al-Taḥrīm 66:9

Yā ayyuha'n-nabiyyu jāhidi'l-kuffāra wa'l-munāfiqīna wa'ghluẓ ʿalayhim, wa maʾwāhum jahannamu wa biʾsa'l-maṣīr

"O Prophet! Strive against those who deny and against the hypocrites, and be hard towards them. Their abode is hell; and what an evil destination!"

At first sight this is the verse that stands most out of place in the sūra. Its subject is neither a family matter, nor repentance, nor the four women.

The same verse occurs in another place in the Qurʾān as well, in almost identical wording (al-Tawba 9/73). That is, the expression is an established formula.

Then what is it doing here? Several readings are possible and I present none of them as certain:

The third reading is the most functional in point of word order: the ninth verse says al-kuffār, the tenth gives an example for li'lladhīna kafarū; the eleventh gives an example for li'lladhīna āmanū. That is, this verse sets up the parties of the two coming examples.

I record this not as a preference but as a possibility of reading.

Root ج ه د (j-h-d). The concrete sense of the root is to expend force, to spend one's strength, to be put to effort. Jahd — strength, effort. Juhd — capacity. Ijtihād — trying to reach a conclusion in a question by expending all one's strength on it. The Turkish içtihat (independent legal reasoning) and cihat (striving) are from this family.

The pattern: مُفَاعَلَة (mufāʿala). This form, as was recorded in the discussion of al-Maʿārij too, states a two-sided effort: the act is done reciprocally, or an exertion one party keeps up against another is recounted.

That is, jihād is not a one-directional act of attack; it is the name of a reciprocal struggle. The pattern says so.

And I must enter a note about the scope of the word. The word jihād is used in the Qurʾān over a wide field: with wealth, with life, with the tongue, with the Qurʾān. In Sūrat al-Furqān it says "strive against them with it — that is, with the Qurʾān — with a great striving" (al-Furqān 25/52), and there the instrument is explicitly the text itself.

In this verse no instrument is stated. There is only the verb and its object. I draw no instrument out of the verse itself; I content myself with recording the general scope of the word.

And as the method of this text requires: the legal framework of jihād, its conditions, against whom and how it is to be done, are the subject of the literature of law and I issue no ruling on this. Nor do I enter into current political disputes — this is one of the rules of method to which this commentary is bound.

A detail of word order: the verse mentions two groups together — al-kuffār and al-munāfiqīn. But with a single verb. That is, the same verb is directed at two different groups, and the situation of the two groups is not the same: one is openly opposite, the other inside and hidden.

This shows of itself that the word cannot be reduced to a single method: an open method of conflict cannot in any case be applied against a hidden opposition. I record this as an observation.

Root غ ل ظ — treated at the sixth verse: thickness, density, not flexing. I do not repeat it.

What must be noticed here is what the word does not say. The verse does not say uqtul (kill), it does not say iẓlim (wrong), it does not say ubghuḍ (hate). It says "be thick" — that is, do not flex, do not slacken, do not soften.

And the original sense of the root supports this reading: ghilẓa is not a way of behaving but a consistency. What is thick does not change shape under pressure.

The context of the verse requires this reading. What had the first verse of the sūra corrected? A softening. The Prophet had changed a boundary God had set, in order to please the other side.

The ninth verse sets up the other face of the same subject: not slackening in matters of boundaries.

Setting the two verses side by side shows that the sūra sets up an axis:

At first sight they look contradictory: one seems to ask for slackening, the other for hardness. But the common point is this: in both, the measure is set not by the person's own preference but from outside. In the first the person narrowed of his own accord; in the second he is asked not to slacken of his own accord. In both verses what is corrected is adjusting the setting oneself.

I write this as my own reading; it is not binding.

Root أ و ي (ʾ-w-y): to take refuge in a place, to shelter, to come back. Maʾwā — a place of refuge, a shelter. From the same root comes īwāʾ (to shelter someone).

The interesting side of the word: it is a positive word. A maʾwā is the place a person returns to at the end of the day — home, nest, refuge. The Qurʾān uses the same word for the garden as well (jannatu'l-maʾwā).

Its use here for hell produces a contrast: fire as a place of refuge. And this contrast is a technique repeated several times in the Qurʾān's descriptions of punishment — the giving of a comfortable word to an uncomfortable object.

وَبِئْسَ الْمَصِيرُ — "what an evil destination!" مَصِير, root ص ي ر: to turn into a state, to arrive at an outcome. Maṣīr — the place arrived at, the state turned into.

This formula is repeated in the neighbouring sūras too; Sūrat al-Taghābun will use the same expression (64/10). One of the verbal kinships between the two sūras.

The adjusting of the measure by oneself.

The axis I recorded above — narrowing in the first verse, a warning against slackening in the ninth — says something practical.

A person constantly adjusts the measure according to his relation with the other party. He slackens it before someone he loves, he tightens it before someone he does not. And this adjustment is most often made without being noticed; the person is not even aware that he has changed the measure — he counts his own setting as "what the situation required".

The two verses at the two ends of the sūra show the same error in two different directions in the same person: in one place an extra narrowing, in another the risk of slackening.

The common lesson is this: the measure must be independent of the relationship. Whom you are facing does not change what is right. This holds both towards those near and towards those far — and in both it is hard.