al-Qiyāma 75:14-15

Bali'l-insānu ʿalā nafsihī baṣīra · Wa law alqā maʿādhīrah "In truth man is a clear sight upon himself — even if he flings out his excuses."

The heart of the sūra. And one of the densest sentences in the Qurʾān about man.

The sūra uses this particle for the second time (the first was in verse 5). And it does the same work again: it leaves what has been said and passes to the real matter.

The previous verse had said "man is informed". This verse strikes that sentence out: there is no need to inform him — he already knows.

This is no ordinary correction. The thirteenth verse had set up the reckoning as a notification: one side reports, the other side learns. The fourteenth breaks that structure and carries the reckoning into the person himself.

Root: ب-ص-ر. Baṣar — the eye, sight. Baṣīr — the one who sees. Ibṣār — seeing. And بَصِيرَة (baṣīra) — inner sight, discernment; and proof, plain evidence.

The Qurʾān uses this word in one place as the name of a stance:

قُلْ هَٰذِهِۦ سَبِيلِىٓ أَدْعُوٓا۟ إِلَى ٱللَّهِ عَلَىٰ بَصِيرَةٍ — "Say: This is my way; I and those who follow me call to God upon clear sight." (Yūsuf 12/108)

There baṣīra is the name of a call made not blindly but with sight.

The verse does not say "man is baṣīr upon himself", it says baṣīra. Although the subject (al-insān) is masculine, the predicate is feminine. This is a point the grammarians have dwelt on at length.

The first and the second readings are both strong in the classical sources, and both work in the text.

But the second joins far better with the next verse. Because the fifteenth verse speaks of excuses — and an excuse is a courtroom word. A defendant offers an excuse. If man is a proof, then the uselessness of an excuse is the natural consequence: a proof is not removed by a defence.

My preference is the second reading, and my ground is the courtroom language of the fifteenth verse. It is not binding; the first reading also suits the text, and in fact the two readings come out at the same place — a person who sees himself very well is already a proof against himself.

The finest word in the verse is this particle.

In Arabic the difference between عَلَىٰ (ʿalā) and لِـ (li-) is a legal difference: lahu "in his favour", ʿalayhi "against him". English makes the same distinction with for and against: a witness for the defence, a witness against him.

The verse says عَلَىٰ نَفْسِهِ: against himself.

That is, the sentence does not say "man sees himself". It says "man sees against himself / man is proof against himself". The knowledge is not neutral knowledge; it is knowledge that takes a side — and the side it takes is opposite its owner.

The Qurʾān says this explicitly in another place:

ٱقْرَأْ كِتَٰبَكَ كَفَىٰ بِنَفْسِكَ ٱلْيَوْمَ عَلَيْكَ حَسِيبًا — "Read your book! Today you are enough as a reckoner against yourself." (al-Isrāʾ 17/14)

The same particle: عَلَيْكَ. And the same structure: a person is the officer of his own reckoning.

In the section on al-Inshiqāq this verse was cited to complete the scene of the giving of the book. Here it goes one step further: even if the book is not read, the person already knows.

And now the place where the sūra closes upon itself.

ٱلنَّفْس ٱللَّوَّامَة (75/2) — the soul that reproaches itself. ٱلْإِنسَٰنُ عَلَىٰ نَفْسِهِۦ بَصِيرَةٌ (75/14) — man is proof against himself.

The relation between the two verses carries the whole argument of the sūra:

What is sworn by in the second verse turns into a verdict in the fourteenth.

If the soul reproaches itself, then in order to reproach it must know. Reproach is an operation of knowledge: the person knows what he did, knows what that act was, and compares the two. Lawwāma is an accounting at work.

And if that accounting is working, then the day of reckoning brings nothing new — it opens what is already there.

The only difference between the two verses is time:

What gives disquiet now gives a verdict on that day. The mechanism is the same; what changes is that its result becomes binding.

This is the real answer the sūra gives to the question in the sixth verse. The man had asked "when is that day?" The sūra gave no date. Instead it says this: that day's court is already set up and running inside you.

I offer this as my own reading; that the two verses pair the same object (nafs) with the same subject (man) is a datum of the text.

Root: ع-ذ-ر. ʿUdhr — an acceptable reason for a thing's not being done, or for its being done. Maʿdhūr — the one held excused. Iʿtidhār — apologising. (In Turkish the borrowed words özür, "apology", and mazeret, "excuse", come straight from this root.)

The singular of the word is disputed, and this dispute affects the meaning directly:

The second reading is transmitted by some of the lexicographers and it is striking: when the word means "curtains", the verse is saying — "even if he lets down his curtains."

That is, an excuse is in the word's own logic an act of covering. The person sees himself; he draws a curtain in front of what he sees. The curtain does not remove what he saw, it only shuts it in.

I transmit this second reading and build no ruling on it; it cannot be presented as a settled preference among the lexicographers. But both readings come out at the same place: an excuse changes not the knowledge but its visibility.

And the finding recorded for the root of kufr at al-Baqara 2/6 works here once more: kufr is covering. Drawing a curtain is covering too. The two acts do the same work — one over the truth, the other over one's knowledge about oneself.

Root: ل-ق-ي. This root was treated in the discussion of al-Inshiqāq 84/4. The summary of the finding there: the root works in two directions — laqiya (he met, he came upon) and alqā (he threw, he cast, he brought out to face). That is, "to throw" and "to meet" are from the same root: to throw a thing is to bring it out before you.

I do not repeat it here. What belongs to this place is the use of the same verb with two different subjects in two sūras:

The two verbs are in the same pattern (Form IV, perfect). The earth threw out what was inside it and was emptied; man throws out his excuses and is not emptied.

The difference lies in what is thrown. The earth really does throw out what is inside it — the dead, the wealth, the traces. Man does not throw out what is inside him; he throws something in front of what is inside him. An excuse is not a thing taken out but a thing put in place.

I record this as my own reading; the verb's occurrence in the two places is a datum of the text.

وَلَوْ is in Arabic what is called waṣliyya: it states that a judgement holds even under the most extreme condition. In English, "even if…", "even though…".

This has two consequences:

First: the verse does not prevent the production of excuses. Man will produce excuses — that is not disputed, it is even set down as expected. The only thing said is that what is produced will be of no use.

Second: the abundance of excuses is implied. The word comes in the plural (maʿādhīrah — his excuses). Not a single defence but a heap.

And when these two details are put together a familiar picture appears: the person knows, but piles layer upon layer of explanation on top of what he knows. The verse does not deny the pile; it says that what lies beneath it goes on being visible.

The fourteenth and fifteenth verses depart from the sound-order of the preceding seven.

Verses 7-13: al-baṣar, al-qamar, al-qamar, al-mafarr, wazar, al-mustaqarr, wa akhkhar — seven verses in a row ending in -ar. A hard, short, closed series.

Verses 14-15: baṣīrah, maʿādhīrah — the long ī enters.

When the sound changes the subject changes too: the scene ends, the verdict begins. And the next block (16-19) will move to an entirely new sound.