al-Zukhruf 43:17-18

Wa idhā bushshira aḥaduhum bimā ḍaraba li'r-Raḥmāni mathalan ẓalla wajhuhu muswaddan wa huwa kaẓīm · A-wa man yunashshaʾu fi'l-ḥilyati wa huwa fi'l-khiṣāmi ghayru mubīn

"And when one of them is given good news of what he has ascribed to al-Raḥmān, his face turns black and he is inwardly choked. Is one who is raised amid ornament and cannot bring his meaning to light in a dispute (to be ascribed to Him)?"

In treating these two verses I must keep one thing clear from the outset, per the method (Method).

The verse issues no ruling about women. The verse reports a society's attitude towards a daughter and shows the contradiction inside that attitude. I shall show step by step below how this is done; for the force of the verse lies exactly in this manner of reporting.

The verse does not say "when one of them is given good news of a daughter".

It says: bushshira aḥaduhum bimā ḍaraba li'r-Raḥmāni mathalan — "when one of them is given good news of what he has ascribed as a likeness to al-Raḥmān".

This is one of the most striking choices of arrangement in the sūra, and it must be treated in detail.

The word — "daughter" — does not occur in the sentence. In its place, the person's own ascription is used as the description. What the sentence does, that is, is this: "you ascribe such a thing to God; now let us look at what happens when the same thing is given to you."

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the expression itself: the verse joins two situations in a single sentence and forces the reader to set them side by side. A person ascribes something upward; when the same thing comes to him, his face turns black.

The expression occurs in open wording in al-Naḥl 16/57-59, and the expression in this sūra is like an abbreviation of it:

"And when one of them is given good news of a female, his face turns black and he is filled with rage. He hides from the people because of the bad news he has been given: is he to keep her in humiliation, or to bury her in the earth? Look how evil is the judgement they make!" (al-Naḥl 16/58-59)

This verse was treated in al-Takwīr, and there al-Naḥl's verb (dassa — to push into the earth in secret) was compared with al-Takwīr's word (mawʾūda — one on whom a weight has been laid). I rely on that treatment and extend the comparison to three columns:

Three verses take hold of the same fact from three different places. In al-Takwīr the victim herself was made to speak — and, as recorded in al-Takwīr, the question was put not to the doer but to the victim. In al-Zukhruf, neither doer nor victim is the one addressed: the one addressed is the mind that both belittles a thing and ascribes it upward.

The root ب-ش-ر has been treated in the corpus (al-Baqara, ʿAbasa, al-Qamar and others). Its core: the outer surface of the skin (bashara); and from there, a piece of news striking the face.

The use of the word here produces a tension, and it must be recorded: bushshira — "he was given good news". The verb is the verb of good tidings. But the reaction that follows is the reaction to bad news.

In naming the event, that is, the verse declares its own side: what happens is good news. The wrongness of the reaction is marked at the very head of the sentence by the choice of verb.

In al-Naḥl 16/58 the same root turns up again elsewhere: min sūʾi mā bushshira bih — "because of the evil of what he was given good news of". There the word comes once more, but this time together with the person's own assessment. In ʿAbasa the root's core of "news that strikes the face" was treated; here what strikes the face is a darkening.

ظَلَّ — not a full verb but an incomplete verb (nāqiṣ): to be in some state throughout the day, to remain in that state. The lexicographers record that ẓalla is bound up with the day, bāta with the night.

The sentence does not say "his face turned black"; it says "his face remained blackened". It conveys duration.

مُسْوَدًّا — root س-و-د, an active participle of Form IX. In Arabic Form IX (ifʿilāl) is used almost only for colours and defects, and the lexicographers record that this form conveys a colour's settling upon a person.

This is a detail of language, but it carries the meaning: the pattern conveys not a passing flush but a colour that settles on the face.

The root was treated in detail in al-Qalam at 68/48 (makẓūm); I rely on that treatment. What was recorded there was this:

"The concrete sense of the root: kaẓama'l-qirba — he filled the mouth of the waterskin and tied it. That is, a vessel filled inside and stopped at the mouth. كَظِيم (kaẓīm) — one who has buried his grief within. The Qurʾān uses it of Jacob (Yaʿqūb): 'His eyes went white with grief; he was filled within (kaẓīm)' (Yūsuf 12/84)."

