al-Najm 53:32

Alladhīna yajtanibūna kabāʾira'l-ithmi wa'l-fawāḥisha illā'l-lamam · Inna rabbaka wāsiʿu'l-maghfira · Huwa aʿlamu bikum idh anshaʾakum mina'l-arḍi wa idh antum ajinnatun fī buṭūni ummahātikum · Fa-lā tuzakkū anfusakum; huwa aʿlamu bi-mani'ttaqā "Those who avoid the great sins and the shameful deeds — save for small lapses. Your Lord is wide in forgiveness. He knows you best, when He brought you forth from the earth and when you were embryos in the wombs of your mothers. So do not declare yourselves pure; He knows best who has guarded himself."

One of the densest verses of the sūra. There are five separate sentences, and the link between them is not visible at first sight.

Root: ج-ن-ب. Concrete sense: the side, the flank. Janb — the side; jānib — a side, a direction.

ٱجْتَنَبَ — Form VIII: to leave a thing to one side, to keep away from it. Not "not to do" but not to come near.

The choice of the verb is worth recording. It could have said lā yafʿalūn (they do not do). It says yajtanibūn — and this conveys a distance.

The practical difference: not doing a thing includes standing beside it and not doing it. Ijtināb, on the other hand, is moving away. The Qurʾān uses this verb regularly with prohibitions: "So avoid the abomination of idols" (al-Ḥajj 22/30: fa'jtanibū); "Avoid much supposition" (al-Ḥujurāt 49/12).

إِثْم — root أ-ث-م. The concrete sense of the root is dwelt on: to be slow, to lag behind, to be sluggish. Nāqatun āthima — a camel that lags behind.

The lexicographers' explanation: ithm is what holds a person back from good. Sin, by its root, is named as a delay — a load that slows the person down.

I give this derivation as transmitted from the lexicographers; I build no interpretation upon it.

كَبَٰٓئِر — the plural of kabīra (great). Kabāʾiru'l-ithm — "the great ones of sin."

فَوَاحِش — root ف-ح-ش. Fuḥsh — an ugliness that passes all bounds, excess. Fāḥisha, plural fawāḥish — a deed whose ugliness is plain.

The difference between the two categories:

A deed may be great and yet not plainly ugly; or a deed whose ugliness everyone knows may not be counted among the great sins. Two measures are set separately.

And this is the most disputed word in the sūra.

Root: ل-م-م. This root was treated in the section al-Fajr (al-Fajr 89/19: aklan lammā); what was recorded there:

لَمّ — root ل-م-م: to gather, to collect together. Lamma'l-shayʾa — he gathered up what was scattered.

And another derivative of the root is decisive here: أَلَمَّ بِ — to call briefly at a thing, to touch and pass on, to arrive without lodging. Alamma bi'l-manzil — he called at the house but did not stay.

Also: لَمَم — a light touch; and in one linguistic usage it is used of a slight clouding of the mind as well (someone being "lightly touched").

The common core of the root: to make contact but not to enter into.

And the disagreement is real:

There is a grammatical disagreement as well, and it matters:

Of what kind is the exception إِلَّا here?

It is transmitted that the majority of the grammarians call it munqaṭiʿ, and this reading appears the more consistent: if lamam were a kind of great sin, a person who did not avoid it could not be characterised as "one who avoids the great sins".

I state a preference and it is not binding: the root's sense of "to call and pass on, to touch and not stay" supports the second and third views; and these three (small sin / not repeated / approached but not done) do not exclude one another. The common core is: lamam is a fault that does not last, that does not settle in.

And this must be recorded explicitly: the boundaries of the distinction between "great sin" and "small sin" have been debated at length in the literature of law and theology, and there is no single list. Per the method (Method) no legal ruling is issued in this commentary; that the distinction exists is the Qurʾān's own datum (al-Nisāʾ 4/31: "If you avoid the great sins you are forbidden, We shall cover your lesser faults"), while where the boundaries lie is not the subject of this section.

And what is to be noticed in the word order: immediately after the fault is recorded, forgiveness is named.

وَاسِع — root و-س-ع. To be wide, to encompass, to suffice. Wusʿ — the limit of one's capacity; tawassuʿ — widening.

