. The first is an operation and is completed; the second is a process and takes time.

In the section on al-Naṣr this verse was already named with that description, and the sentence recorded there was: "The number of those who enter does not tell the quality of those who enter."

Two. And that this verse cannot be used about someone else.

This is the most important note and it must be written plainly.

In the verse the side that gives the ruling is clear: the answer was given to the Prophet with the command qul (say), and the source of the knowledge is revelation. For a person to look at another person and say "you are only a muslim, you are not a believer" is not an authority this verse gives.

Because:

• The measure of the verse is the inside of the heart, and the thirteenth verse had said that the measure is ʿinda'llāh.
• As was recorded in the section on al-Mumtaḥina: a ruling about a person is built upon outward signs and declaration; the authority to know the heart has been given to no one.
• And to use this verse about someone else would be to do the very thing the eleventh and twelfth verses of the sūra forbid: to place a person lower on the basis of something you cannot see.

The sūra's own inner logic, that is, closes off the use of this verse as a weapon against another. The verse stands so that the one who reads it may measure his own claim.