I add the difference of pattern here, because the two verses use two different patterns:

The difference is worth recording, and I give it as an observation: the mouth of the one who is makẓūm is tied by another; the one who is kaẓīm ties his own mouth.

And the root's picture works here exactly: the mouth of the skin is tied, but the skin is full. What is visible from outside is a darkened face; what stands inside is pressure.

And a comparison can be made: the same root occurs in Āl ʿImrān 3/134 as a virtue — wa'l-kāẓimīna'l-ghayẓ (those who swallow their rage). The same verb, then, is praised in one place and in another becomes the description of a reaction. What makes the difference is what is stopped up inside: in the one, rage is held back; in the other, the birth of a child.

The eighteenth verse is a question attached to the seventeenth, and the a-wa at the head of the sentence conveys denial.

Who is the subject of the sentence? Here the exegetes differ, and the disagreement must be set out in a table:

The majority stand around the first two readings. I do not impose a preference.

But whichever reading is taken, the work of the sentence is the same, and I record this as my own reading: the verse is not making a description, it is reporting a point of view.

The proof of this within the language is as follows: the sentence is a question of denial opening with a-wa. In a question of denial, the content put into the question is not the speaker's own verdict — it is taken from the addressee's own acceptance and handed back to him. The verse is not saying "a daughter is such and such"; it is saying "is one whom you see in such a way really so?"

Writing this distinction out plainly is required by the method (Method), and it also follows from the text. The one addressed by the verse is the mind that carries two verdicts at once: the mind that on the one hand counts a daughter low enough for its face to darken, and on the other sees no objection to ascribing the same thing to God. What the verse shows is that these two cannot stand together.

The root was treated in al-Insān at 76/21 (ḥullū asāwira min fiḍḍa). Its meaning: ornament, jewellery, adornment. Ḥuliyy — jewellery; taḥliya — adorning.

Yunashshaʾu — from the root ن-ش-أ, Form II, passive: "is raised". The root was treated in detail in al-Wāqiʿa at 56/35; the core recorded there was this: "it describes not bringing into being out of nothing, but being built upward from a ground that already exists."

The pattern matters, and I record it as an observation: the verb is passive. Yunashshaʾu — "is raised". The subject of the verb, that is, is not the person herself; the one who raises her is another.

Here lies the irony within the sentence: to be raised amid ornament is not the choice of the one who is raised. A community is putting forward its own manner of upbringing as a defect. I record this as my own reading; its ground is the passive pattern of the verb.

The root خ-ص-م: the tip or edge of a thing (khuṣm — the corner of a sack); and from there the opposing party, an adversary; contention. Khiṣām — dispute, the exchange of speech in a suit.

The word will return in the fifty-eighth verse: bal hum qawmun khaṣimūn — "they are a contentious people".

What emerges when the two occurrences are set side by side is worth recording, and I give it as my own reading:

The same root, forty verses apart, for two sides. On the one side, one counted small because she cannot contend; on the other, those who do nothing but contend.

ghayru mubīn — and here we return to the opening verses of the sūra.

The same word (mubīn) has occurred three times in the sūra:

And the same word will come in the fifty-second verse, of a human being: Pharaoh will say of Moses wa lā yakādu yubīn — "he can scarcely make his meaning plain".

This is one of the clearest patterns in the sūra, and it can be verified: the same root, throughout the sūra, always by the same measure. And twice it is used to make a human being small — in verse 18 of the one raised amid ornament, in verse 52 of Moses.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is this repetition: the sūra shows twice how the measure of "being able to state one's meaning clearly" is used to strip a human being of value. And in the opening verses it had set up the same measure positively, for the Book. The measure itself, that is, is not wrong; what is criticised is the use of the measure to establish a ranking of superiority among human beings.

The reaction the verse describes is not a record of history.

The note entered on this subject in al-Takwīr holds here too, and I repeat it: sex-selective practices have produced measurable population imbalances in some countries where the means of prenatal determination have become widespread, and have become the subject of legal regulation. I write this not as a "scientific miracle of the verse" but as a record that the motive the verse describes has not been buried in history.

And the verse's own method is one that can still be used today: the verse does not defend a verdict, it shows a contradiction. It says that it is not possible both to count a thing low and to ascribe it upward. This is a test that can be applied to any ranking of value.