2/145-147 — "No proof avails"
"Even if you brought every kind of proof to those who were given the Book, they would not follow your qibla; nor are you a follower of their qibla; nor do they follow one another's qibla. If you were to follow their desires after the knowledge that has come to you, you would then be among the wrongdoers. Those to whom We have given the Book recognise it as they recognise their own sons. But a group of them conceals the truth knowingly. The truth is from your Lord; so do not be of those who doubt."
| Sentence | What it says | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | mā tabiʿū qiblatak | They will not follow your qibla |
| 2 | wa mā anta bi-tābiʿin qiblatahum | Nor will you follow theirs |
| 3 | wa mā baʿḍuhum bi-tābiʿin qiblata baʿḍ | Nor do they follow one another's |
The first two sentences are expected: they describe a mutual separation. The third ends the whole dispute.
For the objection rested on this assumption: there is one right qibla, and departing from it is straying. But those objecting do not turn the same way among themselves either. There is, that is, no measure agreed upon; each group has its own direction.
I record this as an observation about the logic: the sincerity of a demand can be measured by looking at whether the one making it applies that demand within his own house. The third sentence does exactly this.
بِكُلِّ ءَايَةٍ — "with every kind of proof." The sentence is built with la-in, that is, it is a hypothetical condition: the most extreme possibility is supposed. And the outcome does not change. This is an application of the finding at verse 6 of the sūra: "it is the same for them whether you warn them or do not warn them." There too the issue was not the insufficiency of the proof.
أَهْوَاء — the plural of hawā. The root ه-و-ي was treated at verse 87 of the sūra: to fall, to go downward; hāwiya (an abyss) is from the same root. Arabic has given desire the name "what pulls a person downward".
And that the word comes in the plural joins with the finding in the third sentence: not one hawā but ahwāʾ. This is also why each group has its own direction — desire does not unite, because every desire has a direction of its own. By contrast the ٱلْعِلْم that comes at the end of the sentence is singular.
وَلَئِنِ ٱتَّبَعْتَ أَهْوَآءَهُم… إِنَّكَ إِذًا لَّمِنَ ٱلظَّٰلِمِينَ — the one the warning addresses is the Prophet himself.
This is one of the most striking features of the Qurʾān's style, and it is seen several times in the sūra. The hardest clauses are placed not on the other side but on one's own. Indeed in the same sūra "do you forget yourselves while you go on reciting the Book?" (2/44) was also said to its own addressees.
And the ground of the clause is stated: min baʿdi mā jāʾaka mina'l-ʿilm — "after the knowledge that has come to you." The sūra's most repeated measure once again: the issue is not ignorance but what is done with what is known.
This comparison at verse 146 occurs once more in the Qurʾān in the same wording (al-Anʿām 6/20).
The field the comparison chooses is striking. A person's recognising his own child is not a learned piece of knowledge: no thinking is needed to pick him out in a crowd, there is no margin of error, it requires no proof. Recognition is chosen here as the most everyday form of certainty.
The verse does not say "they knew"; it says "they recognised". That is the difference between knowledge and recognition: knowledge is learned and can be forgotten; recognition is what happens on looking.
| View | Whom or what yaʿrifūnahu points to | Ground |
|---|---|---|
| The Prophet | They recognise him from the descriptions made known to them | The one addressed in the verse is the Prophet; the same context at al-Anʿām 6/20 |
| The truth / the matter of the qibla | They recognise the rightness of the change of qibla | The context is the qibla; the next sentence says "they conceal the truth" |
I do not impose a preference. The place both readings arrive at is the same: there is something known, and it is being concealed.
وَإِنَّ فَرِيقًا مِّنْهُمْ لَيَكْتُمُونَ ٱلْحَقَّ وَهُمْ يَعْلَمُونَ — and once more the distinction is preserved: a group. The scrupulousness seen at verses 99, 105 and 121 of the sūra continues here; the ruling is not closed over the whole community.
The chain of the verb katm in the sūra was given in a table at verse 140; this is the fourth link of that chain.
ٱلْحَقُّ مِن رَّبِّكَ — the sentence is nominal, and the predicate is attached directly to the subject: "the truth is from your Lord." No verb, no tense — a state is stated.
مُمْتَرِين — root م-ر-ي. The lexicographers record the concrete sense of the root as the repeated stroking of an animal's udder to draw milk (marā'l-nāqata); mirāʾ and imtirāʾ come from here: to keep picking at a matter, to wrangle, to fall into doubt. I transmit this connection as the lexicographers make it.
The pattern is Form VIII (iftiʿāl), and in Arabic this form generally adds an element of effort and intention to the verb. Imtirāʾ, that is, is not a hesitation that comes of itself; it is doubt gone after, picked at.
And this forms a ring with the second verse of the sūra: there it was said of the book lā rayba fīh — "there is no doubt in it". A hundred and forty-five verses later the same idea comes, this time as a clause turned towards the addressee: if there is no doubt in the text, doubt must not be produced in the reader.
That the warning is again directed at the Prophet is a repetition of the pattern at verse 145. In this stretch of the sūra the measure is continually applied to one's own side — after the attitude of the other side is recounted, it is recorded that the same risk exists for oneself.