al-Ikhlāṣ 112:4

Wa lam yakun lahū kufuwan aḥad "And there has never been anyone equal to Him."

Root k-f-ʾ (kāf-fāʾ-hamza): to be equal, to be a match, to be the counterpart of. This root too occurs only in this verse in the Qurʾān — the sūra holds two words of single occurrence in two of its verses.

Kufuw (or kifʾ, kafīʾ) means a thing's being on the same level as another, of the same weight, in a position to correspond to it. Like the two pans of a balance coming level. The word is not the same thing as "like" (mithl): likeness is a sharing of qualities, whereas kufuw is equivalence and the capacity to correspond.

Its use in marriage. The most widespread concrete use of the word in Arabic is in the context of marriage. From the same root, kafāʾa means the equality of the two parties to a marriage with one another — by such measures as descent, religion, occupation and property. It is treated as a separate topic in the books of jurisprudence; the schools of law have adopted differing views on which criteria kafāʾa covers and how far it is binding. I transmit no ruling here; I touch on it in order to show the place of the word in the language.

This concrete background sets the tone of the verse. Kufuw is a legal and social word: the equality required for two parties to be able to come together. By choosing this word the verse says: there is nothing that could be set over against God, nothing that could be seated in the same pan of the balance with Him. Nothing that could be His match, nothing that could enter into partnership with Him, nothing that could be compared with Him.

Differences among the authorities of the variant readings are transmitted in the pronunciation of the word (kufuwan, kufwan, a reading with hamza). These differences do not change the meaning; they are only a matter of articulation.

The grammatical structure of the verse is this: lam yakun (there has not been) — lahū (to Him) — kufuwan (as an equal) — aḥad (anyone).

The English rendering gives no sense of how out of the ordinary this arrangement is. The expected word order in Arabic would be: wa lam yakun aḥadun kufuwan lahū — "no one has been an equal to Him." That is: first the subject (aḥad), then the complement of the predicate (kufuwan), then the prepositional phrase (lahū).

The verse breaks this order twice:

1. Lahū ("to Him") has been brought right to the front. In Arabic an element pulled forward from its normal place gains emphasis and restriction. The centre of gravity of the sentence becomes not "there is no one" but "there is no such thing as being an equal to Him". What is denied is not the impossibility of equality in general, but specifically the impossibility of establishing equality with Him.

2. Kufuwan has moved in front of the subject. The concept of "equality" is thereby denied before it is said who might hold it. The sentence runs to this rhythm: there has not been — to Him — an equal — anyone. The idea of equality is put out of action at the outset, and then every kind of subject that might fill it is erased.

This word order also establishes the verse-ending: because aḥad has moved to the end, the verse closes with the same word as the first verse of the sūra. Sound and meaning close at the same moment.

Verse 3 had denied the bond of descent. But descent is not the only way of establishing equality. A being may also be made a partner to God in these ways:

• As a partner in creating (the idea of two creators)
• As a partner in governing (a god of one domain, another god of another domain)
• As an opposing power (the duality of a god of good and a god of evil; in the period in which the Qurʾān came down this duality was alive in the religious conceptions current in Iran)
• As a being equal in attributes (at the philosophical level, a second necessary being)

Verse 4 closes all of these at once, because the concept of kufuw is wide enough to cover every kind of equality. Where verse 3 denies a particular claim, verse 4 draws the frame of the denial.

The Qurʾān expresses this principle elsewhere too: "There is nothing like Him" (al-Shūrā 42/11). And it gives the cosmological consequence of the principle thus: "Had there been gods in the two other than God, the order of both would have broken down" (al-Anbiyāʾ 21/22).