al-Qamar 54:43

A-kuffārukum khayrun min ulāʾikum am lakum barāʾatun fi'l-zubur "Are your disbelievers better than those? Or do you have an acquittal in the scriptures?"

Verse forty-three opens the second half of the sūra. Having spoken about the third person for forty-two verses, the text turns here to the second person and does not turn back.

A count of the pronouns shows this: from 43 to 53 the suffix -kum occurs five times (kuffārukum, ulāʾikum, lakum, and in 51 ashyāʿakum). Before verse forty-three the pronoun of address occurs in only two places in the sūra (the command to the Prophet in 6, and dhūqū in 37 and 39).

The construction is unusual and worth dwelling on.

Kuffār is the plural of kāfir. And with the suffix -kum it is ascribed to a community: "your disbelievers."

To whom is it said? If the addressees are themselves the deniers, "your disbelievers" falls strangely. Two solutions are transmitted:

I do not impose a preference. Both arrive at the same result: a comparison is being made.

And the subject of the comparison is power, not morality. The question is not "are you better" but, in context, "are you stronger" — because what is compared are those destroyed in the four accounts. The logic behind the sentence is this: if they were destroyed, what is there in you that would save you?

The word خَيْر is a comparative here, and in Arabic the comparatives of khayr / sharr are used without the hamza (not akhyar but khayr).

أَمْ in Arabic is of two kinds: the connected (a continuation of the first question, "or is it that…") and the disjunctive (opening a new question, "rather…"). Here it is commonly read as connected: two possibilities are being offered.

And what the two possibilities are matters:

1. Actual superiority — "are you better?" 2. A written exemption — "or do you have a document?"

The sūra, that is, enumerates two kinds of guarantee and turns both into a question: being strong in fact or being exempt in law. No third possibility is offered.

I record this as my own reading; its ground is that the particle am sets out two possibilities, and that is grammatical data.

بَرَاءَة — Root: ب-ر-أ. This root was treated in al-Infiṭār, al-Ḥashr, al-Ḥadīd and al-Mumtaḥana. Its concrete sense: to separate from a thing, to be freed of it, to move away from it.

And the root has two great branches:

• بَرِئَ مِنْ — to keep away from a thing, to sever connection with it. Barāʾa — a document of severance. Barīʾ — innocent, having no connection.
• بَرَأَ — to create, to bring forth from nothing. al-Bāriʾ — the Creator. The lexicographers' explanation: to create is to separate a thing out of non-being.

The sense in the verse is the first: acquittal, exemption, a document of release.

And the picture the word carries is documentary. In Arabic, and in old legal language generally, a barāʾa is a written guarantee given to someone, or a certificate of discharge. The Turkish beraat etmek, "to be acquitted", comes from this same word.

The question, then, is: do you hold a written exemption?

And from here one passes straight to the next word.

Root: ز-ب-ر. And this root is the key root of the last section of the sūra; it will come back in verse fifty-two.

Its concrete sense: to write by carving into stone or a hard surface; to record firmly and lastingly.

Its derivatives show the field of the root:

• زَبَرَ — he wrote; and especially he wrote by incising, by carving.
• زُبْرَة — a block of iron, a hard piece. In the Qurʾān: "Bring me blocks of iron" (al-Kahf 18/96 — zubara'l-ḥadīd).
• زَبَرَ ٱلْبِئْرَ — he lined a well with stone, he made it firm.
• زَبُور — a written text; and specifically the book given to David (al-Nisāʾ 4/163; al-Isrāʾ 17/55; al-Anbiyāʾ 21/105).
• زُبُر — the plural of zabūr or of zibr: written pages, books.

The common core of the root: hardness and permanence. The block of iron, the stone-lined well and the incised writing all come from the same place. This root, that is, ties the verb "to write" not to paper but to stone.

And this connects directly with the verse's question: "do you have an acquittal in the scriptures?" — what is asked after is a record that will not be erased.

The difference between ز-ب-ر and س-ط-ر must be dwelt on separately, and I shall do so at verse fifty-three; both convey "writing", but from different places.

The word occurs twice in the sūra, and the two occurrences answer one another:

The question is asked in verse forty-three, the answer given in verse fifty-two. Nine verses lie between them.

And the form of the answer is worth recording: the question asks "is there an exemption"; the answer does not say "there is no exemption". It says what is in the records: everything that has been done. There is a record, then — but what is inside it is not an acquittal but an account.

I record this as my own reading. The wording of the two verses and the repetition of the same word in the same form are verifiable data of the text; the question-and-answer relation is my reading.