al-Ṣaff 61:8

Yurīdūna li-yuṭfiʾū nūra'llāhi bi-afwāhihim, wa'llāhu mutimmu nūrihi wa-law kariha'l-kāfirūn

"They want to put out the light of God with their mouths. But God will complete His light, however much those who deny may dislike it."

The verb arāda (to want, to will) normally comes with أَن: yurīdūna an yuṭfiʾū. Here لِ has come.

The classical explanations divide in two:

There is a subtlety in the second reading: the aim of the will and its act are separated from one another. That is, the sentence implies that they do something but that what they do is not sufficient for the aim: they exert themselves, but there is a distance between what they exert themselves at and what they want to reach.

This agrees very well with the image that comes next in the verse — trying to put out a light with the mouth is exactly such a disproportion. I find the second reading the more interesting; but this is a preference, it is not binding, and the first has been widely defended as well.

أَفْوَاه — the plural of the word fam/fū (mouth).

And the whole force of the verse lies in this single word. Think of the image: trying to put out a light with the mouth.

This works for a candle. It works for an oil lamp. As the scale grows the act becomes ridiculous; and the verse states that scale: نُورَ ٱللَّهِ.

The verse, then, sets up in a single sentence the disproportion between the scale of the effort and the scale of the target — using no adjective at all, simply by placing two words side by side.

And the choice of "mouth" is meaningful in itself: not with a weapon, but with speech. This binds the verse to the one before it. The seventh verse described the manufacture of fabrication (iftarā — to cut and shape). The eighth verse says what that fabrication is for: to put out a light. Two consecutive verses take the same organ as their target.

The sūra's portrayal of the other side, then, is built from beginning to end on speech. And note: the criticism the sūra directs at its own community was also about speech (lima taqūlūna mā lā tafʿalūn). Two different faults, the same organ:

This distinction was analysed at al-Baqara 2/17. There, in the comparison set up for the hypocrites, the finest detail was this: the man kindled a fire (nār), but God took away its light (nūr). And two properties of fire were distinguished: to give light and to burn.

Also recorded there was the pattern that nūr is singular and ẓulumāt plural: the true is one, the false is countless.

What is to be added here is an observation about the language:

نَار (fire) is a source — the burning thing itself. نُور (light), by contrast, is what radiates from it. And the verb of extinguishing (iṭfāʾ, root ط-ف-أ) is a verb belonging to the source: what is put out is fire, not light. You put out a fire; light you can only darken by cutting off its source.

The verse thus records an inconsistency at the level of the words: the verb and its object do not agree. The verb yuṭfiʾū (to put out) takes nūr as its object — yet nūr is not a thing that can be put out. The effort of the other side, then, aims at a task that is impossible even in the logic of the language itself.

This is an observation about the language; it is not a claim about physics and must not be read as one.

مُتِمّ — root ت-م-م: to be complete, to become free of deficiency. Mutimm is an active participle and has come in a genitive construct: "the completer of His light".

The choice of word is striking: not "the protector" but "the completer."

The difference matters. Protection is an answer given to an attack; it is defence. Completion, by contrast, is a work independent of the attack, running its own course. The verse, then, positions the effort of the other side not as a threat that has to be answered but as a noise that does not change the course.

And the active participle form states continuity: the work is not finished, it is going on.

كَرِهَ — root ك-ر-ه: to dislike, for one's inner self not to accept. And from the same root comes إِكْرَاه (compulsion): to compel a person to something he dislikes. The "there is no compulsion in religion" of al-Baqara 2/256 is from the same root.

This pattern — wa-law kariha… — occurs twice in the sūra, but with two different subjects:

This duality is no coincidence, and it agrees with the deeds:

In the eighth verse what is wanted is a covering — to put out the light, to make it invisible. And the root of kufr is exactly to cover (al-Baqara 2/6). The verse, then, names those who try to cover as "the coverers": deed and noun from the same root.

In the ninth verse, by contrast, the matter is the position of one religion relative to the other religions — that is, a matter of plurality. And there the other side is named with the word that expresses plurality: the mushrikūn, those who associate partners.

The choices of word have been made according to the subject of each verse.