al-Shūrā 42:18

Yastaʿjilu biha'lladhīna lā yuʾminūna bihā; wa'lladhīna āmanū mushfiqūna minhā wa yaʿlamūna annaha'l-ḥaqq; alā inna'lladhīna yumārūna fi's-sāʿati la-fī ḍalālin baʿīd

"Those who do not believe in it seek to hasten it. Those who believe are apprehensive of it and know that it is the truth. Know well that those who keep disputing about the Hour are in a far-gone error."

The verse separates two groups by their reactions to the same thing:

ISTIʿJĀL — root ع-ج-ل, Form X: to want a thing to come in haste. ʿAjala, in the root's original sense, is to want a thing before its time.

And the logic is plain: to want a thing to come in haste is a sign of not taking it seriously. A person does not want a reckoning he truly believes will come to come quickly.

The root was treated in al-Ṭūr, al-Maʿārij and al-Inshiqāq. The description there: shafaq is the intermediate light between day and night; and ishfāq is an anxiety standing between fear and hope — not fear pure and simple.

And the distinction the lexicographers record is this: khawf drives away, whereas ishfāq keeps the attachment alive. A person is mushfiq for something he loves as well — indeed the Turkish şefkat ("compassion") is from the same root.

This explains the word's work here: the state of the believers is not flight but attentiveness.

And the root occurs once more in the sūra — four verses later, but this time of another group:

The same word, two different groups, two different causes. This is a fact that can be verified from the text.

And the difference must be recorded: the believers are apprehensive of what is coming, the wrongdoers of what they have done. The one's anxiety is in front of him, the other's behind.

Mirāʾ — to dispute, to wrangle. The lexicographers give the root's original sense as to milk (marā'ḍ-ḍarra — he milked the udder) and explain the transition thus: the one who disputes tries to draw words out of the other.

The root was treated in al-Qamar (fa-tamāraw bi'n-nudhur), and the reading recorded there was this: tamārī is "to render something ineffective by opening it to dispute".

The use here does the same work: to dispute about the Hour is to turn the Hour into a subject of dispute — and once a thing is turned into a subject of dispute, deciding about it can be deferred indefinitely.

Ḍalālin baʿīd — "a far-gone error". The adjective baʿīd conveys not the degree of the straying but its distance: how far one has gone from the road.