al-Muṭaffifīn 83:12

Wa mā yukadhdhibu bihī illā kullu muʿtadin athīm "And none denies it but every aggressor, every sinner."

The diagnostic verse of the sūra.

The sentence is on the pattern مَا … إِلَّا. In Arabic this is among the strongest patterns of ḥaṣr (restriction): it assigns a ruling to a single group.

"None but these deny" — that is, the set of deniers lies inside the set of aggressors and sinners.

And there is a point of logic here that is indispensable to understanding the verse rightly.

The sentence says this: every denier is an aggressor and a sinner.

The sentence does not say: every aggressor and sinner denies.

These two propositions are different. The first states that denial rests on a moral ground. The second would count every faulty human being an unbeliever, and the verse does not say that.

This distinction must be stated plainly, because this is where the verse is most easily abused. The verse does not permit looking at a person's faults and passing a verdict on his belief. The direction of the link it sets up runs the other way: back from denial, towards morals.

What was recorded in the section on al-Humaza for li-kulli humaza holds here too: كل conveys universality, covering the whole of a class.

And the conclusion reached there: "the sūra does not take aim at a person, it takes aim at an attribute. Whoever bears that attribute is whom the verse is speaking of."

So here too: the verse names no one, it describes an attribute.

Root: ع-د-و. Its concrete sense is to pass, to cross, to go beyond.

The derivatives:

• ʿadā — he ran, he passed swiftly. (The name of Sūrat al-ʿĀdiyāt is from this root and was taken up there: al-ʿādiyāt — those that run.)
• ʿaduww — enemy. The one who crosses the boundary and comes.
• ʿudwān — enmity, going beyond the bound.
• iʿtidāʾ (the iftiʿāl form) — to exceed the bound, to transgress. The muʿtad of the verse is from this form.
• taʿaddā — to pass something; in grammar mutaʿaddī (a transitive verb) comes from here.

The idea at the centre of the root: to cross to the far side of a boundary.

And this completes the sūra's weave of vocabulary. Three words, three separate roots, the same idea:

Three words are three scales of a single behaviour. And the sūra uses all three of the same people.

I offer this weave as my own reading; the concrete senses of the three roots are the lexicographers' data, the sequence I set up among them is an interpretation.

The Qurʾān uses the verb iʿtidāʾ very plainly in one place: "And fight in the way of God those who fight you; but do not exceed the bound. God does not love those who exceed the bound." (al-Baqara 2/190). That is, iʿtidāʾ is the overflowing of a legitimate field — not a thing that should never be done at all, but a thing whose measure is lost.

Root: أ-ث-م. Ithm — sin.

On the concrete sense of the root the lexicographers have recorded an explanation: ithm is what holds a person back, slows him from what is good. It is formulated in the sources as "al-ithmu mā abṭaʾa ʿani'l-khayr" — sin is what delays the reaching of the good. From the same root āthima is used of a camel that lags behind.

I transmit this explanation as the lexicographers have recorded it; I do not offer it as a settled etymology.

The word athīm is on the measure فَعِيل, an intensive or quasi-participial adjective: one who has made sin a habit, who is settled in sin.

The use of the two adjectives together:

That is, the two adjectives describe the fault in two directions: what is done to another and what is in the person. This is a structure like the joining of two traits (mockery and hoarding) into a single portrait in Sūrat al-Humaza.

Now we come to the most important idea of the sūra.

This finding was made in the section on al-Māʿūn, and this very verse was shown as the evidence:

"Note the direction of the sentence: immorality is shown not as the result of denial but as its cause. First the way of life, then the belief that fits it."

Now we are at the verse's own place, and the finding has to be opened up.

First step: the reversal of the usual assumption.

The usual assumption is this: a person first believes or does not believe, and then acts according to his belief. Belief is the cause, behaviour the result.

This assumption is innocent but incomplete. The verse shows the opposite direction: behaviour is the cause, belief the result.

