al-Ṭūr 52:35-36

Am khuliqū min ghayri shayʾin am humu'l-khāliqūn · Am khalaqu's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ; bal lā yūqinūn "Or were they created out of nothing? Or are they themselves the creators? Or did they create the heavens and the earth? No — they do not attain certainty."

One of the densest pieces of reasoning in the Qurʾān. And it is not complete unless the two verses are read together.

The thirty-fifth verse asks two questions and the questions leave a third implicit.

Let us open up the sentences:

The first question: am khuliqū min ghayri shayʾin — "were they created out of nothing?"

The second question: am humu'l-khāliqūn — "or are they themselves the creators?"

And to see the logic one must first ask this: does man exist? The one addressed says yes to this — he does not dispute his own existence.

Then a question arises: where did this existence come from?

And logically there are three possibilities:

The verse puts the first two as questions and does not mention the third at all.

And this is the technique itself: the third possibility is not stated, because the impossibility of the first two already leaves it standing. Its not being stated requires the reader to arrive at it himself.

I record this as a reading drawn from the structure of the verse. But that two questions are asked and the third is not is plain in the text; and in the classical sources it is common for this verse to be read as a proof.

Min ghayri shayʾin — "out of nothing".

Several explanations of how the construct is understood are transmitted in the classical sources:

The first two explanations are the more widespread and both serve the same logic: existence without a cause.

And why is it impossible? The verse does not argue this — it only asks. And the question's being asked as a question states that the answer is not worth giving: istifhām inkārī.

But one thing must be recorded and I offer it as my own reading: the verse does not refute this possibility, it mentions it. And the reason it is content to mention it may be this: the one addressed does not defend this possibility in any case. Quraysh had the idea of a god; what was in dispute was not the existence of a creator but the reality of the hereafter.

That is, the question does not refute a thesis the one addressed defends; it recalls to him his own admission.

Am humu'l-khāliqūn — "or are they themselves the creators?"

And the impossibility of this possibility is clearer: for a thing to create itself, it must exist at the moment of creating. A thing that exists has no need to be created.

The verse does not argue this either. But the word order of the sentence carries an emphasis: humu'l-khāliqūn — a nominal sentence, and the predicate is definite (al-khāliqūn).

In Arabic the predicate's coming definite states restriction (ḥaṣr): "are they the creators?" — that is, are they the owners of the work of creating?

I record this as an observation about word order.

And the thirty-sixth verse enlarges the argument in scale.

35: Did you create yourselves? 36: Well then, did you create the heavens and the earth?

The second question is more easily rejected than the first — and it is put there for precisely that reason.

A man may claim some uncertainty about his own existence. He cannot about the heavens and the earth: he knows they existed before him.

That is, the series of questions moves from what is hardest for the one addressed to reject towards what is easiest, and makes the rejection certain.

I record this as my own reading.

And bal comes for the second time in the series.

33: bal lā yuʾminūn — they do not believe. 36: bal lā yūqinūn — they do not attain certainty.

The two sentences are in the same pattern but from different roots (أ-م-ن / ي-ق-ن).

And the position of the two answers is meaningful.

The bal in the thirty-third verse was closing the questions about the speech: is it a poet, is it the mind, is it fabrication? The answer: they do not believe.

The bal in the thirty-sixth is closing the questions about existence: without cause, themselves, did they create the heavens? The answer: they do not attain certainty.

That is, two different lacks are placed in two different fields: faith in the face of the speech, certainty in the face of existence.

I record this as an observation about word order.

And the root yaqīn was treated in the discussion of al-Dhāriyāt 51/20 (li'l-mūqinīn) and analysed in the section on al-Takāthur. I do not repeat it here. Its summary: yaqīn is a kind of knowledge — not a quantity of it.

And two neighbouring sūras use the same root in opposite directions:

al-Dhāriyāt 51/20: āyātun li'l-mūqinīn — there are signs for those who attain certainty. al-Ṭūr 52/36: bal lā yūqinūn — they do not attain certainty.

Al-Dhāriyāt describes the receiver of the sign; al-Ṭūr establishes the lack of the receiver.

I record this as a comparison.

I do not drown this argument in philosophical terms, and I must write the reason.

This verse has been made the subject of wide debates in the history of philosophy and kalām; and those debates have produced their own terms. But the verse itself uses no term.

What the verse does is simple and requires no technical knowledge: it asks where an existing thing came from, mentions two impossible answers, and does not state the third.

And this is a piece of reasoning any person can follow. To fit the verse out with terms carries it into a field of specialisation — and makes it do exactly what it does not do.

The record made in the section on al-ʿAlaq holds here in another field: "To load a verse with knowledge that requires specialisation takes it out of the reader's hands."

And one record more: whether the verse is a "demonstration" is a separate discussion. The verse does not explicitly maintain the third possibility; it asks two possibilities and leaves off. To load this structure with a logical necessity would be to load it with more than it does.

I write this as a record about method.