al-Mulk 67:10-11

Wa qālū law kunnā nasmaʿu aw naʿqilu mā kunnā fī aṣḥābi'l-saʿīr — fa'ʿtarafū bi-dhanbihim fa-suḥqan li-aṣḥābi'l-saʿīr "And they say: 'Had we listened or used our reason, we would not be among the people of the blaze.' So they confess their sin. Away with the people of the blaze!"

The most quoted verse of the sūra, and rightly. It counts in a single sentence the two instruments a human being has for deliverance.

First note the forms of the verbs: imperfect (nasmaʿu, naʿqilu), used together with law kunnā.

Law kunnā nasmaʿu — "had we been listening". That is, not "had we listened once" but "had we been people who listen." The form describes not a single event but a state. What was lacking is not an act but a capacity.

سَمِعَ — root س-م-ع. To hear. And the Qurʾān uses this word on two levels: the act of the ear, and to accept. Samiʿnā wa aṭaʿnā — "we heard and we obeyed" (al-Baqara 2/285). There hearing is the first step of acceptance.

English has this too: the sentence "you're not listening to me" has nothing to do with the ears.

The samʿ in the verse is in this second sense. The people in Hell were not deaf; they had heard the voice of the warner — in the preceding verse they say so themselves: "a warner came to us." They heard. They did not listen.

عَقَلَ — root ع-ق-ل. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Baqara (2/44); I do not repeat it here. The summary of the finding there: the meaning of the root is to bind — ʿiqāl is the rope tied round a camel's knee so that it does not run off. And Arabic has given the intellect this name: the intellect is not a store of knowledge but a bond; the thing that holds a person, that keeps him from being swept away.

The finding in al-Baqara was this: you have knowledge, you read, you even teach — but if the knowledge does not bind you, you have not used your reason.

Al-Mulk 67/10 is the counterpart of that finding in the hereafter. There was a human being there who knew but was not bound; here that human being sees the outcome and names what was lacking.

The verse does not say وَ (and). It says أَوْ (or).

The difference is great and is generally lost in translation:

• "Had we listened and used our reason" — both together would have been needed for deliverance.
• "Had we listened or used our reason" — one would have been enough for deliverance.

The verse says the second. And this multiplies the weight of the claim.

Because it means this: there were two separate roads to deliverance and these people used neither. Had one road been closed there would have been an excuse; that neither of two independent roads was used leaves no excuse.

What the two roads are needs separating out, because the whole idea of the verse is here:

The last row is especially important. These two roads are each other's reserve: a person whom no report has reached has an intellect; a person who cannot manage to reason can be reached by a report. That both channels should be closed at once is possible only if both are closed off.

And the sūra says who closed them: they closed them themselves. A warner came (the channel of hearing was open); seven heavens were shown and they were asked to look (the channel of reason was open). Neither was used.

This verse connects directly with the twenty-third verse, and the link stands in the text:

"Say: It is He who created you and gave you hearing, eyes and hearts. How little you are grateful!" (67/23)

The two things whose lack is stated in the tenth verse are counted in the twenty-third verse as things that were given.

That is, the instrument had been given. The sentence spoken in Hell is refuted by the inventory in the world: to the person who says "had we listened", it is said "hearing was given to you".

I record this as my own reading, but that the two verses stand in the same sūra with the same words is a datum of the text.

Root: ع-ر-ف. And this root is surprising: to know, to recognise. Maʿrifa — recognition; maʿrūf — the known, the good that custom recognises; ʿurf — what a society recognises.

Iʿtirāf is in Form VIII and adds reflexivity: to recognise something against oneself.

That is, confession is not the giving of new information; it is the recognising of what is known. The root of the word says this. The one who confesses is not teaching anything; he is accepting something already known.

And this explains the futility of the scene: the confession adds nothing. The keepers already knew; those confessing already knew. The only new thing that appears is the acceptance itself.

Root: س-ح-ق. And both senses of the root are at work here:

1. To crush, to grind to powder. Saḥaqa — he pounded it in a mortar and reduced it to dust. The Turkish sahk (pounding) is from this root. 2. To be far. Saḥīq — very distant. The Qurʾān uses this: "…like one whom the wind has flung to a far place" (al-Ḥajj 22/31 — makānin saḥīq).

That the two senses are found in the same root is no accident: to crush a thing is to scatter it and put it far off. What has become dust does not hold together.

The suḥqan in the verse is a verbal noun in the accusative; in Arabic it is a pattern of imprecation — like buʿdan (be far), tuḥqan. The closest English is not "damn them" but "away with them".

The choice of the word is meaningful and it connects with the whole of the sūra. Throughout the sūra the matter of nearness is treated: the nearest sky (5), the punishment seen brought near (27, zulfa). Here, by contrast, distance is stated as a punishment.

And one more observation: the expression is not "let there be punishment for them" but "let them be far". The punishment is named not as a torture but as a distance.

The verse is heavy: people accept their mistakes and the answer is "away with them". At first sight this may seem merciless, and the question needs asking.

The answer has to do with what repentance is.

In the discussion of al-Baqara (2/37) repentance was treated. The record there is this: repentance is, by its root, to turn — that is, to pass from one direction to another. Turning is possible only while there is a road.

The confession in Hell is not a turning; it is a surrender. The person is not changing direction, because there is no direction left to change. To say the same sentence in the world would have been a choice; to say it here is a statement of fact.

And there is one thing more, as my own reading: the confession in the verse still contains an excuse. "Had we listened or used our reason" — note the grammar of this sentence. It is in the conditional, and the condition's not having been fulfilled is presented as an impossibility. The person does not say "I did not listen"; he says "had I listened" — as though listening had not depended on him.

The twenty-third verse cuts exactly this off: hearing was given to you.

The pair "to hear or to use reason" names the two ways of acquiring knowledge: to receive from someone, and to think for oneself.

And today both are corrupted in their own particular way.

The corruption of hearing: knowledge has never been so abundant and has never been so little listened to. A person meets hundreds of utterances in a day and passes most of them without hearing. The problem is not access; it is receptivity. To hear a thing is to allow it to change you; and when that permission is not given, hearing does not get beyond registering.

The corruption of reasoning: the outsourcing of thinking. To learn what one is to think about a subject without thinking about the subject is extremely easy today — ready-made opinions are plentiful and free. The difference between holding an opinion and using one's reason is exactly the difference recorded at al-Baqara 2/44: in one, knowledge is acquired; in the other, one is bound.

The danger the verse points to is the closing of both at once — and these two closings feed each other. The person who does not listen is left at the mercy of his own thought; the person who does not think surrenders to the last voice he heard.

The measure the sūra gives is plain: for deliverance both together are not required; but one is required.