al-Qiyāma 75:31-33

Fa-lā ṣaddaqa wa lā ṣallā · Wa lākin kadhdhaba wa tawallā · Thumma dhahaba ilā ahlihī yatamaṭṭā "He neither affirmed nor prayed; but he called it a lie and turned away. Then he went off to his people with a swagger."

After the moment of death the sūra turns back: who was this man?

The ordering itself is meaningful. The Qurʾān showed the end first (26-30), then tells the life. Like the reading backwards of a file on which judgement has been given.

Root: ص-د-ق. To be true, to correspond to reality. Ṣidq — truthfulness; ṣādiq — one who speaks truly; taṣdīq — affirming; ṣiddīq — one who has made truthfulness a habit.

And from the same root comes صَدَقَة (ṣadaqa), alms. The explanation the lexicographers transmit: alms is what shows the truth of a person's faith — what is said in words verified with property.

This second branch gives rise to a disagreement in the verse:

The first reading is stronger, because the thirty-second verse brings the opposite verb in the same measure: ṣaddaqa ↔ kadhdhaba. I state my preference; it is not binding, and the second reading is also in the classical sources; moreover the two readings do not exclude one another — as was recorded in the sections on al-Balad and al-Māʿūn, the Qurʾān often measures faith by property.

Root: ص-ل-و. In the section on al-Aʿlā a record was made on this matter and I repeat it here: ص-ل-ي (to enter the fire) and ص-ل-و (prayer) are not the same root; no meaning should be drawn from the likeness of sound.

In the verse two verbs stand side by side: affirming and prayer. That is, one from within (conviction), one from without (act). This is the Qurʾān's habitual pairing; at al-Bayyina 98/5 too, ikhlāṣ and iqāmu'ṣ-ṣalāt occurred in the same sentence.

The three verses work in two parts, and the symmetry is exact:

The opposition has two layers. Ṣaddaqa and kadhdhaba are from the same form (tafʿīl) and come from exactly opposite roots — one to affirm, the other to call a lie. Ṣallā and tawallā, on the other hand, form an opposition of direction: one is turning towards, the other turning away.

The root و-ل-ي is striking: to be near, to be adjoining, to be a friend. Walī — near one, friend, protector. Wilāya — nearness, protection. And Form V, تَوَلَّىٰ (tawallā), carries two opposite senses:

• He took charge, he took up — the usage in the line of "God is the walī of those who believe".
• He turned his face away, he turned his back — the usage here.

The same verb states both drawing near and moving away. The lexicographers' explanation: at the centre of the root is "to turn, to face one way"; the sense is determined by whom the turning is towards. To turn to one is to turn one's back on another.

wa lākin — the particle of istidrāk: after a negation it brings the contrary of what is expected. "He did not do it — but neither did he stand idle."

The function of this particle is fine: the sentence says the man was not in a state of deficiency. What filled the place of what he did not do was not emptiness but other acts.

The most visual verse of the sūra, and its harshest diagnosis.

يَتَمَطَّىٰ — the disputed root. The lexicographers propose two derivations:

Some lexicographers also relate the word to مَطَا (maṭā) — the back, the loins — and explain it as "to walk swinging the back, throwing the shoulders". I transmit these derivations; I make no definite preference among them.

The meaning is shared: to walk stiffly, swaying, with a swagger. English answers to it with to swagger, to strut.

The choice of word must be dwelt on. The verse could have been content with "he went". It adds a circumstantial qualifier beside the verb — a word telling how he went. And the word chosen is a manner of walking.

That is, denial is shown here not as an opinion but as a bodily state. The man does not merely call it a lie; he carries his calling it a lie.

And this is consistent with the sūra's account of man. The fourteenth verse had said that man is proof against himself. The thirty-third shows that this proof can be seen from outside as well: from his walk.

Root: أ-ه-ل. This root was treated in the section on al-Bayyina and used again in the section on al-Inshiqāq. The summary of the finding there: at the centre of the root is belonging and familiarity; a person's ahl are his household; an ahlī animal is one accustomed to living with man; ahliyya is being the right man for a task.

I do not repeat it here. What belongs to this place is that the same expression occurs twice in Sūrat al-Inshiqāq.

Let us set three verses side by side:

The same place, three states. And the finding recorded for this word in the section on al-Inshiqāq works here once more: the reward is given not as a place but as a belonging — not "he enters the Garden" but "he returns to his people".

Al-Qiyāma shows the other end of the same belonging. The man in al-Inshiqāq 84/13 was joyful among his people; the man in al-Qiyāma 75/33 goes to his people with a swagger. Al-Inshiqāq states the condition, al-Qiyāma the walk.

And the shared diagnosis of the two sūras is this: a man's denial takes its most visible form, at the moment when he assumes he will not be called to account, among those closest to him. How he stands where no one is judging him shows what he is.

I offer this link as my own reading; the use of ahl in the three verses is a datum of the text.

The particle ranges three verbs in a sequence: he called it a lie → he turned away → then he went off to his people with a swagger.

This was not the expected order. When a person turns away from a truth, one would expect at least some unease. The verse shows the opposite: denial is carried not as a loss but as a gain.

And thumma stresses the distance between: time passed between the two acts, the man reached his house, and in that time nothing changed.