al-Aḥzāb 33:57-58

Inna'lladhīna yuʾdhūna'llāha wa rasūlahu laʿanahumu'llāhu fi'l-dunyā wa'l-ākhirati wa aʿadda lahum ʿadhāban muhīnā · Wa'lladhīna yuʾdhūna'l-muʾminīna wa'l-muʾmināti bi-ghayri ma'ktasabū fa-qadi'ḥtamalū buhtānan wa ithman mubīnā

"Those who injure God and His Messenger — God has cursed them in this world and the hereafter, and has prepared for them a humiliating punishment. · And those who injure believing men and believing women for something they have not done have taken upon themselves a slander and a manifest sin."

The two verses use the same verb (yuʾdhūna) with two different objects and state two different outcomes.

And that the two verses come one after the other is one of the most striking facts of word order in the sūra.

Immediately after recounting the injury done to the Prophet, the Qurʾān recounts the injury done to ordinary believers. And it uses the same verb for both.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is the succession of the two verses and the shared verb.

Classical exegesis has dwelt on this expression, because the injuring of God cannot be thought of in its literal sense.

The classical explanations:

I do not impose a preference. And the note of tanzīh entered at al-Ḥadīd (57/4 and 57/29) and at al-Baqara (2/115) holds here too: in speaking about God human qualities are not fastened onto Him, and al-Shūrā 42/11 (laysa ka-mithlihī shayʾ) stands as the limit.

ٱكْتَسَبَ — root ك-س-ب. To earn; in Form VIII (iktisāb) it generally conveys an effort and an intent.

And this distinction (kasaba / iktasaba) was recorded at al-Baqara: at al-Baqara 2/286 the two forms come side by side and the lexicographers record that the first is used of good and the second of evil.

The function of the note is this: the verse takes as its subject undeserved injury. That is, a response to something a person has actually done is not the subject of this verse.

And this explains why the verse ends with the word buhtān.

And the concrete sense of the root must be dwelt on: bahata — to leave someone dumbfounded, to astonish him to the point of freezing. The Qurʾān uses the root in this sense: "Abraham… so the one who disbelieved was left dumbfounded" (al-Baqara 2/258 — fa-buhita'lladhī kafar).

From this comes the sense buhtān — slander. And the link is this: slander freezes the one it is aimed at. The person does not know what to say, because he has no connection at all with what is being levelled at him.

This is the most elegant side of the word and I record it: Arabic has named slander by the victim's reaction. The name of the offence comes not from the offender's act but from the state of the one wronged.

And the link with al-Ḥujurāt: that sūra was from beginning to end about wounding with speech — mockery, nicknames, surmise, backbiting. Al-Aḥzāb 33/58 closes the same matter with a sentence of ruling.

Root: ح-م-ل. To carry, to take on.

And this root will return in the seventy-second verse of the sūra: wa ḥamalahā'l-insān — "and man took it up."

The comparison of the two occurrences is worth recording:

The same root, once a burden taken without wanting it, once a burden undertaken. I record it and shall return to it at the seventy-second verse.

The measure of the fifty-eighth verse is one of those most needed today.

The verse ties injury to a matter of desert: bi-ghayri ma'ktasabū. That is, the question is not "is this person bad" but "did this person do it".

And the verse names injury done over something not done buhtān — with a word whose root is "to leave dumbfounded".

Its present-day form is concrete: to speak about a person over something he has not done leaves him defenceless. Because a defence is possible only about something that actually happened. Against something that did not happen there is no defence — only bewilderment.

The root of the word says exactly this.