al-Ḥujurāt 49:16

Qul a-tuʿallimūna'llāha bi-dīnikum wa'llāhu yaʿlamu mā fi's-samāwāti wa mā fi'l-arḍ, wa'llāhu bi-kulli shayʾin ʿalīm

"Say: Are you teaching God your religion? God knows what is in the heavens and what is on the earth. God knows all things."

The sentence is a question, but not a question that expects an answer. In Arabic this is called istifhām inkārī (a question of denial): a refusal in the form of a question.

And the picture the question produces is a hard one.

A-tuʿallimūna'llāha bi-dīnikum — "are you teaching God your religion?"

عَلَّمَ — root ع-ل-م. In Form II: to teach. That is, to convey knowledge to one who does not know.

The scene the verb sets up is this: on one side there is a teacher, on the other a learner. The teacher knows more than the learner. The verse places the sentence of those it addresses into this scene.

When a person says "I have believed", he is giving a piece of information about his own heart. And that information is one the other side is assumed not to know — otherwise there would be no need to say it. The verse brings this assumption into the open: you are giving information to a side that does not know.

And the second half of the sentence destroys the assumption: wa'llāhu yaʿlamu mā fi's-samāwāti wa mā fi'l-arḍ.

Root: د-ي-ن. In Arabic this root has a wide field of meaning, and the lexicographers record these derivatives:

• دَيْن (dayn) — a debt.
• دِين (dīn) — both "religion" and judgment, requital, recompense. Yawmu'd-dīn — the day of reckoning.
• دَانَ (dāna) — he submitted; and he requited.
• مَدِين — indebted, submitting.

The common idea: a relation of allegiance and requital. A debtor is bound to his creditor; a servant is bound to his Lord; and in both there is a "giving of what is due".

And the particle bi- is worth recording: tuʿallimūna'llāha bi-dīnikum — "to teach God about your religion". What they are trying to teach, that is, is their own religiousness.

This verse joins the sūra's two ends on the subject of knowledge:

49/6: When a report comes, you must investigate — because your knowledge may be incomplete. 49/16: Do not try to give Him information about your own condition — because His knowledge is not incomplete.

The two verses record the two directions of the asymmetry of knowledge. Man's knowledge is incomplete, and for that reason verification is needed; God's knowledge is complete, and for that reason a declaration is unnecessary.

I record this as my own reading; the shared root of the two verses (ع-ل-م / ب-ي-ن) and their shared subject stand in the text.

The occurrences of the root ع-ل-م in the sūra deserve to be gathered:

The root occurs in six verses and in five of them its subject is God. The single exception is the seventh verse, and there too the verb is a command: "know that".

This shows why a sūra of conduct is woven with words of knowledge. All the sūra's commands — lower your voice, verify the report, do not mock, do not conjecture, do not pry, do not boast of your lineage — all of them are built upon a limit of knowledge: do not pass judgment on something you do not know.

And where knowledge is complete is repeated in six places.