al-Ḥujurāt 49:11

Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū lā yaskhar qawmun min qawmin ʿasā an yakūnū khayran minhum wa lā nisāʾun min nisāʾin ʿasā an yakunna khayran minhunn, wa lā talmizū anfusakum wa lā tanābazū bi'l-alqāb, biʾsa'l-ismu'l-fusūqu baʿda'l-īmān, wa man lam yatub fa-ulāʾika humu'ẓ-ẓālimūn

"O you who believe! Let no people mock another people; it may be that they are better than themselves. Nor let women mock other women; it may be that they are better than themselves. Do not find fault with yourselves, and do not fix nicknames on one another. How evil is the name of transgression after faith! And whoever does not repent — these are the wrongdoers."

The verse forbids three separate acts, and all three are things done with the tongue:

And there is an ordering among the three: mockery is an attitude, fault-finding a gesture, a nickname a lasting record. The order runs from the passing to the permanent.

Root: س-خ-ر. This verse was named in the section on al-Ḥāqqa. The root sense the lexicographers record is to put someone under a yoke, to use him for one's service, to make him subject to oneself.

And this is visible in the root's second life: تَسْخِير (taskhīr) — it occurs many times in the Qurʾān and means a thing's being placed at man's service: "He made the sun and the moon subservient to you" (Ibrāhīm 14/33).

The same root, that is, carries both "to mock" and "to place in service".

This common ground shows what mockery is, and it is pointed to in the classical sources: the one who mocks makes the person he mocks the instrument of his own amusement. The other is no longer a subject but an object with which something is done.

And this joins with the conclusion recorded in the section on al-Humaza for hamz and lamz. It was written there: "Both treat a human being as an object: for the one an object to be pushed down, for the other an object to be picked over for faults." Mockery is the third form of the same operation: an object to be used.

This is the idea common to the three roots: the removal of the other person from the position of subject.

Two indefinite nouns stand side by side in the word order: qawmun min qawmin — "a people at another people".

The indefinite usage generalises the ruling: which people is not said, because it makes no difference.

And more importantly: since the sides are not named, who is the mocker and who the mocked is not fixed. Today's mocker is tomorrow's mocked. The verse records this by naming both sides with the same indefinite word.

The separate mention of women is debated in the classical exegesis:

I impose no preference; all three explanations are recorded in the sources.

But there is something that can be recorded in the word order: the prohibition is repeated twice, with the same structure, and in the second repetition the feminine plural form ʿasā an yakunna is used. The sentence, that is, does not merely say "women are included"; it builds the prohibition afresh for women. To be covered by a ruling and to be addressed separately are different things.

This is the strongest place in the verse, and the form of the reason given is worth noticing.

The verse does not forbid mockery with these grounds: "because they too are human", "because it is coarse", "because they will be hurt".

The ground it gives has to do with knowledge: it may be that they are better than you.

عَسَىٰ — in Arabic this is a word stating tarajjī (hope) and possibility: "it may be that, perhaps". It states no certainty.

And that the ground is built with this indefinite word is the whole logic of the verse.

The verse does not say "they are better than you" — that too would be a judgment, only in the opposite direction. It says: you do not know.

Mockery is in essence an act of ranking: the one who mocks places himself above the one he mocks. That placing is a claim to knowledge — "I am superior to him". The verse removes the ground of that claim.

And removing the ground is different from refuting the claim. The verse does not set up a counter-ranking; it says that ranking cannot be done.

This is directly connected with the thirteenth verse of the sūra, and the link is worth recording:

49/11: ʿasā an yakūnū khayran minhum — it may be that they are better (it cannot be known). 49/13: inna akramakum ʿinda'llāhi atqākum — the most honoured of you with God is the one who guards himself most.

The eleventh verse suspends human ranking; the thirteenth says where the real ranking is done. And the measure of that ranking — taqwā — is something a person cannot see.

Together the two verses set up this: there is a ranking of worth among people, but that ranking cannot be made by people. The impossibility of mockery comes from here: mockery is the announcing of the result of a measurement that cannot be made.

I record this as my own reading; but that the two verses stand in the same sūra, two verses apart, is the text's own word order.

Root: ل-م-ز. This root was treated in detail in the section on al-Humaza and this verse was named there as well. I do not repeat it; the summary is this:

• Lamz: to find fault, to pick at a flaw, to belittle with a movement of the brow or eye, to point at someone in a way that lowers him.
• On the difference between hamz and lamz there are mutually contradictory definitions in the classical sources; they were given in a table in the section on al-Humaza and none was preferred.
• The conclusion drawn there: the common ground of the two words is the act itself — to diminish someone — and the difference lies in the instruments of that act.

What is to be taken up here is the single thing not present in al-Humaza: the object.

The verse does not say "do not find fault with one another". What it says literally is: anfusakum — "do not find fault with yourselves."

This point was indicated in the section on al-Humaza and recorded thus: "Note: not 'one another' but literally 'yourselves' — anfusakum. That is, whoever finds fault with another has found fault with himself."

Now it is necessary to open out how this point works.

In Arabic the form anfusakum has two readings:

Both explanations are in the classical sources and they do not exclude one another. I impose no preference.

But what the second explanation carries deserves to be opened out here, and I record this as my own reading.

The verse looks as if it deliberately leaves the word indefinite, because on either reading something true is being said:

One. To find fault with a person is to attribute a flaw to him. And for the attributing of a flaw to work, a shared measure is needed — a ground on which it is agreed that "this is a flaw". Whoever accepts that ground has placed himself on the same ground. The fault-finder, that is, has laid down a measure for himself as well, and he is subject to it.

