al-Kawthar 108:3

Inna shāniʾaka huwa'l-abtar "The one truly cut off is the one who reviles you, who bears rancour against you."

Root: ش-ن-أ. Shanaʾān: rancour, hatred, loathing, dislike of someone. The verb shaniʾa: he loathed, he hated.

Shāniʾ is the active participle of this root: the one who hates, who bears rancour. The word does not simply mean "enemy"; there is an emotional charge in it. Enmity states a position; shanaʾān is an inward state. "The one who bears rancour" or "the one who harbours spite" comes nearer in English.

Tafsīr of the Qurʾān by the Qurʾān. This root occurs rarely in the Qurʾān, and the places where it occurs are interesting. Twice in Sūrat al-Māʾida, and in both as a warning directed at us: "Let the rancour you bear towards a people not drive you to injustice; be just, that is nearer to godfearing" (al-Māʾida 5/8; a similar expression occurs at 5/2 as well).

That is, the Qurʾān uses the same word in one place to describe the rancour borne towards us, and in another to forbid the rancour we bear. Setting these two uses side by side matters for what the sūra says to the present; we shall return to it.

Its being singular. In the verse shāniʾaka is singular — not "those who revile you" but "the one who reviles you". There are two readings of this: (1) a particular person is meant — which fits the reports about the occasion of revelation; (2) the class is meant — that is, everyone who bears this attribute. The second reading is the more widespread in the exegetical tradition, and it is more comprehensive because it does not confine the sūra to a single event. The verse's ruling is thus attached not to a person but to an attitude.

One more thing to note: the verse gives no one's name. The other side had fixed a name with an insult; in its answer the sūra fixes no name. The level of the answer does not come down to the level of the insult.

Root: ب-ت-ر. Its concrete sense is to cut, to sever — particularly to cut the end, the tail, of something.

The most concrete use of the adjective abtar in Arabic is for an animal with its tail docked. A horse or a camel whose tail has been cut is abtar. From here the metaphor widens:

• A man whose line is cut — one who has no male child to come after him.
• An undertaking that comes to nothing, that does not continue — left half done, bearing no fruit.
• A man cut off from good — severed from every kind of benefit.

The conception behind the word matters: what is cut is the tail, that is, the part that comes behind. The cutting of a line is likewise "having no one come after". Words from the same root such as butr and battār preserve the act of cutting.

In the society of the jāhiliyya "abtar" was a heavy insult, and the reason was cultural: in that society a person's continuity, his standing and his protection ran through male offspring. To have one's line cut meant the loss of one's name and the erasure of one's weight within the tribe.

The last part of the verse is three words, and two of them are there for emphasis.

1. هُوَ — the pronoun of separation (ḍamīr al-faṣl). Placed in Arabic between subject and predicate, this pronoun adds to the sentence the sense of "the real", "precisely", "he alone". Without the pronoun the sentence would be "inna shāniʾaka'l-abtar" and would say "the one who reviles you is cut off". With the pronoun the sentence becomes: "the one truly cut off is he", "the thing called being cut off belongs to him".

2. الْأَبْتَر — the definite article. The word comes with the article. In Arabic a definite predicate conveys restriction (ḥaṣr). Not "a cut-off one" but "the cut-off one" — that is, the full and true bearer of the attribute of being cut off.

When the two instruments work together the sentence turns into an act of returning: the epithet thrown is given back to the thrower. And it is not merely given back; it is stated that he is its real owner, and that the other only carried it as a word.

The three verses are built from beginning to end upon a contrast:

The centre of the contrast is gathered in two words: كوثر (abundance, overflow, continuity) and أبتر (severance, breaking off, end). One continues, the other ends. Both are set against one another in the same sūra, within ten words.

It is worth looking at the distribution of the pronouns as well. The pronoun of the one addressed, كَ, occurs three times in the sūra: aʿṭaynāka (we have given you), li-Rabbika (for your Lord), shāniʾaka (the one who reviles you). In all three verses the one addressed is the same person, and in each verse he is touched once: once as recipient, once as servant, once as target. The other side is named only once and indirectly — not by his own name but by his position relative to the Prophet ("the one who reviles you").

All three verses end in the sound rāʾ: al-kawthar — wa'nḥar — al-abtar. Two of these (kawthar and abtar) echo one another in both sound and structure: both are of four letters, both end in -ر, and their meanings are exact opposites. The sound of the sūra carries the contrastive structure of its meaning.