The structure of the sūra was already saying this. The sūra did not open with denial; it opened with cheating in the measure. For three verses a behaviour was related, and then it was said, "do these people not consider that they will be raised?" So the order is: first the act, then the belief the act requires.

Second step: the mechanism itself.

How does this work?

If a person is engaged in a behaviour that constantly brings him benefit, then the idea that the behaviour is wrong is for him an unbearable idea. Because to accept the idea requires giving up the behaviour; and to give up the behaviour requires giving up the benefit obtained.

In this situation there are two roads: to give up the behaviour, or to reject the idea.

The second is far cheaper. And it is generally the one chosen.

Denial, then, is not the result of a thought; it is a need. The person does not believe there is no reckoning; he needs there to be no reckoning.

Third step: this finding is not new, and the Qurʾān sets it up in several places.

"No! Man wants to deny / to break through what lies ahead of him. He asks: when is the day of resurrection?" (al-Qiyāma 75/5-6)

These two verses set up the same structure: first a desire (li-yafjura amāmahu — this expression was taken up in the section on al-Shams: "to split through the obstacle ahead of him"), then a mocking question. The source of denial is not a lack of knowledge but a want.

"None reject Our signs but the wrongdoers." (al-ʿAnkabūt 29/49) — again a pattern of restriction, again a moral attribute.

Fourth step: the practical consequence of this.

This finding has a consequence, and it is important: denial may not be dissolved by evidence.

If a person rejects something out of a lack of knowledge, giving him knowledge works. But if he rejects it because it runs against his interest, giving him knowledge does not work — because the problem is not in the knowledge.

This is why the sūra does not line up proofs. It does not try to prove the resurrection. What it does is to show the person his behaviour and ask him to look at it: you are shaving off the measure; what must you believe in order to be able to do that?

Fifth step: the sūra does not turn this finding into a weapon of defence.

A limit has to be drawn. If this verse is read as "those who deny are bad people", it has been abused. The point of logic recorded above comes into play here: the verse says that the deniers have an attribute; it does not say that everyone who bears that attribute denies.

And a second limit: the verse is an instrument of diagnosis, not an instrument of classification. The principle recorded in the sections on al-Humaza and al-Māʿūn holds here too: the text is applied first to oneself.

This verse applied to oneself is the following question: is there a relation between the things I find hard to believe and the things I do not want to give up?

The closest relative of this verse is in Sūrat al-Qalam, and the overlap between the two texts is striking.

Sūrat al-Qalam draws a portrait of a person (68/10-16), and the portrait enumerates: one who swears much, contemptible, a hammāz (much given to faulting — this verse was cited in the section on al-Humaza), a carrier of tales, a hinderer of good, and:

مَنَّاعٍ لِّلْخَيْرِ مُعْتَدٍ أَثِيمٍ (al-Qalam 68/12) — "a hinderer of good, an aggressor, a sinner."

That is, the construct muʿtadin athīm occurs in two places in the Qurʾān, and both are inside a portrait of a person.

And Sūrat al-Qalam continues:

أَن كَانَ ذَا مَالٍ وَبَنِينَ • إِذَا تُتْلَىٰ عَلَيْهِ ءَايَٰتُنَا قَالَ أَسَٰطِيرُ ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ (al-Qalam 68/14-15) "Because he is a man of wealth and sons; when Our signs are recited to him he says, 'tales of the ancients'."

This is word for word the same sentence as al-Muṭaffifīn 83/13.

So the two sūras use the same expressions across two verses:

And the one thing found in al-Qalam and not in al-Muṭaffifīn is that the cause is written out plainly: an kāna dhā mālin wa banīn — "because he is a man of wealth and sons."

The classical grammarians explain the an at the head of this expression as causal: that is, he says this because he has wealth and sons.

This is the plainest example of what al-Muṭaffifīn 83/12 says: the cause of denial is not a piece of reasoning but a position.

I record this overlap between the two sūras as a datum. That the same construct and the same sentence are found in two places is a fact of the text; I make no claim that there is a deliberate reference between the two sūras.