Two. Within a community, the finding of fault with one person does not stay confined to the one it is aimed at. Once it is accepted that a given flaw is something one may be laughed at for, everyone who carries that flaw — today or tomorrow — becomes the object of the same operation. Fault-finding is done not to a person but to a category.

Three. And by the definition of the tenth verse: the believers are brothers. Your brother's flaw is written to your own account.

The real beauty of the word order is this: the verse does not say "do not find fault with another, because he too is a human being like you" — that would be a piece of advice. It changes the object grammatically. It takes the target of the verb away from the other and gives it back to the agent. It builds the prohibition, that is, not with a moral note but with a grammatical move.

Root: ن-ب-ز. Nabz — a nickname, the fixing of a name; especially a disparaging name. The lexicographers record al-nabz as "to call a person by a name he does not like".

Form: Form VI (tafāʿul) — tanābaza. This form states reciprocity: do not fix nicknames on one another.

And the choice of the form says something: the fixing of nicknames does not remain one-sided. Within a community nicknames are produced reciprocally; one man fixes a name, the other answers. The form records this cycle.

A note on a root close in sound: the root ن-ب-ذ (nabadha — to throw, to cast, to abandon) is close to it in sound and occurs in the Qurʾān ("they cast the Book behind their backs" — Āl ʿImrān 3/187, nabadhūhu). I make no claim that there is a link of derivation between the two roots; their last letters differ (ز / ذ) and the lexicographers treat them under separate roots. But the nearness of their semantic fields — throwing a thing and throwing a name at a person — is an association that can be recorded, and I build no interpretation upon it.

أَلْقَاب — the plural of لَقَب. Root ل-ق-ب. A laqab is a name given to a person besides his real name.

And a note is needed here: the verse does not forbid all nicknames. In Arabic and in Islamic history complimentary by-names are common and have not been censured. What is forbidden is what the rest of the verse says: the name of transgression. That is, the name that diminishes a person, that proclaims his flaw, that he does not like.

The classical exegetes record this distinction, and the verse's own sentence supports it.

بِئْسَ — in Arabic a verb of dispraise: a frozen verb stating blame. Its counterpart is niʿma (how excellent).

There are two directions to the sense of the sentence in the classical sources:

The first view agrees with the verse's coming immediately after the prohibition of nicknames. The second agrees with the note about repentance at the end of the verse — one who repents has removed the name from himself.

I impose no preference; both are recorded in the sources and neither is binding.

This is the third and last occurrence of the root ف-س-ق in the sūra. The three occurrences form a chain:

The word moves from a person to an act, and from an act to a name. And in the last occurrence the verse qualifies the word as a "name": biʾsa'l-ismu'l-fusūq. The sūra, that is, comes to count calling someone a "transgressor" as itself transgression.

I record this as my own reading; but the forms of the three occurrences stand in the text and can be counted.

The verse qualifies the one who does not repent as a wrongdoer.

The root ظ-ل-م was treated in the section on al-Jumuʿa: to put a thing somewhere other than its place. Wrongdoing, at the root of the word, is an error of displacement.

And this coincides exactly with the whole subject of the verse. Mockery, fault-finding and nicknames — all three are operations of taking a person from the place he is in and putting him somewhere else: lower. The word ẓulm is the exact name of that operation.

I record this as an observation about the language; the sense of the root was recorded independently in the section on al-Jumuʿa.

And the structure of the conditional clause is important: wa man lam yatub — "whoever does not repent". The ruling, that is, is attached not to the one who commits the act but to the one who does not repent.

This is a repetition of the feature recorded at the fifth verse: the sūra leaves a way back after every heavy prohibition it lays down. Here the way back is placed inside the wording of the verse itself: the ruling is given after the door has closed.

Several accounts are transmitted in the sources: that a woman mocked another woman on account of her height or her appearance; that people who came to Medina were called by nicknames left over from the age of ignorance; that a group made fun of newcomers.

I relate these accounts with the note "it is transmitted", give no names, and tie none of them to the verse in definite terms.

What the reports have in common is historically reasonable: Medina was a place where people from different tribes, different pasts and different economic positions had begun to live together. In such a place a nickname is the easiest way of marking an identity quickly — and it generally works through the most humiliating feature.

I do not repeat what was written in the section on al-Humaza about the present-day form of mockery; the measure recorded there was: "The returns of belittling have risen and its cost has fallen."

What is to be added here are two things particular to this verse:

One. The form of the ground.

The verse does not forbid mockery as a rule of politeness. It forbids it on the ground of a deficiency of knowledge: it may be that they are better than you.

The practical consequence of this is: to refrain from mockery does not require thinking well of the other. The verse does not say "love them", it says "you cannot pass judgment on them". This is a workable measure — because it demands no feeling from anyone; it asks a person to give up a claim.

Two. The permanence of a nickname.

Mockery is passing, fault-finding is a moment; a nickname sticks to the person. A name fixed on a person comes before everything that is thought about him and shapes even the knowledge held about him.

Today this operation works differently from before, but more lastingly: namings that identify a person with one sentence, one image or one incident become searchable together with his name and are not erased. The tanābuz form the verse uses — reciprocal and ongoing — describes this cycle.

And the verse's remedy is interesting: the verse does not command the removing of a nickname (which is most often not possible); it forbids the fixing of one. The chain is broken at the first link.