al-Qamar 54:2

Wa in yaraw āyatan yuʿriḍū wa yaqūlū siḥrun mustamirr "If they see a sign they turn away and say, 'a passing magic'."

The sentence is a conditional structure: in (if) + yaraw (they see) → yuʿriḍū (they turn away) + yaqūlū (they say). All three verbs are imperfect and in the jussive.

And at just this point a datum falls into the disagreement over the first verse. The first verse was in the perfect; the second is in the imperfect. The text is therefore moving from an event to a habit: this happened once; and whenever these people see a sign they do this.

The conditional particle chosen is إِنْ, not إِذَا. The difference the lexicographers record: idhā is used for a condition expected or certain to occur, in for a condition that is possible or rare. The use of in here implies that their seeing a sign is a rare situation — and this fits the exceptional character of the event the first verse relates.

I record this as an observation about the grammar; I do not claim that the in / idhā distinction works absolutely everywhere, since there are places in the Qurʾān where it is relaxed.

Root: ع-ر-ض. Concrete sense: breadth, width. ʿArḍ — the width of a thing (as against its length). ʿArīḍ — wide.

Two branches come out of this, and both are in active use in the Qurʾān:

• عَرَضَ — to turn a thing broadside and present it, to set it forth. ʿArḍ, maʿrūḍ, maʿriḍ (an exhibition), iʿrāḍ.
• أَعْرَضَ (Form IV) — to turn away. The lexicographers' explanation: to turn not one's face but one's side. That is, you show the one before you not your face but your width.

This detail matters. The English expression "to turn away" gives the movement correctly but not the picture inside the word. The picture in Arabic is this: the face-to-face stance is broken, the person turns himself sideways. To refuse, one need not speak; changing one's stance is enough.

And read together with the "presenting" sense of the same root, a contrast emerges: ʿarḍ is opening a thing to the one before you; iʿrāḍ is closing yourself to him. The same root names both the offering and the refusal of what is offered. This is a datum of the language; the reading of it as a contrast is mine.

This word has been treated in many places in this commentary and I do not repeat it. Only one point here: a sign exists not for its own sake but for what it points to. To see an āya is not to watch a display; it is to receive a direction. For the one who takes the sign and does not look where it points, the āya ceases to be an āya; only an event is left.

Further on in the sūra the same word will occur twice more: in verse 15, "and We left it as a sign"; in verse 42, "they denied all Our signs".

Root: س-ح-ر. This root was treated in this commentary in al-Muddaththir and al-Dhāriyāt. What was recorded there and is decisive here is this: the root yields two distinct words —

• سِحْر (siḥr) — magic.
• سَحَر (saḥar) — the last part of the night, the time just before dawn. Its plural is asḥār.

As was recorded in the section on al-Dhāriyāt, the lexicographers ground the relation between these two senses in the hour when light and darkness mix and the eye can be deceived. That explanation is ascribed to the lexicographers; it is not offered as a settled etymology, and I do not offer it as one here either.

But there is something that must be recorded for this sūra. Both words of the root occur in it:

So at the beginning of the sūra one group calls what it sees siḥr; thirty-two verses later another group is saved at saḥar. The same three letters.

I record this as my own reading, and I mark its limit: that the two words are from the same root is a datum of the language and can be verified. The claim that the two are set opposite one another in the sūra and that this is a deliberate choice is not mine, and I do not make it. I only record an overlap found in the text.

Root: م-ر-ر. The concrete sense of the root: to pass, to go by from one place to another. Marra / yamurru — he passed. Murūr — passage. Mamarr — a passageway.

The word is the active participle of the pattern إِسْتِفْعَال (istifʿāl, Form X): mustamirr. And this form opens here in two different directions:

First reading: "continuing, going on." The verb istamarra is settled in Arabic in the sense "it continued, it went on". On this reading what they say is: "This is unceasing magic — one ends and the next begins." That is, the addressees count the signs that come one after another as a single continuous act of sorcery.

Second reading: "passing, soon to be over." From murūr, the root's proper sense: this too will pass. On this reading what they say is: "This is magic that will pass — it is not worth dwelling on."

A third reading is also transmitted: from the root's مِرَّة branch (strength, firmness) — "a strong, thoroughly solid magic." The Qurʾān uses this word at al-Najm 53/6: dhū mirratin fa'stawā.

All three are recorded and I do not impose a preference. But one thing can be said: all three readings arrive at the same result. Whether they say continuous, or passing, or strong, one thing is common to all three — the refusal to let the sign be a sign. The word's several senses are not an ambiguity here; they are three separate tones of refusal.

That last sentence is my own reading.

The root occurs in three places in the sūra, and the three must be read together:

The أَمَرّ of verse forty-six is from another branch of the root: murr — bitter (in taste). Amarr is the comparative: "more bitter".

Whether the senses "to pass by" and "to be bitter" derive from the same root is a matter the lexicographers dispute, and I issue no definite ruling here. The classical dictionaries give both under م-ر-ر; whether the link between them is genuinely etymological or was drawn later is another question.

But the observation about word order within the sūra can be recorded and verified: in the second verse the deniers qualify the sign as mustamirr; in the nineteenth verse a people's day of destruction is qualified as mustamirr; in the forty-sixth verse the Hour is qualified as amarr. The word they themselves used comes back twice.

I record this as my own reading. The sūra will weave this kind of "return of a word to its owner" once more: in verse twenty-five what Thamūd say of Ṣāliḥ, kadhdhābun ashir, is made definite in verse twenty-six and turned back on them; and what they say in verse twenty-four, ḍalālin wa suʿur, is repeated word for word in verse forty-seven as the state of the guilty. The sūra does the same thing three times: it takes the denier's word and hands it back to him.