al-Ḥujurāt 49:6

Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū in jāʾakum fāsiqun bi-nabaʾin fa-tabayyanū an tuṣībū qawman bi-jahālatin fa-tuṣbiḥū ʿalā mā faʿaltum nādimīn

"O you who believe! If a transgressor brings you a report, investigate it thoroughly; lest you harm a people in ignorance and then become regretful over what you did."

This verse is the densest sentence in al-Ḥujurāt — perhaps in the Qurʾān — about the ethics of knowledge. It has five elements, and all five are links of one chain:

The verse lays down no prohibition. It lays down a procedure. In this respect it stands alone in the sūra.

Root: ف-س-ق. This root was treated in the sections on al-Ḥashr, al-Ḥadīd and al-Munāfiqūn. The concrete sense recorded there was this: the date's coming out of its skin — fasaqati'r-ruṭabatu ʿan qishrihā. The same verb is used when a mouse comes out of its hole.

The summary recorded: fisq is not the name of a "sin" but the name of a position — the thing that ought to be inside being outside. And the place gone out of is a husk: a protective covering. Fruit that comes out of its skin is both left unprotected and spoiled.

The work of the word in this verse is a distinct one and asks for attention.

The verse does not say that the bringer of the report is a liar. It does not say kādhib. It says fāsiq — one who stands outside the boundary. And this distinction determines the logic of the procedure the verse lays down:

• If the bringer of the report were a liar, the right course would be to reject the report.
• If the bringer of the report is a fāsiq, the right course is to investigate the report.

The verse, that is, does not identify the condition of the source with the truth of the report. What a fāsiq brings may well be true. The fault of the source does not make the report void; it only prevents its being accepted directly.

This is a distinction that looks fine at first sight but has large consequences, and it is often lost in the modern setting of information. To look at who said a thing and then pass a verdict on its content — in either direction — is to depart from both halves of the procedure the verse sets up. What the verse says is: the source determines how much the report is to be investigated; not whether it is true.

Root: ن-ب-أ. This root was treated in detail in the section on al-Nabaʾ, and this verse was specially dwelt on there. I do not repeat it; the summary is this:

• Beneath the root lies the idea of coming from one place to another, being carried. A report is what is carried.
• According to the definition recorded in al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī's al-Mufradāt and widely transmitted in the exegetical tradition, a nabaʾ is a report that carries great benefit, and by which knowledge or a strong conviction comes about.
• And in the section on al-Nabaʾ a note was entered on this definition, precisely on account of this verse: the Qurʾān uses the word nabaʾ here for a report that is commanded to be verified — that is, one that may be false. The condition of the definition is therefore not that the report be true but that it be of a kind to carry weight if it is true.
• The sentence drawn out in the section on al-Nabaʾ: "A nabaʾ is a report at which something has to change once it is heard."

And this determines the scope of the verse. The verse does not take every rumour as its subject. What it takes as its subject is a report of the kind that will be acted upon once it is heard. As was recorded in the section on al-Nabaʾ: the report of this verse is heavy enough to lead to an expedition against a people. For a trivial piece of gossip the verse would not have said "investigate it thoroughly".

This makes the verse more serious still: the procedure is laid down for reports whose consequences are heavy.

This is the command of the verse, and here there is a difference of variant reading. Because the difference changes the meaning, it must be taken up.

Two readings are recorded in the sources:

Both readings are transmitted among the variant readings of mass transmission. Since I cannot state with certainty which imam read which, I write no names; this is the practice adopted in this commentary.

How the two readings change the meaning is this:

Tabayyun is an active command: you will do something in order to bring the truth of the report to light. You will ask, you will check, you will go to the source. The concrete sense of the root — bayn: the space between two things, separation — implies an act of separating: separating the true from the false.

Tathabbut is a passive command: when the report comes, do not move from your place. The concrete sense of the root — thabata: a thing's standing fixed and in place — implies an immobility: do not hurry, delay your reaction.

And the two readings complete one another. When a report comes, two distinct errors are possible: acting on false information, and acting too early even on true information. Tabayyun closes off the first, tathabbut the second.

I record this complementarity as my own reading. It is also transmitted in the classical sources that the two readings were held to be close in meaning. But the concrete senses of the two roots are different, and there is no need to erase that difference: one is a command to investigate, the other a command to halt.

And in practice the two work together: investigation takes time; to gain time one must halt. Tathabbut, that is, is the precondition of tabayyun.

أَصَابَ — root ص-و-ب. Its root sense is to hit, to reach the target. Muṣība is from the same root: what strikes a person. Ṣawāb — right, on target.

The interesting side of the root is that it carries both "to be right" and "to strike". An arrow strikes its target; a calamity strikes a person; and an opinion is "on target". The common idea: a thing's reaching a mark.

The sense used here is the negative one: to make a harm strike a people.

And qawman comes indefinite: "a people". Which people is not said. This generalises the ruling — whichever tribe may figure in the account of the occasion of revelation, the verse is not closed upon that tribe.

It is also worth recording that the one harmed is a qawm — a people. The harm of acting on a false report is written to the account not of one person but of a group. This agrees with the weight of the report (nabaʾ), and its counterpart today is the same: the price of an unverified report is generally paid by the community that is its subject, not by those who spread it.

Here there is a distinction the classical exegesis records, and it widens the sense of the verse.

Root: ج-ه-ل. Its common sense is not to know; jahl is the opposite of ʿilm.

But a second sense of the root is also recorded in Arabic: to act in anger, without thinking, with levity. Jahl is also the opposite of ḥilm (gravity, self-restraint). The connection of the word jāhiliyya with this sense is debated in the classical sources: on one view jāhiliyya is not "the age of ignorance" but "the age of roughness, of failure to hold oneself back".

