al-Shūrā 42:21

Am lahum shurakāʾu sharaʿū lahum mina'd-dīni mā lam yaʾdhan bihi'llāh; wa lawlā kalimatu'l-faṣli la-quḍiya baynahum; wa inna'ẓ-ẓālimīna lahum ʿadhābun alīm

"Or have they partners who have laid down for them, as religion, what God has not permitted? Were it not for the word of separation, it would have been decided between them. And for the wrongdoers there is a painful punishment."

This verse is set face to face with the thirteenth by way of a single word. And this is the sharpest verbal opposition in the sūra:

The same verb, the same preposition (mina'd-dīn), the same structure. The only thing that changes: who lays it down.

This is a fact that can be verified from the text and was recorded in the section on the structure of the sūra. Eight verses apart, the same verb is used twice with two opposite agents.

And the concrete sense of the root (treated at the thirteenth verse: the path down to water) makes this opposition still more visible. On both sides there is a claim of "opening a way". The difference is in where the way arrives — and no information is given about where the second way arrives; it is only said to be unpermitted.

The sentence does not describe what the false way is; it gives the measure by which it is recognised: permission.

أَذِنَ — root أ-ذ-ن. The concrete sense of the root is the ear (udhun); idhn is derived from "giving ear" — hearing a request and approving it.

And this is worth recording in point of arrangement: the measure looks not at the content of the rule laid down but at its source. That a rule seems reasonable or useful is not the subject of the measure.

This measure will be used once more in the fifty-first verse: fa-yūḥiya bi-idhnihi mā yashāʾ — what the messenger conveys is likewise tied to permission. The same word, at the two ends: the unpermittedness of the false (21), the permittedness of the true (51). This is a verifiable fact.

In the fourteenth verse kalimatun sabaqat min rabbika ilā ajalin musammā occurred. Here comes kalimatu'l-faṣl, and the close is the same: la-quḍiya baynahum.

فَصْل — root ف-ص-ل: to separate two things, to cut the connection between them. Faṣl (a section), fāṣila (a verse-ending), tafṣīl (setting out in detail) are from the same root.

The difference between the two constructions:

In both verses the same outcome: the judgement is not given now. And in both the cause is a "word". The sūra, that is, names the decision of deferral twice, under two different names.