ٱلَّذِينَ يُظَٰهِرُونَ مِنكُم مِّن نِّسَآئِهِم مَّا هُنَّ أُمَّهَٰتِهِمْ إِنْ أُمَّهَٰتُهُمْ إِلَّا ٱلَّٰٓـِٔى وَلَدْنَهُمْ وَإِنَّهُمْ لَيَقُولُونَ مُنكَرًا مِّنَ ٱلْقَوْلِ وَزُورًا وَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ لَعَفُوٌّ غَفُورٌ
Alladhīna yuẓāhirūna minkum min nisāʾihim mā hunna ummahātihim, in ummahātuhum illa'llāʾī waladnahum, wa innahum la-yaqūlūna munkaran mina'l-qawli wa zūrā, wa inna'llāha la-ʿafuwwun ghafūr
"Those among you who make ẓihār against their wives — those women are not their mothers. Their mothers are only those who gave them birth. They are indeed uttering an abhorrent and baseless word. And surely God is much pardoning, much forgiving."
Root: ظ-ه-ر. The back. From the same root: ẓāhir (what is outward, what is visible — the back being turned outward), ẓuhūr (to come into view), ẓahīr (one who backs another, a supporter).
Ẓihār is, in the Arabia of the Jāhiliyya, a man's saying to his wife: "You are to me as my mother's back." Once this formula was spoken, in that order the woman was counted forbidden to her husband forever.
| Explanation | Its ground | Its weak side |
|---|---|---|
| A metaphor from the back of a mount | An allusion in Arabic connected with "riding"; the back is what is ridden | The existence of the allusion is not certain |
| Naming the part and meaning the whole | A part of the body is named and the whole intended | It does not explain why "the back" was chosen |
| An indirect expression out of covering and decency | Instead of saying it directly, the most neutral limb was named | Plausible, but not resting on transmission |
I adopt no firm preference. But this is striking: the root of the word means the face that shows. Ẓihār is a likeness in appearance — and the sūra will say exactly that appearance does not change reality.
The consequence of ẓihār in the Jāhiliyya was this: the woman was left neither divorced nor married.
- The marriage bond legally continued — hence the woman could not marry another.
- But the husband could not approach her — hence the marriage was in fact over.
This is a position that leaves the woman in an indefinite suspense. She can neither go forward nor turn back. And what builds this suspense is a single sentence — a sentence, moreover, most often spoken in anger. Her maintenance, her children, her future, all freeze inside that sentence.
1. It refutes the truth-claim of the formula (this verse): "those women are not their mothers." 2. It characterises the formula: munkar and zūr — that is, the formula is not a legal disposition but an abhorrent and baseless piece of speech. 3. But neither does it leave the formula without consequence (verses 3-4): it attaches an expiation to it.
The third step calls for particular attention. The Qurʾān does not say "this formula is void, forget it and be done". The spoken word comes to have a price. Why?
Because to leave the formula entirely without consequence makes it free of charge. What is free is repeated. The expiation, while it makes the formula retractable, also makes the retraction cost something. That is, the regulation does two things at once: it takes the woman down from suspense, and it loads a price onto the one who spoke.
The consequence of this is: a sentence a man builds in a moment of anger can no longer lock another person's life. The lock climbs onto the man's own back.
A point of grammar. The مَا here is a particle of negation that governs as laysa does in the Ḥijāzī dialect: it puts its subject in the nominative and its predicate in the accusative. Accordingly ummahātihim is read not as genitive but as accusative (ummahātihim — its kasra appearance is due to the construct).
The best-known instance of the same structure in the Qurʾān: "This is no mortal" — مَا هَٰذَا بَشَرًا (Yūsuf 12/31). The same pattern, the same function: to declare in a decisive manner that a thing is not a thing.
The function of the sentence. This sentence is not a ruling but a statement of fact. It does not say "do not count them as mothers"; it says "they are not mothers". The difference matters: the first would have been a prohibition, and prohibitions can be broken; the second is a declaration of a fact, and facts cannot be broken.
A structure of restriction (ḥaṣr). The pattern in … illā conveys limitation in Arabic: "only and only". That is, the definition of motherhood is closed: those who give birth.
What is being done here is the fixing of the source of a definition. What is motherhood? A status established by a word, or an event that has taken place? The verse says the second: motherhood comes about by the event of giving birth. It cannot be established by a sentence; and therefore neither can it be imitated by a sentence.
وَلَدْنَ — the verb, feminine plural perfect: "they gave birth". A concrete, physical event with a history.
This is one of the most basic principles the sūra builds, and it is treated with the same logic elsewhere in the Qurʾān.
The clearest parallel is al-Aḥzāb 33/4, and that verse already takes ẓihār as its subject too:
"God has not made two hearts inside a man. He has not made your wives, against whom you make ẓihār, your mothers. Nor has He made your adopted sons your own sons. These are words you say with your mouths. But God speaks the truth and guides to the way."
| Example | The claim | The reality |
|---|---|---|
| Two hearts | There can be two centres inside a person | There cannot — a person is not divided |
| Ẓihār | A word makes a wife a mother | It does not — motherhood is giving birth |
| Adoption | A word makes an adopted son an own son | It does not — lineage is established by birth |
And the ruling common to all three is in a single sentence: ذَٰلِكُمْ قَوْلُكُم بِأَفْوَاهِكُمْ — "this is what you say with your mouths."
