al-Muddaththir 74:43-47 — Four grounds from the mouths of the people of the Fire

Qālū lam naku mina'l-muṣallīn / Wa lam naku nuṭʿimu'l-miskīn / Wa kunnā nakhūḍu maʿa'l-khāʾiḍīn / Wa kunnā nukadhdhibu bi-yawmi'l-dīn / Ḥattā atāna'l-yaqīn

"They will say: 'We were not among those who pray. We did not feed the destitute. We plunged in along with those who plunged. And we used to call the Day of Reckoning a lie — until certainty came to us.'"

One of the most striking narrative moves of the Qurʾān: the accusation comes from the mouth of the accused.

The verse does not recount why the people of the Fire are there; it makes them recount it.

And this has two consequences:

1. No ground for objection is left. An accusation from outside can be disputed; a person's own statement cannot. 2. The list is their own assessment. That is, these four items are not a classification made from outside; they are what these people saw when they looked back over their own lives.

I record this reading as an inference.

A point of word order.

The first two grounds begin with لَمْ نَكُ. Its original is lam nakun; the final ن has dropped.

This is a permissible lightening in Arabic. And its effect is this: the sentence shortens, it becomes clipped.

The last two grounds come with the full form: وَكُنَّا — "and we used to be".

Four grounds, two pairs: two of omission, two of act.

The first two are things not done. The last two are things done.

This symmetry can be observed and stands in the text.

This pair is one of the measures the Qurʾān repeats most insistently.

In al-Māʿūn this measure was treated in detail, and this verse (74/43-44) was already recorded there as the chief example: "The three main elements of Sūrat al-Māʿūn — the prayer, feeding the destitute, and calling the truth a lie — stand together in al-Muddaththir in the same order." I do not repeat it.

And the most important finding recorded there was this: "The sūra does not set worship against morality; it says that worship cannot remain without morality."

But one thing must be done: to show in how many places in the Qurʾān this pair is repeated.

For the repetition is itself a proof — the more a measure is repeated, the more central it is.

Six separate places. And four of them are sūras counted as belonging to the early Meccan period.

And the order the series shows is this: the measure is set up both in the positive direction (who is delivered) and in the negative (who goes under); and the two sides are always mentioned together.

al-Māʿūn had already given this list; my reason for repeating it here is that the ground that comes out of the mouths of the people of the Fire stands by the same measure. That is, the measure is not only a criterion applied from outside; in the end it is presented as a criterion its own addressees themselves accept.

This inference is my own.

The verse does not say "we did not pray". It says "we were not among those who pray".

The difference is important. The first states the absence of an act, the second not belonging to a group.

In al-Māʿūn the same word order was treated (fa-waylun li'l-muṣallīn — "woe to those who pray"), and it was recorded there that the plural of the active participle conveys a continuity and belonging.

It is so here too: the person describes himself as outside a community.

In the second ground the verb is imperfect: nuṭʿimu — "we did not use to feed" (continuous, habitual).

That is, not a single lapse; a way of life is being described.

Root: ط-ع-م. To feed, to give to eat. Ṭaʿām (food), iṭʿām (feeding).

And the same root had occurred in al-Muzzammil 73/13: ṭaʿāman dhā ghuṣṣa — "a food that sticks in the throat".

Two sūras use the same root at two extremes: the one food not given, the other food that cannot be swallowed.

I record this weave as my own reading.

The subtlest of the grounds in the sūra, and the least talked about.

Root: خ-و-ض. And its concrete sense lights the word up completely:

خَاضَ (khāḍa) — to go into water, to walk about in it, to push on through muddy water, churning it up.

Khāḍa'l-māʾa — he went into the water, he walked in it. It is used especially of turbid water whose bottom cannot be seen.

From here the metaphorical sense comes out: to plunge into a subject, into a talk — especially into a talk that is empty, without foundation, of uncertain end.

The uses in the Qurʾān:

• "When you see those who plunge into Our signs, turn away from them until they plunge into some other talk" (al-Anʿām 6/68).
• "…and you plunged in as they plunged" (al-Tawba 9/69).
• "Those who are at play in a plunging" (al-Ṭūr 52/12).

The likeness of plunging into water says three things at once:

1. There is no ground. One who goes into water does not tread on anything. 2. There is no seeing. The bottom of turbid water is not visible; one does not know where one is going. 3. And most important: it arrives nowhere. To churn about in water is not to advance.

And there is a link with al-Muzzammil 73/7: there the daytime was described as sabḥan ṭawīlā — "a long swim", and what was recorded there was this: "one who stands still in water sinks… the medium carries the person and sweeps him along… there is no ground."

The two sūras use two separate images of water:

And here is the difference: swimming can be done alone; plunging is here done together.

I record this comparison as my own reading.

The real point of the verse is in this construction.

The verse does not say "we plunged into empty things". It says "we plunged along with those who plunged".

That is, the act is described as an act done jointly with others. And inside the construction the active participle of the same root is repeated: nakhūḍu maʿa'l-khāʾiḍīn.

This repetition stresses the social character of the act.

And an observation, as my own reading: among the four grounds this is the only "group" ground.

• Not praying — an individual omission.
• Not feeding the destitute — an individual omission.
• Calling the reckoning a lie — an individual belief.
• Plunging along with those who plunge — a thing done together with a crowd.

And this is an interesting ground, because it does not look like something the person chose on his own. It stands somewhere between "everyone was doing it" and "I did it".

The verse counts it a ground even so. That is, its having been done together with a crowd does not take the act off the one who did it.

I record this inference as my own reading.

The ك-ذ-ب root and the difference made by the tafʿīl form were treated in al-Muzzammil 73/11: kadhaba is to tell a lie, kadhdhaba is to count a thing a lie — to reject what another says.

يَوْمِ ٱلدِّينِ — "the day of religion", the day of account. The د-ي-ن root was treated in al-Fātiḥa (māliki yawmi'l-dīn), and the link of the root with dayn (debt) was recorded there: the day of account is the day on which debts are settled.

And the order of the grounds seems meaningful.

Among the four grounds this is the most basic — because it explains the other three. For someone who counts the day of account a lie, not praying, not feeding the destitute and plunging into empty talk are consistent pieces of behaviour.

But the verse has put it last.

I draw no conclusion from this ordering; but it is an observable order: the root cause comes at the end of the list — just as the verdict comes last at 74/18-25.

I record this coincidence as an observation.

"Until certainty came to us."

The ي-ق-ن root — certainty, the lifting of doubt.

And here yaqīn means "death". This use occurs once more in the Qurʾān:

"And serve your Lord until the certainty (al-yaqīn) comes to you" (al-Ḥijr 15/99).

The choice of the word is striking.

Death is named "certainty". And this gains a particular weight in the place where the sentence stands: those who called the reckoning a lie went on calling it a lie until certainty came.

That is, calling a lie and certainty stand face to face in the same sentence. The state of doubt ends with the lifting of doubt — but too late.

I record this as an observation.

The particle حَتَّىٰ ("until, up to") covers all four grounds at once.

That is, all four items lasted until the same moment. Not one was abandoned, not one was corrected.

And this turns the list into a "summary of a life". The four items cover a whole lifetime.