al-Jumuʿa 62:6

Qul yā ayyuha'lladhīna hādū in zaʿamtum annakum awliyāʾu lillāhi min dūni'n-nāsi fa-tamannawu'l-mawta in kuntum ṣādiqīn

"Say: O you who are Jews! If you claim that you alone, and no other people, are God's friends, then wish for death — if you are truthful."

This test is set up twice in the Qurʾān. The first is al-Baqara 2/94-96, and it was treated in detail there; I do not repeat it here. The summary of the finding recorded there was this: a claim put forward in words is tested by behaviour. The claim was "the abode of the hereafter belongs to us"; on that footing death would be not a loss but a gain, and so it ought to be wished for. The answer: "they will never wish for it."

Now the same test is set up here again. But the claim has changed. To see the difference the two must be set side by side:

Two differences matter.

The first difference: the subject of the claim. In al-Baqara the claim is a claim of ownership: the abode of the hereafter is ours. In al-Jumuʿa it is a claim of nearness: God's friends are we. The first takes an outcome as its subject, the second a relationship.

This changes the logic of the test a little. The test in al-Baqara worked thus: if the destination belongs to you, you must want to go there. The test in al-Jumuʿa is more inward: if a friendship has been formed, you must want to meet that friend. In the first, death is a door; in the second, a meeting.

The second difference: the verb. In al-Baqara kānat (was / if it is) is used — a neutral verb of condition. In al-Jumuʿa زَعَمْتُمْ is used, and this is not neutral.

The root ز-ع-م: to say a thing without proof, to put it forward without ground.

The place of the word in Arabic is a special one. Qāla (he said) is neutral; zaʿama carries within it that what is said is unverified. The difference in English between "he claimed" and "he said" comes close to this, but the Arabic zaʿm is heavier: it registers in advance that the speaker has no proof in hand.

It is instructive to look at the places where the Qurʾān uses this word, because there is a pattern:

• Not "…those persons whom you would not wish to be partners in your property…" — a direct example instead: Sabaʾ 34/22: "Say: call upon those whom you have alleged (zaʿamtum) besides God."
• Al-Kahf 18/48: "…you were claiming (zaʿamtum) that We would not appoint for you a time of meeting."
• Al-Taghābun 64/7: "Those who disbelieve have alleged (zaʿama) that they will never be raised."
• Al-Anʿām 6/94: "…we do not see with you the partners you alleged (zaʿamtum)."

In all four places the word is used for a claim the Qurʾān rejects. That is, zaʿm has become almost a technical term in the Qurʾān's vocabulary: the name of a claim without ground.

And if one looks closely, the third here is al-Taghābun — the sūra immediately after al-Munāfiqūn. Three neighbouring sūras share the same family of words.

In the Arabic language there is a widespread saying that states the unreliability of the word zaʿm; and in the hadith collections too a report to this effect is transmitted. I do not give its wording and its source here with any certainty, because I am not sure of them. But that this is the word's place in the language is the common record of the dictionaries.

The word order of the verse does something with this word: it qualifies the claim before it is even uttered. It does not say "if it is so" but "if you so claim". That is, even while setting up a condition, the sentence records that the condition is without ground.

The root و-ل-ي: nearness, adjacency. To be immediately beside something. The breadth of the words that issue from this root shows the centre of the root:

• walā — to come one after another, to follow one another
• walī — the one who is near; a friend; a protector; the one who takes a matter in charge
• wālī — the one who takes a matter in charge, a governor
• mawlā — both master and freed slave (because both sides are the near side of the bond)
• tawallī — to turn towards; and to turn one's back (the two directions of a change of direction)
• awlā — nearer, more fitting

At the centre of the word there stands not love but the absence of distance. A walī is the person with whom the gap in between has been removed; for this reason it can mean "friend" and "protector" and "the one in charge" alike — all three are different faces of nearness.

A point of word order: why not awliyāʾullāh but awliyāʾu lillāh?

In Arabic the structure expected for "God's friends" is the construct: awliyāʾullāh. The verse does not use this; it puts a lām in between: awliyāʾu lillāh.

There is more than one explanation of this difference in the classical sources. As my own reading — and recording plainly that this is a reading — I can say this: the construct states a settled and established belonging, while the lām states an orientation. Like the difference between "God's friends" and "those who are friends to God". The second expression pictures the bond not as an established fact but as a position put forward.

This reading may be strained; I do not count it binding. But that the verse is built together with the verb zaʿamtum suggests that there is a caveat of this kind present.

مِنْ دُونِ النَّاسِ — "apart from all other people", that is, "excluding other people, only us". This is the really problematic part of the claim, and the same caveat was present at al-Baqara 2/94 too.

For the claim consists of two parts:

1. "We are God's friends." — This claim by itself is not problematic. The Qurʾān counts walāya (the bond of mutual protection) possible and desirable; it says "God is the protecting friend of those who believe" (al-Baqara 2/257). 2. "Not others." — The problem is here. The claim ceases to be a claim of nearness and turns into a claim of exclusion.

That is, what the verse opposes is not the claim of friendship but the monopolising of friendship. And this distinction is critical, because the fourth verse of the sūra had cut off exactly this monopoly in advance: "This is God's bounty; He gives it to whom He wills." What is a bounty cannot be monopolised — because a monopoly requires a claim of right.

As was recorded at al-Baqara 2/62: a label does not save. The same measure works here from the other side: a label is not enough to keep others outside either.

The root م-ن-ي: to measure out, to assess — and from there tamannī: to set a thing up in the mind wanting it to be.

At al-Baqara 2/78 another derivative of this root had occurred: أَمَانِيّ (amāniyy) — "a conviction resting not on reality but on wish", fancy. Recalling the picture recorded there throws light here: the text is recited but not known; what fills the gap is what the person wants to be the case.

Now the same root is used here as an instrument of testing. And this does not look like an accident: a mind that lives by fancy is invited to measure its own wish. By asking what the person really wants, the verse measures what he believes.

The logic of the test. As was recorded in the section on al-Baqara, the logic works faultlessly: if the state beyond death is in your favour, death is not an obstacle but a passage; and for one who waits, waiting is wearying. Then the holder of the claim ought to want the natural consequence of his claim.

The force of the test lies in its requiring no answer. No one has to say "no, we do not want death". The seventh verse already gives the answer: they will not want it. The test does not open a debate, it records an outcome.

A caveat. This verse does not mean that wishing for death is praised in general, and it must not be so read. The verse tests, in the face of a particular claim, the consistency of that claim. On the subject of wishing for death in Islam there are reports in the hadith collections in the contrary direction — there are transmissions that do not look kindly on wishing for death because of hardship. I do not give the wording of these reports, but I record their existence, because they prevent the verse from being wrongly generalised. The wishing in the verse is not a proposal of worship but a test of logic.

The root ص-د-ق: firmness, reality. From the same root come ṣadaqa (the thing given — the act that verifies the giver's word), ṣadāq (the marriage gift) and ṣiddīq (one who has made truthfulness his character).

The "firmness" sense of the root is important: ṣidq in Arabic is not merely "not to lie" but the word's sitting upon reality. That a spear is ṣadq comes from its hardness and from its going straight.

This enters a meaningful caveat at the end of the verse. What is being tested is not sincerity but whether the word sits upon reality. A person may believe his own word; that is not what the test measures.

And this distinction will sit at the very centre in the first verse of Sūrat al-Munāfiqūn: a group counted liars although what they said was true. Two neighbouring sūras work on two different fractures of the notion of truthfulness.