The note "with your mouths" is important. Words are said with the mouth in any case; to state this separately looks like a repetition. But the repetition does a job: it says that the word stays in the mouth, that it does not pass over into reality. The word comes out of the mouth and ends there; it produces no counterpart in the world.
This principle is the Qurʾān's general attitude towards false realities built with language. To give a thing a name does not make it that thing. The same logic is seen elsewhere too: of the names given to idols, "They are nothing but names you and your fathers have given" (al-Najm 53/23); of those who count usury as trade, "They said: trade is just like usury" (al-Baqara 2/275) — and the verse rejects this equation.
Its side facing the present is quite concrete: giving a practice a new name does not change it. Naming orders not reality but perception.
مُنكَر (munkar) — Root: ن-ك-ر. Not to recognise, to find odd, to find foreign. The exact opposite of maʿrūf (the recognised, the known, the accepted).
This is an important pair of words in the language of ethics. The Qurʾān frequently uses the words maʿrūf and munkar for good and evil — that is, "familiar" and "foreign". Maʿrūf is what human nature and common reason recognise; munkar is what they do not recognise, what they find odd. The ẓihār formula is characterised as munkar: this word is foreign, foreign to the relations a person has himself built.
The note mina'l-qawl is meaningful too: "a munkar of speech". That is, munkar has kinds, and this is one of them — the kind that belongs to the class of speech.
زُور (zūr) — Root: ز-و-ر. The original sense of the root is crookedness, inclination, a swerving to one side. Azwar is a person whose chest is crooked.
The concrete use of the root in the Qurʾān appears in Sūrat al-Kahf: of those in the cave, "You would see the sun, when it rose, inclining away from their cave to the right" — تَّزَٰوَرُ (al-Kahf 18/17). That is, the light of the sun does not come straight; it slides to one side.
From the same root comes ziyāra (visiting) as well: to turn towards someone, to incline towards him. At the centre of the root lies "a swerving from the straight, an inclining in one direction".
From here zūr: a word bent away from the truth. Not exactly a lie — a lie (kidhb) is to say the contrary of a known truth. Zūr is a word that makes an angle with reality, that does not correspond to it. The English word "baseless" stands close to it.
The other uses of zūr in the Qurʾān confirm this sense: "Shun the word of falsehood (qawl al-zūr)" (al-Ḥajj 22/30); "They do not bear witness to zūr" (al-Furqān 25/72).
What do the two words do together? Munkar characterises the social side of the word, zūr its relation to reality. That is, the word is both something to be found odd and not true. A word may possess only one of these two — abhorrent but true, or fine but false. The ẓihār formula carries both at once.
Immediately after a heavy accusation come two names of forgiveness. This is a structure the Qurʾān uses often, and it has a function: to weight the ruling without closing the door.
عَفُوّ (ʿAfuww) — Root: ع-ف-و. The concrete sense of the root is to wipe out, to erase the trace; as the wind erases footprints on the sand. ʿAfw is a thing's leaving no trace.
غَفُور (Ghafūr) — Root: غ-ف-ر. To cover. Mighfar (helmet) is from the same root — what covers the head. Maghfira is the covering over of a sin.
The difference between the two is put thus in the classical sources: ghufrān covers, ʿafw erases. What is covered is there but not seen; what is erased is no longer there. I convey this distinction as a point about the language; the exegetes generally take the coming together of these two names as emphasis.
Intensive forms. ʿAfuww is on the فَعُول pattern, and ghafūr is on the same pattern. Both convey abundance and continuity.
Their place. That the names come at the end of the verse is striking in that this is before the verses of expiation. The order, that is, runs thus: the word is abhorrent and baseless → but God is pardoning → now hear the expiation. The possibility of forgiveness is stated before the obligation. The expiation is set down not as a punishment but as the threshold of a door that has been opened.
One. The power of the word over life, and its limit. The sūra says two things at once, and the two do not contradict: the word does not change reality (verse 2); but the word binds the one who speaks it (verses 3-4). That is, the power of the word lies not in shaping the world but in placing the speaker under obligation.
Two. Sentences built in anger. The typical context of ẓihār is anger. What the regulation does is to prevent a sentence built in a moment of anger from producing a permanent legal consequence. This is a principle still valid today: a momentary anger is not allowed to lock another person's life indefinitely.
Three. Leaving someone in suspense. The real problem this regulation solves is the woman's position of being "neither married nor single". Uncertainty is often heavier than an open negative — because no decision can be made, no plan laid, nothing new built. Here the Qurʾān ends the uncertainty: either the expiation is given and the marriage continues, or the paths separate. The scope of this principle is wider than ẓihār; to hold a relationship in suspense, neither ending it nor carrying it on, is a wrong done to the other side.