al-Falaq 113:5

Wa min sharri ḥāsidin idhā ḥasad "And from the evil of an envier when he envies."

Root: ح-س-د. The definition of the word is quite precise in the classical sources: to want a favour that someone has to go from him.

This definition has two parts, and both are necessary: 1. Someone else has a favour. 2. The envier wants that favour to be taken from him.

Without the second condition there is no envy. This separates the concept from a neighbouring one:

This distinction is drawn regularly in the classical books of ethics, and it is important: to covet what another possesses is not envy. Envy is the name not of coveting but of grudging.

It is transmitted that in some dictionaries the root is linked with the name of a parasite that clings to the skin and sucks blood (the tick). This linkage offers an attractive image — envy's clinging silently and consuming from within — but it is not certain in point of language; I record it as a transmitted report, not as a ground.

The first victim of envy is the envier. This is not something the Qurʾān says directly; it is a finding often voiced in the tradition of ethics, and it is reasonable: because the envier constantly measures his own lack against what another has, he wounds himself without cease. The favour is with the other, the pain is with the envier.

This restriction is one of the most important fine points of the sūra, and it is often passed over.

The verse does not say "from the evil of an envier"; it says "from the evil of an envier when he envies". To say "when he envies" of someone who is an envier already looks at first sight like an unnecessary repetition. It is not.

Two main explanations, transmitted and defensible:

1. As long as envy stays within, its harm is to the one who holds it; when it moves into action it reaches another. A feeling that passes through a person does nothing to another by itself. The evil appears at the moment that feeling breaks out, when it turns into a word, an obstruction, a trap, a look. The restriction marks exactly this moment of transition.

The moral consequence of this explanation is important: you are responsible not for what passes through your heart but for what you do. This is the general line of the Qurʾān and of the tradition — a person is called to account not for inner states that come of themselves and over which he has no mastery, but for what he does by his will.

2. The restriction states the case in which envy actually occurs. That is, not the tendency to jealousy present potentially in every person, but the case in which that tendency actually turns into envy. There is a difference between something stirring inside a person and that something being envy.

A third explanation is transmitted as well: the restriction points to envy's coming out by way of the eye (naẓar, ʿayn). In the tradition a link is made between envy and "the striking of the evil eye"; reports are transmitted in the ḥadīth sources to the effect that "the eye is real" (al-ʿaynu ḥaqqun). The views that make this link are found in the classical commentaries. I do not go into the detail of the subject; what must be recorded is that the wording of the verse says nothing of an "eye", and that this is an interpretation.

The Qurʾān uses the word "envy" in several places:

• "Many of the People of the Book would like to turn you back into unbelief after your faith, out of the envy in their souls (ḥasadan min ʿindi anfusihim), after the truth has become clear to them" (al-Baqara 2/109). The expression min ʿindi anfusihim here — "arising from within themselves" — is important: envy issues not from an outward cause but out of the person's own inside. And note: the verse says not "the People of the Book" but "many of the People of the Book" — here too the Qurʾān lays no wholesale ruling upon a group but describes an attitude.
• "Or do they envy people for what God has given them of His bounty?" (al-Nisāʾ 4/54). The object of the envy here is explicitly "what God has given". This brings out the hidden logic of envy: envy is to appearance directed at a person, but in reality it is an objection to the distribution itself. Without realising it, the envier calls the apportionment into question.

And two narratives the Qurʾān tells show what envy can do:

The two sons of Adam (Ādam). "Recite to them the account of the two sons of Adam, in truth: when the two of them offered a sacrifice, and it was accepted from one of them and not accepted from the other. He said: I will surely kill you" (al-Māʾida 5/27 and what follows).

Note: the Qurʾān does not give the names of these two; it says "the two sons of Adam". The names Cain and Abel do not occur in the Qurʾān; they come from other sources. This needs to be stated.

The structure of the narrative is the exact description of envy: a favour (the acceptance of the sacrifice) has been given to the other; the one who could not receive the favour turns to doing away with the one who has it. The point to notice: the one who did not receive the favour chooses not to put his own sacrifice right but to destroy the other. Envy prefers lowering the other to raising itself; because the matter is not the favour but the comparison.

The brothers of Joseph. "When they said: Joseph and his brother are dearer to our father than we are, though we are a company" (Yūsuf 12/8). Here too the word "envy" does not occur, but the structure is the same: a favour (the father's love) is with the other, and this becomes unbearable through the comparison "we are more and we are stronger". The outcome is the well.

What the two narratives have in common is striking: in both cases the envy comes from a brother. From the nearest one. This is important for the ordering of the sūra, and we shall return to it in the next section.

In the tradition Iblīs's not prostrating is often bound to envy as well. The ground the Qurʾān records is pride — "I am better than he; You created me from fire and created him from clay" (al-Aʿrāf 7/12) — but the interpretation that behind this ground there lies a "grudging" is widespread. It needs to be stated that this is an interpretation; the wording of the verse does not say "envy".