The two senses:

The second sense widens the scope of the verse and coincides directly with the tathabbut reading: that a report is true does not show that the reaction given to it is measured.

I relate this second sense as a view recorded in the classical sources; I impose no preference and it is not binding. But this must be said: the two senses do not exclude one another. A person who acts without investigating the truth of a report is generally both ignorant and hasty.

أَصْبَحَ — root ص-ب-ح. Its root sense is to come into the morning. Ṣubḥ — morning. In Arabic this verb came in time to be used also in the sense of "to come to be, to become" (not in the sense of passing the night through until morning, but in the sense of "he came to be…").

But the root sense leaves a picture here: a thing done at night being seen in the morning. A step taken in the dark, a step whose nature is understood in the light.

I record this not as a claim but as a point where the origin of the word intersects with the context; a similar note was entered in the section on al-Ḥashr.

نَادِم — root ن-د-م. Regret. The sense the lexicographers record: the grief and self-reproach felt after something done.

And that the word comes in the form of an active participle is worth recording: nādimīn — "those who regret". Not a condition but a quality. Regret is described as a state that clings to a person.

That the verse ends with this word and says nothing of a punishment is worth recording. The verse sets up no threat of chastisement. What it sets up is a consequence that comes in this world and immediately after the act: irreversibility.

For this is the definition of regret. If a person can take back what he has done, he does not regret it, he corrects it. Regret is the feeling that appears when the possibility of correction is gone.

The deterrent element of the verse, that is, is this: what is done on a false report is not taken back. A word can be taken back; the harm done to a people cannot.

This verse has been counted in the Islamic tradition of learning as one of the grounds of a method: examining the condition of the one who brings a report.

The field called jarḥ wa taʿdīl in the science of hadith — the examination and recording, one by one, of the reliability of the transmitters — is largely grounded on the principle this verse sets up: a report cannot be assessed independently of its source.

I record this as a note of history. What is worth recording is this: the idea of examining first the chain that carries a report in order to assess it is an early and systematic instance in the history of knowledge. The structure of what is done today under the name of "source verification" is similar: to look at the carrier before looking at the content.

And there is one further debate — it occupies a wide place in the books of legal theory:

The verse says "if a transgressor brings a report, investigate". Does the contrary also carry a ruling — that is, does it follow that "if a just man brings a report, do not investigate"?

This is a question of legal theory on which the schools divide, and here I make no choice and issue no legal ruling. I record both views; neither is binding.

But a practical note can be entered: both views agree that the source of a report matters. Where they part is over whether a report from a trustworthy source is also to be investigated.

The following account is widely transmitted in the sources as the occasion of the verse's revelation: an officer was sent to collect the alms from a tribe; on the way he turned back for some reason and reported that the tribe had refused to pay the alms and had risen against him. Upon this, moving against the tribe came under consideration; a delegation of the tribe arrived and said that this was not so, that on the contrary they had come out to meet the officer, and the verse came down.

In the reports the names of both the officer and the tribe are given. I do not write the names here. For two reasons: there are differences among the details of the reports and their soundness has been debated by the classical scholars; and, more importantly, to record a particular person in definite terms as the one addressed by the Qurʾān's word fāsiq is a heavier ruling than the transmissions in my hands can carry.

That is the uncertain side of the account. The certain side is the text itself: the verse gives neither a personal name nor a tribal name. Fāsiqun — indefinite. Qawman — indefinite. Both sides have been left unnamed.

And this shows what the verse does: it is not recording an event, it is setting up a procedure.

This verse is the place in al-Ḥujurāt that looks most directly to the present, and it requires no additional interpretation.

One. The obligation is placed on the receiver.

This is the most striking side of the verse. It does not say "let the transgressor not carry reports". It does not say "punish the one who spreads the report". It addresses the one who receives the report: fa-tabayyanū.

The reason for this can be understood: the behaviour of the one who brings a report cannot be controlled, but the behaviour of the one who receives it is in his own hands. A report spreads only so far as those who receive it pass it on. The chain is broken at the receiver.

Two. The asymmetry between speed and truth.

The time it takes a report to spread and the time it takes to verify it are not the same. Verification is an operation and takes time; spreading is not an operation and takes none. This asymmetry existed in the period the verse came down as well — a report would go round a city in a matter of days, while verifying it required sending a messenger. Today the asymmetry has grown: spreading has become almost costless, while verification still requires the same work.

The tathabbut reading looks exactly to this point: if you cannot verify, at least wait. Waiting does not take the place of verification, but it limits the harm.

Three. The correction cannot catch up with the report.

The last word of the verse is nādimīn — regretful. And the cause of regret is that what has been done cannot be taken back.

When a false report has spread, its correction generally reaches only a part of the places the report reached. What spreads and what corrects do not travel at the same speed. This is today's form of the "irreversibility" the verse records.

Four. A limit: this verse is not a command to be silent.

To read the verse as "do not receive reports, do not speak, do not get involved" is contrary to the text. The command is tabayyun — investigate. To investigate requires taking an interest. In the ninth verse of the sūra, stepping in when two groups fight will be commanded; the verse, that is, does not teach indifference to what is going on.

What it teaches is an order: verify first, then act. And this is the same as the command in the sūra's first verse — do not put a thing ahead of where it belongs.

Five. And this commentary's own note.

In writing what this verse says to the present, I have avoided using the verse about any particular side, any particular event, or any current controversy. The reason is the rule of the method (Method), and it agrees with the verse itself: the verse named neither of the two sides. To place it as a weapon in the hand of one side would be to undo the first thing the verse does.