al-Munāfiqūn 63:1

Idhā jāʾaka'l-munāfiqūna qālū nashhadu innaka la-rasūlu'llāh. Wa'llāhu yaʿlamu innaka la-rasūluh, wa'llāhu yashhadu inna'l-munāfiqīna la-kādhibūn

"When the hypocrites come to you they say, 'We bear witness that you are indeed the Messenger of God.' God knows that you are indeed His Messenger; and God bears witness that the hypocrites are liars."

This verse establishes one of the Qurʾān's finest distinctions, and the distinction is very easy to miss.

The verse consists of three sentences:

1. They say: "You are the Messenger of God." 2. God says: You are indeed His Messenger. 3. God bears witness that: the hypocrites are liars.

Now note: the second sentence confirms the first. What they say is true. The verse does not dispute this; on the contrary it affirms it.

What, then, is the "lie" in the third sentence?

The answer lies in the first word of the first sentence: nashhadu — "we bear witness".

What is declared false is not the content of the sentence but their own bearing of witness. That is:

"You are the Messenger of God" — this is true. "To this we bear witness" — this is false.

What they say is true; what is false is the claim that they themselves believe what they say.

The classical exegetes establish this distinction openly, and the formulation has settled thus: the lie lies not in the report itself but in the claim to bear witness. A person may utter a true sentence and still have lied — if he presents that sentence as his own conviction and it is not his conviction.

At first sight this distinction looks like a technical nicety. It is not. It has a central place in the understanding of the sūra, and of the concept of hypocrisy in general.

First: the distinction shows that hypocrisy is not a deficiency of knowledge. The verse does not claim that the hypocrites say something wrong. They utter the true sentence. The finding recorded for taḥrīf at al-Baqara 2/75 holds here too: "the matter is not ignorance but what is done with what is known."

Second: the distinction says that a true word cannot by itself be a measure. That a sentence is true says nothing at all about the one who says it. This is a very hard finding, and it lowers the value of speech.

Third: the distinction explains why the whole of the rest of the sūra proceeds by way of behaviour. When speech ceases to be a measure, what is left? In the fourth verse an appearance, in the fifth a movement, in the seventh the consequence of a sentence, in the eighth a plan. Because the sūra took speech out of being a measure in its first verse, in the rest it is obliged to use other measures.

The root ش-ه-د: to be present. The shāhid is the one who was there. Shahāda is the report of one who has been there. From the same root come mashhad (the place seen, the place witnessed), mushāhada (observation) and shahīd.

At al-Jumuʿa 62/8 this root occurred as the opposite of ghayb: ʿālimu'l-ghaybi wa'sh-shahāda — the knower of the unseen and of the seen. As was recorded there, the opposition is not "known / unknown" but "what is hidden / what is present".

Return to the verse with this in mind. To say nashhadu is to say "we were there, we saw, we were present". That is, the hypocrites are claiming to rest on an observation.

And the lie is exactly here. They have not seen. Their hearts have not made that observation. Not because they heard the sentence from others — perhaps they have really seen — but because they have not bound themselves to that seeing.

The legal side of shahāda works here too. In Arabic and in Islamic law shahāda is a binding declaration: the witness takes on responsibility for his declaration. To bear witness to a thing is to establish a bond between yourself and that thing. What the hypocrites do is to appear to have established the bond without establishing it.

And note: in the verse's last sentence the same root is used of God — wa'llāhu yashhadu. That is, the verse sets a true bearing of witness against the hypocrites' false one. The same word, in two different mouths, with two different weights.

This is the most elegant structure in the sūra's first verse: the word carries its own opposite inside itself.

Look at the grammar of the sentence: إِنَّ (inna) + لَ (the lām of inception). In Arabic this is one of the strongest forms of emphasis with which a statement can be given.

In the classical tradition of rhetoric the emphasising of a statement is divided into three according to the condition of the one addressed:

Now the question is this: in saying to the Prophet "you are the Messenger of God", what need is there to use the strongest pattern of emphasis?

The one addressed is neither hesitant nor denying about his own messengership. By the rule of rhetoric, there is no need for emphasis here.

As my own reading — and recording openly that this is a reading — I think this: the excess of emphasis says something about the sentence itself. If a person is trying to convince someone he does not need to convince, the person he is trying to convince is not the one in front of him.

This is a familiar pattern in everyday life: too much swearing, too much stress, too much repetition. When the force of what is said is not enough, the force of the saying is increased.

I do not attribute this reading to any classical exegete. But that the verse continues in the second verse with "they have taken their oaths as a shield" suggests that there is a note in this direction — because an excess of emphasis and an oath belong to the same family.

The sequence of the sentences is not chance:

1. Qālū nashhadu innaka la-rasūlu'llāh — the claim. 2. Wa'llāhu yaʿlamu innaka la-rasūluh — the content of the claim is confirmed. 3. Wa'llāhu yashhadu inna'l-munāfiqīna la-kādhibūn — the maker of the claim is declared a liar.

Had the middle sentence not been there, the verse would have said something very different: the hypocrites say something and they are lying. That reading would have implied that what they said was wrong too.

The middle sentence closes off that possibility. And in closing it, it does one more thing: the confirmation of the messengership is stated separately, because it does not depend on the hypocrites' approval. That is, the verse cuts off the logic of "they affirmed it, so it must be true". The truth comes from somewhere else.

One more detail: in the second sentence it says رَسُولُهُ (His Messenger), not rasūlu'llāh as in the first. The shift to a pronoun makes the expression closer. In ascribing the Messenger to Himself, God uses a pronoun.

And a grammatical note: in the third sentence inna is again emphasised with a lām: la-kādhibūn. That is, the pattern of emphasis the hypocrites used is repeated exactly in the verdict passed on them. The sentence answers with their own weapon.

That a true word is not a measure. This is the side of the verse that looks most directly at the present, and it is uncomfortable. That a sentence is true says nothing at all about the one who says it. This holds all the more in a period in which knowledge is abundant and true sentences are cheap: saying true things has ceased to be an indicator of a position.

The measure the verse sets down is not the content of the word but the bond the speaker establishes with that word. And this bond is not visible from outside. The verse is therefore not an instrument of identification but an instrument of self-examination.

The weight of bearing witness. The second side has to do with the legal aspect of the word shahāda. To bear witness to a thing is to take on responsibility for it. Today declaration is very cheap: supporting a view, announcing which side one stands on, joining a cause, most often brings no burden at all. The verse gives a name to the declaration that carries no burden.