وَأَمَّا الْقَاسِطُونَ فَكَانُوا لِجَهَنَّمَ حَطَبًا
The particle ammā is used in Arabic in passing from one subject to another, and sets up a definite division between two groups. The English "as for…" answers it well.
And note: in verse 14 two groups were named, but only the outcome of the first was given (those who submitted found rushd). Verse 15 gives the outcome of the second group. The two verses together set up a completed twofold structure.
A grammatical note: normally ammā is used twice (ammā… wa ammā…). Here only the second is present. This is because the ruling on the first group was given inside verse 14; the structure is not deficient but displaced.
The verb is in the past tense. The expected mood would be the future: "they will become." The verse uses the past.
This is a technique often used in the Qurʾān for the rulings of the hereafter: to relate what is to come as though it had happened, in order to convey certainty. The density of this mood in the Qurʾān's depictions of the resurrection was seen in the sections on al-Infiṭār, al-Takwīr and al-Qāriʿa too.
And the word's other occurrence in the Qurʾān is in Sūrat al-Masad: "ḥammālata'l-ḥaṭab" — the carrier of firewood (al-Masad 111/4). It was taken up in that section.
The image the word carries is hard and deliberate. The human being (and the jinn) is named not as a being inside the fire but as the fuel of the fire. The difference matters:
- A being inside the fire is the fire's object — something is done to it.
- The fire's fuel is the fire's substance — the fire is made of it.
That is, the punishment is described not as something coming from outside but as something issuing from the person himself.
- "Guard yourselves against a fire whose fuel is people and stones" (al-Baqara 2/24). This verse occurred in al-Baqara, in the discussion of the challenge.
- "O you who believe! Guard yourselves and your families against a fire whose fuel is people and stones" (al-Taḥrīm 66/6).
- "You and what you serve apart from God are the firewood of Hell" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/98 — there the word ḥaṣab is used, in the sense of fuel).
There is a difference between the waqūd (fuel) of al-Baqara 2/24 and the ḥaṭab (firewood) here, and ḥaṭab is the more concrete: waqūd is burning matter in general, while ḥaṭab is wood gathered, carried, stacked. The word contains a process of labour and preparation — the woodcutter gathers the wood, carries it, stacks it.
This concreteness accords with a method recorded in the section on al-Burūj: the naming of the punishment in the language of the crime. Those who deviate — those who corrupt a share — become fuel; the requital of the share they kept for themselves is their own being spent.
The normal order of the sentence would have been "kānū ḥaṭaban li-jahannama". In the verse li-jahannama has been brought forward.
In Arabic fronting conveys emphasis and restriction. That is: they became firewood for Hell — not for anything else. The address of the firewood is stated.
This fronting also sets up the verse-ending: by moving to the end, ḥaṭabā joins the sūra's weave of rhyme. That choices of word order in the Qurʾān often do the work of sense and sound at once has been recorded many times in earlier sections.
The jinn divide their own community in two — and they do it while speaking about themselves. The division, that is, is not a judgement from outside but a finding from within.
First: belonging to a community is not sharing that community's verdict. The jinn do not say "we are jinn, and jinn are thus." They say "among us there are these, among us there are those." A collective verdict is rejected.
This comes out at the same place as the measure laid down from the start in Method: the verdict is given to an attribute, not to a group. This is exactly what the verse does — and it does it by having a group do it about itself.
Second: being able to name the corruption within one's own community. The list of what the jinn do in the first half of the sūra is this: naming their own fool (4), stating their own false suppositions (5, 7), acknowledging their own dividedness (11), naming the deviators among themselves (14-15).
This is a manner of speech that is not defensive, and it is rare. A community speaking about itself generally either defends wholesale or rejects wholesale. The third road here — to distinguish — is harder than both, because it requires a measure.
From here on the speaker changes. The jinn's report is over; the sūra begins to give its own rulings.
Exactly where the transition falls depends on the grammatical question taken up at the head of the sūra, and no definite boundary can be drawn. But in point of content the change is plain: from verse 16 on the sentences no longer say "we jinn"; general rules, rulings and commands come. The address of verse 18, "so do not call upon anyone along with God", settles it that the speaker is no longer the jinn.