مَا أَصَابَ مِن مُّصِيبَةٍ إِلَّا بِإِذْنِ اللَّهِ وَمَن يُؤْمِن بِاللَّهِ يَهْدِ قَلْبَهُ وَاللَّهُ بِكُلِّ شَيْءٍ عَلِيمٌ
Mā aṣāba min muṣībatin illā bi-idhni'llāh, wa man yuʾmin bi'llāhi yahdi qalbah, wa'llāhu bi-kulli shayʾin ʿalīm
"No affliction strikes without God's leave. Whoever believes in God, He sets his heart straight. And God knows everything."
The tenth verse closed the two outcomes. The eleventh verse enters the subject of affliction without any sentence of transition. This abrupt shift calls for an explanation.
In my judgement the connection is this, and I write it as my own reading: up to now the sūra has described the great reckoning. Now it moves to how that reckoning is lived today. And the first test a person meets today is what befalls him.
That is, the sūra moves from theory to practice — and as the first item of practice it chooses affliction. The following verses will carry this on: obedience (12), reliance (13), family (14), property (15), guarding oneself and spending (16), the loan (17). For seven verses the subject is always the person's present life.
Root: ص و ب. The proper sense of the root is not "calamity"; it is to hit the mark, to find the target, to fall in the right place.
- أَصَابَ (aṣāba) — he hit the mark, he struck the target, he reached it.
- صَوَاب (ṣawāb) — the right, the on-target. Not the Turkish sevap ("religious merit"), which is thawāb and comes from the root ث و ب; the two must not be confused.
- صَيِّب (ṣayyib) — rain; what comes down from the sky and hits the earth. It occurs at al-Baqara 2/19.
- مُصِيبَة (muṣība) — that which hits.
So at the centre of the word there is no pain; there is hitting the mark. A muṣība is "what befalls" — it may be good as well as bad. In the Qurʾān's usage it is used predominantly for what is bad, but the word itself does not require this.
And this changes the work the verse does. The verse does not say "bad things happen by God's leave"; it says "nothing that strikes strikes without leave". Randomness is being rejected.
A point of grammar: the sentence could have said mā aṣāba muṣībatun. It says: mā aṣāba min muṣībatin.
The min here is counted in grammar as pleonastic (zāʾid) — it adds no new element to the meaning of the sentence, but it makes the scope absolute. It is reflected in English by "no … at all".
- mā aṣāba muṣībatun — "an affliction did not strike."
- mā aṣāba min muṣībatin — "no affliction at all struck."
The difference is the closing off of exceptions. When min comes, the whole genus is covered; no instance is left outside.
And the sentence is built with the structure مَا … إِلَّا: negation + exception. That this structure conveys restriction (ḥaṣr) was treated in al-Bayyina in connection with 98/4. So in the sentence two separate instruments of absoluteness come one on top of the other: min closes off the scope, illā closes off the condition.
Root: أ ذ ن. And the concrete sense of the root is the ear: udhun, ear. This link was recorded in Nūḥ: according to the lexicographers, the connection between idhn (leave) and udhun (ear) is that giving leave is lending an ear.
That is, leave is hearing a request and giving an answer to it. Inside the word there is a movement of hearing and approving.
And the choice of the word is decisive here. The verse does not say bi-amri'llāh (by God's command); it says bi-idhni'llāh.
| Word | What it conveys |
|---|---|
| أَمْر (command) | Direct ordering; the source of the act is the one who commands |
| إِذْن (leave) | Giving leave; not preventing the act from taking place |
The difference is not small. The sentence "it happens by command" says that everything that happens is directly ordered. The sentence "it happens by leave" says something narrower: nothing takes place outside His knowledge and His permitting.
I do not present this distinction as a choice in kalām and I do not open that debate here. What I record is only the choice of the word — and the choice makes the sentence's claim more guarded.
The subject of the verb yahdi is not written. And the pronoun in qalbah is unspecified too. Several readings come out of this.
| # | Its subject | Its meaning | Its ground |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | God | "Whoever believes in God, God sets his heart straight." | The context is enumerating God's acts; the subject of the preceding sentence is God too. The most widespread reading. |
| 2 | The believer himself | "Whoever believes in God has set his own heart straight." | The pronoun of the conditional particle man is the nearest subject; grammatically possible. |
| 3 | Faith | "Faith sets his heart straight." | The verbal noun understood from the verb yuʾmin is taken as the subject. A rare analysis. |
All three have been defended in the classical sources and all three are grammatically possible. I do not impose a preference.
This much I can say: the three readings come out in practice at the same place — a link is set up between faith and the heart's being set straight. The difference lies in the direction of the link: in the first the straightening comes from outside, in the second from inside, in the third from the act itself.
Look at the structure of the sentence. The first sentence said that the affliction comes by leave. The second sentence says what will be given to the one who believes — and what is given is not the lifting of the affliction but the setting straight of the heart.
That is, the promise is not that the event will change; it is that the person standing in the event will change.
This distinction is decisive for the sūra's understanding of morality, and it joins with the finding recorded in al-Inshirāḥ. There, when the difference between maʿa (with) and baʿda (after) was treated, the following was said, and I do not repeat it, I recall it: "To know that a hardship 'will pass' teaches a person to wait… To know that there is 'something inside' a hardship teaches him to look."
Al-Taghābun 64/11 sets up the same structure: it is not said that the affliction will be lifted, it is said that the heart inside the affliction will be set straight. What changes is not the outside.
قَلْب — root ق ل ب: to turn, to turn upside down, to revolve. Inqilāb (overturning), taqlīb (turning over), mutaqallib (that which turns) are from the same root. The very name of the thing conveys instability: the heart is what turns.
And this makes the verse's request meaningful. What is asked for a turning thing is that it be set straight — yahdi, that is, that it be given a direction. Not that it be fixed in place; that it be directed.
The Qurʾān explained by the Qurʾān. Another verse directly connected with this one gives the words to be said in the face of affliction:
ٱلَّذِينَ إِذَآ أَصَٰبَتْهُم مُّصِيبَةٌ قَالُوٓا۟ إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّآ إِلَيْهِ رَٰجِعُونَ "Those who, when an affliction strikes them, say: 'We belong to God, and to Him we return.'" (al-Baqara 2/156)
That verse falls inside the section treated in al-Baqara. And note: there too the verb is أَصَابَ and the noun مُصِيبَة. The same root, the same structure.
The division of labour between the two verses is this: al-Taghābun states the source of the affliction (leave), al-Baqara what is to be said in the face of affliction. One is an explanation, the other a response.