فَإِن تَوَلَّوْا۟ فَإِنَّمَا عَلَيْكَ ٱلْبَلَٰغُ ٱلْمُبِينُ · يَعْرِفُونَ نِعْمَتَ ٱللَّهِ ثُمَّ يُنكِرُونَهَا وَأَكْثَرُهُمُ ٱلْكَٰفِرُونَ
Fa-in tawallaw fa-innamā ʿalayka'l-balāghu'l-mubīn · Yaʿrifūna niʿmata'llāhi thumma yunkirūnahā wa aktharuhumu'l-kāfirūn
"If they turn away, nothing is laid upon you but plain delivery. · They recognise God's favour, then they deny it; and most of them are ungrateful."
| Verb | Root | What |
|---|---|---|
| Yaʿrifūn | ع-ر-ف | To recognise — to know, to be aware of |
| Yunkirūnahā | ن-ك-ر | To deny — to fail to recognise, to reject |
And the lexicographers count the two roots as opposites: maʿrifa and nakira. In Arabic a noun that is definite is called maʿrifa and one that is indefinite nakira — the same two roots.
The sentence thus sets two opposed verbs one after the other upon a single object: yaʿrifūna … thumma yunkirūnahā.
And the particle thumma must be recorded. In Arabic thumma conveys sequence and an interval — "then". The denial does not take the place of the recognising; it comes after it.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that particle: the verse does not describe a state of ignorance. The recognising has taken place, and then been rejected. And this coincides with the word yajḥadūn (denial in the face of knowledge) in the seventy-first verse — as was recorded at al-Aḥqāf, 46/26, ج-ح-د is denial against knowledge.
The whole enumeration of the sūra arrives at one place in this sentence: the trouble is not a failure to see the list; it is the rejecting of it after seeing.
And it can be compared with the diagnosis at al-Rūm, 30/7: there the fault was named yaʿlamūna ẓāhiran mina'l-ḥayāti'l-dunyā — superficiality. Here something else is said.
| Sūra | Diagnosis | Where the trouble lies |
|---|---|---|
| al-Rūm 30/7 | Yaʿlamūna ẓāhiran | In the depth of the looking — remaining on the surface |
| al-Naḥl 16/83 | Yaʿrifūna … thumma yunkirūnahā | After the looking — refusing to accept |
This is a difference verifiable across the sūras, and I give it as my own reading: al-Rūm diagnoses the shallowness of the looking, al-Naḥl the step that comes after the looking. The two sūras catch the same fact at two different stages.
وَأَكْثَرُهُمُ ٱلْكَٰفِرُونَ — and the scope must be recorded. The verse does not say "all of them": aktharuhum — most. Per the method (Method) the ruling is tied not to a group but to an attribute, and the verse's own word keeps this.