مَغْفِرَة — root غ-ف-ر. The concrete sense of the root: to cover, to close over. Mighfar — the protective helmet put over the head, from the same root. Maghfira is thus to draw a covering over something — not to erase but to cover.

The structure of the construction is worth recording: wāsiʿu'l-maghfira — "wide in forgiveness." Wideness is given as the attribute of the forgiving.

And this bears directly on the preceding sentence: lamam was recorded, then wideness was named. The recording of the fault and the naming of forgiveness are in the same sentence.

Before establishing the ruling "do not declare yourselves pure", the verse gives a proof. And the proof has to do with when a person's knowledge about himself begins.

أَنشَأَ — root ن-ش-أ. This root was treated in the sections al-Mulk, al-Muzzammil and al-Raḥmān. In the section on al-Mulk its difference from khalaqa was dwelt on. The summary: to be born, to grow, to come forth, to rise; inshāʾ — to build a structure step by step.

أَجِنَّة — root ج-ن-ن. The plural of janīn. The root was given above at verse 15: to cover, to conceal. Janīn — what is covered in the womb.

And what the sentence establishes is this:

Two stages are counted, and in both the person knows nothing about himself.

And the conclusion that follows is the ruling of the thirty-second verse: he is not in a position to pass judgement about himself.

This is a very firm piece of reasoning, and it works thus: to pass judgement on a file one must see the whole of the file. A person has not seen the beginning of his own story. The first part of the knowledge about himself is not in his hand.

I record this as my own reading; that the two records of time stand side by side in the verse is data of the text.

Root: ز-ك-و. This root was analysed in full in the section al-Shams, put to work in al-Layl and al-Aʿlā, and taken up as a tension in al-Jumuʿa. I do not repeat it; the summary:

Beneath the root lie two senses at once, and they are inseparable: cleanness/purification and growth/increase/blessing. The dictionaries do not divide these into separate entries. Zakāt comes from the same root and shows how the two senses join: property is cleansed and increases when a part of it is taken out. The joining of the two senses is seen in agriculture. A plant's growth depends on its being cleared of the weeds that choke it. Clearing is a diminishing, but its result is an increase.

And in this commentary a tension was taken up twice by way of precisely this verse. The section on al-Shams, in treating "he has prospered who purifies it" (91/9), and the section on al-Jumuʿa, in treating "He purifies them" (62/2), both pointed to this verse. In the section on al-Jumuʿa the resolution was given in a table:

And the conclusion recorded there: "what is forbidden is not the effort of purification but the claim of being purified. These are two different acts: one is working, the other is deciding about oneself."

That finding gains one further detail here, in the verse's own context.

For the word order of the verse establishes a cause and effect: the particle فَ (fa) attaches the ruling to the preceding sentence.

"He knows you best, when He brought you forth from the earth and when you were embryos in the wombs of your mothers. THEREFORE do not declare yourselves pure."

The ground of the prohibition is thus not moral but epistemological. The verse does not say "do not be proud", it does not say "be humble". It says "you do not have sufficient knowledge on this matter."

And this is a far more definite ground. Humility is the counsel of a virtue; a lack of knowledge is a finding of incompetence. The first depends on a person's choice, the second is his situation itself.

ٱتَّقَىٰ — root و-ق-ي. This root has been treated in many places in this commentary (al-Fātiḥa, al-Baqara and others); I do not repeat it. Its concrete sense: to be protected, to guard oneself from something. Wiqāya — a protective covering; ittiqāʾ — guarding oneself.

And the verse leaves the question "who is godfearing" in the same place: huwa aʿlamu bi-mani'ttaqā.

The link between the two sentences:

Verse 30: huwa aʿlamu bi-mani'htadā — "who has found the way, He knows." Verse 32: huwa aʿlamu bi-mani'ttaqā — "who has guarded himself, He knows."

The same pattern, two different verbs. The thirtieth verse closes off passing judgement about others, the thirty-second about oneself.

And this symmetry is the sūra's most practical finding:

Both directions are closed off. And I record this as an observation; that the two verses end in the same pattern is data of the text and can be counted.

A note: there is a link between the question of al-lamam and this ruling as well. The verse first accepts that small faults may occur, then names the wideness of forgiveness, then forbids declaring oneself pure. The order is: you have faults, they are covered, but it is not for you to decide that they have been covered.