al-Takwīr 81:25

Wa mā huwa bi-qawli shayṭānin rajīm "Nor is it the speech of an accursed satan."

The last of the three refusals:

Together the three close off every point at which a report can be questioned: from whom did you receive it, how did you transmit it, whom did it come from.

Root: ر-ج-م. And the two senses of this root come together here in an interesting way:

1. To stone, to throw stones; to drive off, to send away. Rajīm — stoned, driven off. This is the word in the formula aʿūdhu bi'llāhi mina'sh-shayṭāni'r-rajīm. 2. To speak without knowledge, to make a stab at it, to conjecture. It occurs plainly in the Qurʾān:

"…stoning at the unseen (رَجْمًۢا بِٱلْغَيْبِ)…" (al-Kahf 18/22)

Rajman bi'l-ghayb — "throwing stones at what is not seen", that is, guessing blindly.

And now set the two verses side by side:

• Verse 24: "He is not withholding / not under suspicion in the matter of al-ghayb."
• Verse 25: "It is not the speech of a rajīm satan."

The two verses carry the two words that stand together in al-Kahf 18/22: ghayb and rajm. And rajman bi'l-ghayb means exactly "shooting off about the unseen".

Verses 24–25 together, then, say this: this is not a stone thrown at the unseen.

I record this connection as my own reading; it rests on the use of the words within the Qurʾān and it is not forced.

What the verse refuses is not an abstract possibility; it was an institution present in the hearer's everyday life.

The kāhin was, in pre-Islamic Arabia, the person taken to give news of the unseen. The widespread understanding of how it worked was this: the soothsayer has a jinn or a satan for a helper; the helper brings what it has heard from the sky; and the soothsayer passes this on in rhymed, cadenced, obscure speech.

The hearer, that is, had a ready-made category in which to place the Qurʾān. Someone who speaks in rhyme and gives news of the unseen — is a soothsayer.

Verses 19–25 of the sūra refuse exactly this category. And the method of refusal is worth noting: it does not deny the category, it enumerates the qualities of the channel. The soothsayer's channel rests on a hidden, unsupervised, driven-off being. The channel here: its position stated, its authority stated, its trustworthiness stated, and seen.

The Qurʾān sets this distinction out plainly in another place — it was mentioned in the section on al-Bayyina as well:

"The satans did not bring it down. It is not fitting for them, nor are they able to. For they are kept far from the hearing." (al-Shuʿarāʾ 26/210-212)

عَنِ ٱلسَّمْعِ لَمَعْزُولُون — "removed from the hearing". The channel, that is, is closed.