al-ʿAlaq 96:13

A-raʾayta in kadhdhaba wa tawallā "Tell me — what if he (the one who restrains) has denied and turned away?"

Who is the subject of this verse? There are two possibilities, and both are mentioned in the classical commentaries:

The first reading is by far the stronger and is the preference of the majority. Its ground is both the context and the sentence itself: verses 11-12 were supposing the good state of the servant restrained; verse 13 sets the state of the restrainer over against it. The contrast is completed in this way.

In that case the three occurrences of a-raʾayta set up a picture like this:

Three questions place the two persons opposite one another. And the answer to the chain will come in verse 14 — but not the expected answer.

The analysis of the root was done on the first verse of Sūrat al-Māʿūn: ك ذ ب, in Form II, "to call another's true word a lie"; its difference from inward unbelief (kufr) is that the attitude is made outward. I rely on that treatment.

Here the verb comes in the perfect, not the imperfect as in al-Māʿūn. In kadhdhaba — "if he denied". A conditional sentence requires the perfect; this is a requirement of the grammar, and no separate sense need be loaded onto it.

Root: و ل ي. This root is one of the most interesting in Arabic, because it carries opposite senses.

The central sense of the root is nearness, adjacency, succession: walī (friend, near one, protector), walāya (nearness and authority), tawallī.

But in Form V (tawallā) the verb can go in both directions at once:

• تولّى + مفعول (with an object): "he took charge of, he took possession of, he took as a friend."
• تولّى + عن or used absolutely: "he turned his back, he turned away, he withdrew."

The usage here is the second. That the same root carries both "to draw near" and "to draw away" is no contradiction: the root in fact conveys turning towards, and turning has two sides — to turn to one thing is at the same time to turn one's back on another. The verb describes the movement of showing the back.

This is an image in accord with the whole sūra. The sūra will end with prostration — with bringing the body down to the ground. Tawallā, on the other hand, is turning the body in the opposite direction. Two movements of the body, the counterparts of two attitudes.

Kadhdhaba first, tawallā after. That is, first the denial, then the turning away.

The ordering is logical: first the judgment is passed inside, then the distance is taken outside. Denial is a conviction, turning away a conduct. The Qurʾān uses this pair together elsewhere as well (al-Qiyāma 75/32: wa lākin kadhdhaba wa tawallā).

And this sets up a complete symmetry with the picture in the preceding verse:

Two attributes each, matched one to one. One is in guidance, the other in denial; one enjoins, the other turns his back. And the party that finds in itself the authority to restrain someone praying is the second.