سَوَاءٌ عَلَيْهِمْ أَسْتَغْفَرْتَ لَهُمْ أَمْ لَمْ تَسْتَغْفِرْ لَهُمْ لَنْ يَغْفِرَ اللَّهُ لَهُمْ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ لَا يَهْدِي الْقَوْمَ الْفَاسِقِينَ
Sawāʾun ʿalayhim astaghfarta lahum am lam tastaghfir lahum lan yaghfira'llāhu lahum. Inna'llāha lā yahdi'l-qawma'l-fāsiqīn
"It is all one for them whether you ask forgiveness for them or do not ask forgiveness for them; God will not forgive them. God does not guide the people who have gone outside the bound."
In pattern this verse is exactly the same as al-Baqara 2/6, and the comparison is instructive:
| al-Baqara 2/6 | al-Munāfiqūn 63/6 | |
|---|---|---|
| Pattern | sawāʾun ʿalayhim | sawāʾun ʿalayhim |
| Condition | a-andhartahum am lam tundhirhum | astaghfarta lahum am lam tastaghfir lahum |
| About whom | alladhīna kafarū — those who deny | al-munāfiqūn |
| Result | lā yuʾminūn — they do not believe | lan yaghfira'llāhu lahum — they will not be forgiven |
And the difference is meaningful. In al-Baqara what is equalised is warning: whether you warn them or do not warn them, they do not believe. Here what is equalised is asking forgiveness.
That is, in al-Baqara the ineffectiveness of speech is stated; here, the ineffectiveness of prayer. Both announce the closing of a door — but the one in al-Munāfiqūn is heavier, because there it was the addressee's own reaction (not believing) that was at issue; here it is the fruitlessness of something someone else does for him.
And its place within the sūra: in the fifth verse the offer was refused. The sixth verse announces the consequence of the refusal. The sequence is: the offer came, it was refused, and now the offer has no meaning left.
This accords with the metaphor of the seal (63/3). The door has been closed from inside.
The root س-و-ي: equality, evenness, equivalence. From the same root come taswiya (levelling), musāwāt (equality) and sawī (even).
Word order: sawāʾun is the subject, and the two conditional clauses that follow stand in the position of its predicate (or the reverse; there are two explanations in the grammatical sources). ʿAlayhim — "for them", that is, the equality is on their side.
The emphasis lies here: the equality is not in the result but from their side. That is, the verse does not say "asking forgiveness is of no use"; it says "for them it makes no difference". The nuance matters — because the verse announces not the invalidity of a rule but the imperviousness of a particular condition.
In the word أَسْتَغْفَرْتَ at the head of the verse, the interrogative hamza and the verb's connecting hamza have merged. Its original form is a-istaghfarta; when the two hamzas come together the connecting hamza drops and it becomes astaghfarta.
This is a technical matter of spelling and it does not affect the meaning; I record it because, in reading the text, it needs to be seen that the word is a question.
أَمْ — "or". A connective denoting equivalence between two alternatives. The same connective was there at al-Baqara 2/6.
لَنْ — the definite negation of the future. As was recorded at al-Jumuʿa 62/7, it is more definite than lā, and it looks to the future.
There is a question here, and one must be honest: does this expression mean that the door of forgiveness has closed absolutely?
| View | Ground |
|---|---|
| The ruling holds as long as the condition of nifāq continues; if a person changes his condition, the ruling changes too | The Qurʾān's keeping the door of repentance open in general; the presence at al-Nisāʾ 4/146 of an exception for the hypocrites, on the conditions of repentance, amendment and sincerity |
| The ruling is a definite announcement about those who persist in this attitude | The plain sense of the expression |
Al-Nisāʾ 4/146 is decisive in this discussion: there it is said of the hypocrites, "Except those who repent, and amend, and hold fast to God, and make their religion pure for God". This exception shows that the ruling is not absolute.
In my judgement the first view is the stronger, and its ground is this exception within the Qurʾān itself. But this preference is not binding, and this qualification matters: what the verse announces is what the outcome will be if that condition is persisted in.
It should also be compared with al-Tawba 9/80: "Ask forgiveness for them or do not ask forgiveness for them; even if you ask forgiveness for them seventy times, God will not forgive them." The same ruling, with an emphasis of number. "Seventy" here is not a definite number but a use denoting multiplicity in Arabic.
The root ف-س-ق. Its concrete sense is very distinct: a thing's coming out of its skin. In Arabic one says fasaqati'r-ruṭaba — the ripe date came out of its skin.
That is, fisq, in the word's own logic, is going outside the bound. And note: the place gone out of is a skin — a protective covering. A fruit that comes out of its skin is left unprotected.
This is an interesting side of the root. Fisq is pictured not as the breach of a rule but as a coming out of a protection. The rule is thought of as the skin that wraps the fruit.
The word's place here: al-Jumuʿa 62/5 and 62/7 ended with al-ẓālimīn. Al-Munāfiqūn 63/6 ends with al-fāsiqīn. Two neighbouring sūras use two different roots:
| Root | Its concrete sense | What it describes |
|---|---|---|
| ظ-ل-م (al-Jumuʿa) | To put a thing somewhere other than its place | Misplacement |
| ف-س-ق (al-Munāfiqūn) | To come out of the skin | Going outside the bound |
Both presuppose an order but describe different breaches: one a misplacement inside the order, the other a going out of the order.
لَا يَهْدِي — the same expression was there at al-Jumuʿa 62/5: wa'llāhu lā yahdi'l-qawma'ẓ-ẓālimīn. The two sūras use the same pattern with a different attribute.
And here too the same balance holds: the withholding of guidance is placed after the attribute. First the being fāsiq, then the absence of guidance.