al-Najm 53:27-28

Inna'lladhīna lā yuʾminūna bi'l-ākhirati la-yusammūna'l-malāʾikata tasmiyata'l-unthā · Wa mā lahum bihi min ʿilm; in yattabiʿūna illā'l-ẓanna; wa inna'l-ẓanna lā yughnī mina'l-ḥaqqi shayʾā "Those who do not believe in the hereafter name the angels with the naming of the female. They have no knowledge of it; they follow nothing but supposition. And supposition avails nothing against the truth."

The word order is odd, and its oddity is deliberate.

The expected sentence is: "they count the angels female" or "they call the angels daughters." The verse does not say this.

تَسْمِيَةَ ٱلْأُنثَىٰ — an absolute-object construction: "they name them with the naming of the female."

The verse characterises what is done, that is, as an act of naming, and lodges this inside the grammar. The verb is yusammūna (they name), the verbal noun tasmiya (naming) — both from the same root.

And this is a repetition of the pattern of verse 23:

Verse 23: asmāʾun سَمَّيْتُمُوهَا — "names you have named" Verse 27: لَيُسَمُّونَ … تَسْمِيَةَ — "they name with a naming"

The same root (س-م-و) twice, four verses apart, both times with the same pattern of emphasis.

The sūra insistently keeps the matter as a matter of naming. Not a dispute about belief; a dispute about an operation of language. And it says this twice, with the same grammatical instrument.

This is a repetition verifiable within the sūra.

The subject of the sentence is worth recording. The verse does not say "the mushrikūn" or "the unbelievers". It says "those who do not believe in the hereafter".

Why was this attribute chosen?

I offer a possible reading and state that it is my own: a person who does not believe that a naming will bring responsibility is free in his naming. If there is no reckoning, what you say does not matter either.

The verse shows, that is, the cause of arbitrary naming: believing that it will have no consequence.

And there is a datum within the sūra that supports this reading: verse 31, in the sūra's next block, will establish precisely the principle of requital — "that He may requite those who do evil for what they did, and reward with the best those who do good." The order is: naming is arbitrary because there is no reckoning (27); yet there is a reckoning (31).

I present this as an inference, not as transmitted.

And this must be added: per the method (Method), no wholesale ruling about a community is issued in this commentary. What the verse describes is an attribute: not believing in the hereafter and, proceeding from that, naming arbitrarily. Whoever bears that attribute falls under the ruling.

Root: أ-ن-ث. This root occurred in the sections al-Qiyāma and al-Layl. The note recorded in the section on al-Qiyāma: "the 'softness' explanation for the root أ-ن-ث was transmitted, with no claim of certainty."

The explanation the lexicographers transmit is that the root carries the idea of softness and pliancy — it is related to words such as anīs, anas. This derivation is not certain and I transmit it with that reservation.

And now look at the distribution of the word in this sūra:

The forty-fifth verse takes the word back from the first two uses.

In the first two verses unthā is an attribute people impute to God. In the forty-fifth it is something God created — and, together with the male, as one half of an equal pair.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the repetition of the word: the sūra first shows a word as the material of a calumny, then places it inside creation. The matter is thus not femaleness itself but where femaleness is placed. What belongs to the created becomes a calumny when it is imputed to the Creator.

The three occurrences of the word are data of the text; establishing this relation among them is my reading and is not transmitted.

The sentence is emphasised twice: mā lahum (absence) + min ʿilm (min pleonastic, generalising the negation). "They have no knowledge of any kind."

To what does the pronoun بِهِ refer? There are two readings: to the naming, or to the sex of the angels. Both readings are possible and neither changes the sense much.

The Qurʾān asks this question more explicitly in another sūra:

"They have made the angels, who are servants of al-Raḥmān, female. Did they witness their creation? Their testimony will be written down and they will be questioned." (al-Zukhruf 43/19)

The question there illuminates this verse: knowledge comes either by witnessing or by communication. The angels have not been seen, and no communication has come down on the matter (53/23: mā anzala'llāhu bihā min sulṭān). One road only is left: guesswork.

This sentence is the sūra's widest-reaching ruling and it establishes a principle of knowledge.

مِنَ ٱلْحَقِّ — min here conveys substitution: "in place of the truth, as a substitute for the truth."

The sentence, that is: supposition does not take the place of truth.

And this is visible in the choice of words:

• Lā yughnī — "does not suffice." The verb was used two verses earlier as well (lā tughnī shafāʿatuhum). The same verb twice, two verses apart.
• Shayʾan — "in anything." Not even partly sufficient, that is.

The structure of the ruling is this: between supposition and truth there is not a difference of degree but a difference of kind. Supposition does not turn into truth by being multiplied. A thousand people supposing the same thing does not make that thing true.

And this is a measurable finding. There is no necessary relation between how widespread a conviction is and how true it is; they are two separate questions. The verse establishes that distinction.

What this says to the present will be taken up together below; but this much can be recorded here: in claiming that a belief is false the sūra does not dispute the sincerity of the other party. What it disputes is the ground. This distinction is worth recording in point of the manners of argument as well.