al-Ḥashr 59:16-17

Ka-mathali'l-shayṭāni idh qāla li'l-insāni'kfur, fa-lammā kafara qāla innī barīʾun minka innī akhāfullāha rabba'l-ʿālamīn • Fa-kāna ʿāqibatahumā annahumā fi'n-nāri khālidayni fīhā, wa dhālika jazāʾu'l-ẓālimīn

"Just like the case of Satan: when he said to man, 'Disbelieve'; and when the man disbelieved, he said, 'I am quit of you; I fear God, the Lord of all the worlds.' • And the end of the two of them was that they are in the Fire, abiding therein for ever. That is the recompense of the wrongdoers."

This parable gives a name to the relation between the hypocrites and the community standing in the opposing rank. And the way it names it is very sharp.

The common structure is this:

1. Incite. 2. Stand behind him (or appear to). 3. When the outcome comes, separate.

This is a pattern of behaviour and it has been repeated many times in history: to push someone into a conflict, to give a promise of support, and to step aside when the time comes to pay the price.

The real point about the position of the instigator is this: it costs him nothing. Giving a word is free. And when the outcome comes, instead of paying what the word requires, it is possible to get out of the word.

The strength of the parable lies in its showing this pattern in its most extreme instance: Satan.

An observation needs to be made here.

In the Qurʾān Satan's way of working is generally described as waswasa (whispering) and tazyīn (adorning and making a thing look good). In Sūrat al-Nās he is called waswās; in al-Aʿrāf and al-Anfāl the adorning of deeds is spoken of.

Here, however, there is a bare command: ٱكْفُرْ — "disbelieve".

The reason for this is that the parable is compressed. A parable is set up not to show the detail of a process but to show its outcome. The intermediate steps — the adorning, the making easy, the manufacturing of excuses — have been skipped and the business has been reduced to its core.

Indeed in Sūrat Ibrāhīm Satan himself gives this detail:

"I had no power over you; I only called you, and you answered me. So do not blame me; blame yourselves." (Ibrāhīm 14/22)

That is, Satan's business is to call; the answering is the other party's business. This verse is the explanation of al-Ḥashr 59/16: what looks like a command given is in truth an invitation.

Root: ب-ر-أ. And this is the same root as the name ٱلْبَارِئ in the twenty-fourth verse of the sūra.

This is a very strong link built within the sūra, and it needs to be dwelt on.

The field of meaning of the root:

• بَرَأَ — to bring into being out of nothing; and to bring into being by separating.
• بَرِئَ مِن — to be far from a thing, to cut one's relation with it, to come out clean.
• بَرَاءَة (barāʾa) — acquittal, release from responsibility.
• بَرِيَّة (bariyya) — created beings.
• بُرْء — recovery from illness, finding health.

The common core: separation.

At al-Baqara 2/54 the name al-Bāriʾ was treated, and the finding set up there was this: "al-Bāriʾ, root b-r-ʾ: to bring out of non-existence into being, to create by separating and by making flawless." And in that verse the choosing of the name was a ruling: a community that had made a statue, when it was called to repentance, was called precisely by the name of "the one who really gives form".

And now, in this sūra, the same root occurs eight verses apart in two opposite positions:

Two separations, one root. The one creates, the other lets go.

The separating in creation is the giving to a thing of its own limit: separating a being out of confusion and giving it an identity. Satan's separating is exactly the reverse: withdrawing from what he built together with another and leaving it in the middle.

I record this link as an observation. That the two ends of the root should stand in the same sūra in this way is striking, and it helps one understand why the series of names in the last section of the sūra is in this sūra.

The strangest sentence of the parable. The being that commands disbelief gives as his ground the fear of God.

Two readings are possible, and both are found in the sources:

The second reading is worth dwelling on, because it says something deeper.

One person drags another into an affair. All through the process he knows the outcome abstractly but does not feel it. And when the outcome takes place, the instigator too sees it. What he feels at that moment is not pity for the person he incited — it is fear for himself.

This is a genuinely familiar behaviour: the person who encouraged a thing, when the outcome is heavy, first calculates his own share.

The link with al-Anfāl 8/48. In the context of Badr the Qurʾān uses almost the same sentences:

"And Satan adorned their deeds for them and said, 'Today no one among people can overcome you, and I am your helper.' But when the two armies came in sight of each other he turned back and said, 'I am quit of you; I see what you do not see; I fear God.'"

The wordings common to the two verses: innī barīʾun minkum and innī akhāfullāh.

This shows that the parable in al-Ḥashr 59/16 is not taken out of the air: the same words are transmitted in a concrete event too. And in al-Anfāl there is an added detail — "when the two armies came in sight of each other": that is, the moment of separating is the moment at which the outcome becomes visible.

The seventeenth verse cuts the whole parable off in a single sentence.

أَنَّهُمَا فِى ٱلنَّارِ خَٰلِدَيْنِ فِيهَا — the dual form: "the two of them".

That is, the attempt at separating does not work.

Satan said "I am quit of you". The result: both of them in the same place. A separation set up by a word does not produce a real separation.

This is the summary of the whole section of the sūra on the hypocrites, and it joins with the central idea of the preceding sūra. The main thesis of Sūrat al-Mujādala was this: a word does not change reality. The word of ẓihār did not make a woman a mother (58/2); an oath did not make a man trustworthy (58/14-18).

al-Ḥashr 59/17 sets up the same thesis once again: saying "I am quit" does not bring it about that one really is quit.

Two sūras repeat the same principle in four separate situations: motherhood, trustworthiness, alliance, and slipping out of responsibility. In all four, something set up by language produces no counterpart in the world.

A grammatical point: fa-kāna ʿāqibatahumā annahumā… — the predicate of kāna (ʿāqibatahumā) has been brought forward and its subject (annahumā fi'n-nār) left to the end.

This is a technique of emphasis in Arabic, and here it brings the word "end" to the fore. And the word is from the same root as shadīdu'l-ʿiqāb in the fourth verse (ع-ق-ب): that which comes after an act.

That is, by using the root twice the sūra says the same thing: what is done has a back to it, and that back comes.

ظُلْم — Root: ظ-ل-م. The original sense of the root is darkness (ẓulma). And the definition the lexicographers give: to put a thing somewhere other than its own place.

This definition makes wrongdoing wider than a definition by "injustice": everything displaced from its place is wrongdoing. Darkness too is a displacement — light's not being where it ought to be.

And it sits on the context of the verse: what is recounted throughout the parable is the displacement of responsibility. The instigator tries to load the outcome onto the one he incited. And the verse, by putting both of them in the same place, sets the places right.