وَٱلَّذِينَ ٱتَّخَذُوا۟ مِن دُونِهِۦٓ أَوْلِيَآءَ ٱللَّهُ حَفِيظٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَمَآ أَنتَ عَلَيْهِم بِوَكِيلٍ
"As for those who have taken protectors besides Him — God is a watcher over them; you are no guardian over them."
The concrete sense of the root: nearness, adjacency, there being nothing else in between. Walī — one who stands immediately beside a thing. Walāya — the authority that arises from that nearness. Mawlā — both master and freed slave; the word works in both directions, because nearness has two sides.
| Verse | Word | Who |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | awliyāʾa | What they have taken |
| 8 | min waliyyin wa lā naṣīr | What the wrongdoers do not find |
| 9 | awliyāʾa / fa'llāhu huwa'l-waliyy | Both the claim and the answer in the same verse |
| 28 | wa huwa'l-waliyyu'l-ḥamīd | After the rain |
| 31 | min waliyyin wa lā naṣīr | A repetition of verse 8 |
| 44 | fa-mā lahu min waliyyin | Of the one who has gone astray |
| 46 | min awliyāʾa yanṣurūnahum | Being without a helper |
This distribution is a countable fact of the text. And what it shows is this: throughout the sūra the question "who has whom beside him" is kept continually open.
حَفِيظ — root ح-ف-ظ: to guard, to watch over, to keep on record. The root was treated in Qāf and al-Infiṭār; the note there was this: the root holds both guarding and keeping a record, and the Qurʾān uses both.
| Verse | Sentence | About whom |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | Allāhu ḥafīẓun ʿalayhim | God is a watcher over them |
| 48 | fa-mā arsalnāka ʿalayhim ḥafīẓā | You were not sent as a watcher over them |
The same word, with the same preposition (ʿalayhim), affirmed once and denied once. And the place where it is denied is the Prophet himself.
This is a fact that can be verified from the text and is worth recording. In giving a task to God the sūra takes the same task away from the Prophet. And it does this twice more:
| What | Given to God | Withheld from the Prophet |
|---|---|---|
| Watching over | ḥafīẓun ʿalayhim (6) | mā arsalnāka ʿalayhim ḥafīẓā (48) |
| Guardianship | (the name wakīl is not used of God in this sūra) | mā anta ʿalayhim bi-wakīl (6) |
| The limit of responsibility | — | in ʿalayka illa'l-balāgh (48) |
وَكِيل — root و-ك-ل. It was treated in al-Mulk; the description there was this: to commit a matter to another, to appoint an agent; wakīl — the one to whom a matter is left. And the point recorded there is important: tawakkul is not the refusal to act but the committing of the outcome.
The use here is the other face of the word: a wakīl is one who takes on responsibility for a matter. The verse says to the Prophet: "you have not taken on their affair."
And the bi- must be recorded: bi-wakīl — the redundant bāʾ placed at the head of the predicate in a negation reinforces the negation. The nearest English equivalent: "you are in no way a guardian over them."
This verse establishes the emotional balance of the sūra. What will be recounted throughout the sūra will look like a failure — people divide, object, deny. The sixth verse says at the outset on whose back this scene is not to be laid.
And this is a measure valid for anyone who calls: the outcome is not the responsibility of the one who calls. The responsibility lies in balāgh — in conveying. The forty-eighth verse will say so outright.
The place where a person convinced he knows something rightly most often stumbles is in counting the other side's refusal to accept it as his own deficiency. This corrupts in both directions: either the person bends his words in order to persuade, or he grows angry at the one who does not accept.
The verse closes the door on both — but not by proposing indifference. Immediately afterwards, in the seventh verse, comes li-tundhira: "that you may warn". The work goes on; but the outcome of the work is not on the back of the one who does it.