al-Mujādala 58:19

Istaḥwadha ʿalayhimu'sh-shayṭānu fa-ansāhum dhikra'llāh, ulāʾika ḥizbu'sh-shayṭān, alā inna ḥizba'sh-shayṭāni humu'l-khāsirūn

"Satan has taken hold of them and made them forget the remembrance of God. They are the party of Satan. Know well: the party of Satan are the losers."

Root: ح-و-ذ. The concrete sense of the root comes from herding: al-ḥāʾidh is the shepherd who drives the flock from behind. Ḥāza'l-ibila: he gathered the camels, put them before him and drove them.

The image is very clear: a shepherd gathers scattered animals, brings them together and drives them in the direction he wants. The animals may suppose that they are choosing their own direction; but the one who determines the direction is the man behind.

Form X (istifʿāl) here conveys completion and total seizure: not merely driving, but taking hold completely and directing.

A point of morphology. This verb is a known example in the Arabic grammar books. The normal rule is this: in Form X the weak middle letter (wāw/yāʾ) turns into an alif — istaqwama → istaqāma, istaṣwaba → istaṣāba. In this verb the transformation has not occurred: istaḥwadha has stayed as it is.

The lexicographers record this as anomalous (shādhdh) and mention it together with its few analogues. That the word has remained outside the rule leaves a roughness in the ear — it catches where it ought to run smooth. I do not turn this into a claim about meaning; I only record that the word stands in a rare and striking form in the language.

فَ (fāʾ) conveys consequence: the result of the taking hold is a making to forget.

That is, the work Satan does is not to make someone do something but to make him forget something. Not an active command to evil, but the erasure of a remembering.

This is a consistent part of the sūra's attitude towards Satan. In the tenth verse the function of najwā was "to grieve"; here it is "to make forget". Neither is a direct harm; both are a mental intervention.

ذِكْر — Root: ذ-ك-ر. To mention, to remember, to utter. At the centre of the root there is both holding in the mind and saying with the tongue — the two in a single word.

And now look at the next sūra. Al-Ḥashr 59/19:

وَلَا تَكُونُوا۟ كَٱلَّذِينَ نَسُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ فَأَنسَىٰهُمْ أَنفُسَهُمْ "Do not be like those who forgot God, so that He made them forget themselves."

Two neighbouring sūras give two links of the same chain of verbs:

The chain is completed: Satan makes one forget God → the one who forgets God forgets himself. The same verb (ansā), with two different agents and two different objects, in two neighbouring sūras.

We shall discuss the logic of the second link in detail in the section on al-Ḥashr. Here this much is enough: a person defines himself only by a reference; when the reference is erased the definition is erased too.

Root: ح-ز-ب. The word's use in Arabic goes in two directions:

1. حِزْب (ḥizb) — a community, a company, a side; a group gathered around a purpose. Also a portion of a thing (the division of the Qurʾān into "ḥizb"s is this sense). 2. حَزَبَهُ ٱلْأَمْرُ — the affair pressed him, hemmed him in, became a trouble to him. Ḥāzib: a distress, a heavy matter that befalls one.

How do the two senses join? The classical explanation is this: people gather when a distress comes. Ḥizb is originally a community come together around an affair. That is, what makes a group a group is a shared matter.

This explains well what the word is. A ḥizb is not a blood tie, not a tribe, not a lineage. Those gathered around a shared affair. The word names not an inherited belonging but a chosen one.

And this connects directly with the 22nd verse of the sūra: there it will be said that the tie of lineage does not determine which side one is on. The choice of the word ḥizb is apt for this reason — the word itself already conveys a togetherness outside lineage.

Other uses in the Qurʾān:

• ٱلْأَحْزَاب — the groups that combined at the Battle of the Trench; and the name of Sūrat al-Aḥzāb.
• "Every group (ḥizb) rejoices in what it has" — كُلُّ حِزْبٍۭ بِمَا لَدَيْهِمْ فَرِحُونَ (al-Muʾminūn 23/53; the same sentence occurs at al-Rūm 30/32 as well). This verse conveys the nature of factionalism: every group counts what it has as sufficient and is happy with it. That is, factionalism is a state of satisfaction more than a claim to truth.

In Sūrat al-Bayyina the subject of division (tafriqa) was treated by way of al-Rūm 30/30-32; the finding there joins with this place: division comes after the proof has arrived, and in spite of the proof.

Root: خ-س-ر. It is a commercial word: the diminishing of capital, to make a loss. Khusrān is not the absence of profit — it is the going of the principal.

This word was treated in Sūrat al-ʿAṣr: "Man is surely in loss" (al-ʿAṣr 103/2). The finding established there was this: loss is not a failure to gain; it is the losing of what one has. The capital in a person's hand is his lifetime, and that capital diminishes at every moment.

Here the same word becomes the attribute of a group. And opposite it, in the 22nd verse, mufliḥūn will be set.