al-Muddaththir 74:54-56 — The close

Kallā innahū tadhkira / Fa-man shāʾa dhakarah / Wa mā yadhkurūna illā an yashāʾallāh. Huwa ahlu'l-taqwā wa ahlu'l-maghfira

"No! It is a reminder. So whoever wills, remembers it. And they will not remember unless God wills. He is worthy to be guarded against; and He is worthy to forgive."

In the last three verses the root occurs three times: tadhkira, dhakarah, yadhkurūn; together with al-tadhkira in verse 49, four in the closing section.

The sūra closes with the word that names it. And the same move was treated in al-Muzzammil 73/19; I do not repeat it.

This is one of the strongest data of the link between the two sūras.

The same skeleton, in two sūras. And the difference is here: al-Muzzammil leaves the door open and leaves it at that; al-Muddaththir adds a caveat.

And the question of the will comes here.

This pattern is repeated in several places in the Qurʾān:

• "And you will not, unless God wills" (al-Takwīr 81/29) — wa mā tashāʾūna illā an yashāʾallāh. Treated in al-Takwīr.
• "And you will not, unless God wills" (al-Insān 76/30).
• al-Muddaththir 74/56 — wa mā yadhkurūna illā an yashāʾallāh.

And note: here the verb is different.

In al-Takwīr and al-Insān the verb is tashāʾūn (to will); here it is يَذْكُرُونَ (to remember).

That is, the caveat has been placed not on willing but on remembering. I record this difference as an observation; I draw no doctrinal conclusion from it.

This verse is one of the places most often cited in the dispute over compulsion and free choice.

In al-Baqara 2/7 the frame of this dispute was set up, and it was applied in al-Takwīr 81/29. I keep the same stance here, and I repeat the caveat recorded there:

"In this commentary I take no side… none of the parties has maintained that man is without responsibility; the dispute is about how responsibility is established."

What can be said from the text itself. Two things:

First — the two sentences stand side by side, and both are in the text.

• Fa-man shāʾa dhakarah — "whoever wills, remembers it." (55)
• Wa mā yadhkurūna illā an yashāʾallāh — "and they will not remember unless God wills." (56)

One verse apart. That is, the text does not set the two sentences against one another; it says them one after the other.

And the observation recorded in al-Takwīr holds here too: that the two sentences should come one after the other shows that the text counts both of them true. It does not choose one side and cancel the other.

Second — the ordering. The release comes first, the caveat afterwards.

This order can be recorded as an observation: the text first shows the addressee the door, then says in whose hand the door is. The reverse order (first the caveat, then the door) was possible, and would have had a different effect.

I draw no doctrinal conclusion from this observation.

One of the most out-of-the-ordinary closings in the Qurʾān.

أَهْل (ahl) — one who is worthy of a thing, the owner of a thing and the one who belongs to it. Ahl al-bayt, ahl al-kitāb.

And two constructions:

أَهْلُ ٱلتَّقْوَىٰ is clear: taqwā is a work the servant does; God is worthy of it. (The و-ق-ي root was treated in al-Muzzammil 73/17: at the centre of the root there is not fear but protection.)

But the second is not symmetrical: maghfira is not a work the servant does; it is a work God does. What, then, does "worthy of forgiveness" mean?

The third explanation reads the asymmetry between the two constructions not as a defect but as a choice, and it is defended in the classical sources.

I impose no preference. But I record this: all three explanations arrive at the same result — the sentence binds guarding oneself and being forgiven to the same address.

And one must look at where the sūra ends.

What was recounted throughout the sūra: saqar, a place like a set of shackles, scorched skins, nineteen keepers, souls held in pledge, startled asses.

And the sūra ends with the word "forgiveness".

The last word: ٱلْمَغْفِرَة.

And the last command of al-Muzzammil came from the same root: wa'staghfirullāh (73/20) — and there the concrete sense of the غ-ف-ر root (to cover, to close over, to overlay; mighfar — the iron helmet) was treated.

Both sūras close with the same root.

The one names the request, the other the source.

I record this coincidence as an observation; I do not claim that the two sūras were deliberately closed with the same root.

The reading recorded at the end of al-Muzzammil holds here as well, and is completed.

al-Muddaththir began by calling out to a man wrapped in his covering (al-muddaththir) — and it was built upon the sense of the د-ث-ر root, "to cover a thing over".

And it ends with another root that means covering: غ-ف-ر.

The sūra takes him out of covering himself and leads him to being covered.

I record this as my own inference. I claim no kinship between the two roots — the roots are entirely separate (د-ث-ر / غ-ف-ر); the link set up is conceptual and rests on the overlap of the concrete senses of the two roots.

And I state that the same reading was set up for al-Muzzammil as well (ز-م-ل → غ-ف-ر): both sūras make the same movement.