al-Mujādala 58:22

Lā tajidu qawman yuʾminūna bi'llāhi wa'l-yawmi'l-ākhiri yuwāddūna man ḥādda'llāha wa rasūlahu wa law kānū ābāʾahum aw abnāʾahum aw ikhwānahum aw ʿashīratahum, ulāʾika kataba fī qulūbihimu'l-īmāna wa ayyadahum bi-rūḥin minh, wa yudkhiluhum jannātin tajrī min taḥtiha'l-anhāru khālidīna fīhā, raḍiya'llāhu ʿanhum wa raḍū ʿanh, ulāʾika ḥizbu'llāh, alā inna ḥizba'llāhi humu'l-mufliḥūn

"You will not find a people who believe in God and the last day forming a bond of affection with those who draw a boundary against God and His Messenger — even were they their fathers, their sons, their brothers or their clan. It is they in whose hearts God has written faith and whom He has supported with a spirit from Himself. He will admit them into gardens beneath which rivers flow, to remain in them forever. God is well pleased with them, and they are well pleased with Him. It is they who are the party of God. Know well: those who attain deliverance are the party of God."

The side of the verse most easily passed over is the mood of the sentence.

The verse does not say "do not form a bond of affection". It says "you will not find". That is, not a command but a declaration of impossibility is being built.

The difference matters:

• Had a command been built, it could have been violated. Prohibitions can be broken; a broken prohibition is still a prohibition.
• When a statement of fact is built, a fact is announced: these two do not stand together.

That is, the verse says that faith and that bond are incompatible with one another. If a person is doing both at once, one of the two is not real.

The address is singular: lā tajidu — "you will not find". The one addressed is first the Prophet, but also everyone who reads. It is as though the text were giving the reader a task of observation: look, you will not see it.

Root: و-د-د. Wudd: love. But which love?

The distinction the lexicographers make is this: ḥubb is love itself — what is in the heart. Wudd is love made outward, turned into a relationship. Wudd is loving + doing what love requires.

From the same root ٱلْوَدُود (al-Wadūd) is one of the names of God (Hūd 11/90; al-Burūj 85/14). This name was treated in Sūrat al-Burūj; there too the stress was on love's establishing a mutual relationship.

Form III (mufāʿala): yuwāddūna — a reciprocal wudd. That is, not a one-sided feeling but a two-sided bond.

What this does in the verse is critical. The verse does not say "they do not love". It does not forbid the love a person feels for his father, his son, his brother — such a prohibition would in any case be meaningless, because feelings do not change by command.

What is forbidden is muwālāt/muwādda: to establish a bond of mutual alliance, to take one's place in that rank. That is, the matter is not sentiment but position.

This distinction is what makes the verse applicable. To ask a person not to love his father is inhuman; to ask him not to stand in his father's rank is possible.

Per the method (Method) an open note is needed here.

The verse does not enumerate a people, a religion, a lineage. What it enumerates is an act: ḥādda — to draw a boundary, to position oneself on the opposite side. And this act was defined in the fifth verse.

That is, the measure is not identity but behaviour. Whoever performs that act, the verse is speaking of him; whatever his identity, his affiliation, his name. Indeed the verse itself says this in the plainest way: the persons enumerated are their own fathers, sons, brothers. That is, not even the closest ring of identity serves as a measure.

And the note of al-Mumtaḥana 60/8 mentioned above holds here as well: to establish a relation of goodness and justice with those who do not fight and do not drive out is not forbidden. The two verses regulate different things.

The list is not random. It advances along two axes at once:

That is, the list sweeps all the directions of kinship: up, down, sideways, and the wide circle. No direction is left open.

And that it begins from the father is meaningful. In tribal society the strongest bond is the father: identity comes from the father, the name comes from the father, protection comes from the father. That the list begins from the hardest case puts the force of the argument at the outset.

عَشِيرَة — Root: ع-ش-ر. ʿAshara: ten. And muʿāshara: to live together, to be intertwined. The ʿashīra is the wide kin-group within which a person lives and with which he shares his daily life.

The root's link with the number "ten" comes from the number's expressing a wholeness (the count of the fingers of the hands). ʿAshīra means the whole of a person's surroundings.

This principle was established in two separate places in Sūrat al-Baqara, and this verse completes the triad.

Al-Baqara 2/124 — Abraham asks that the leadership given to him should continue in his descendants as well. The answer: "My covenant does not reach the wrongdoers." The finding established there: lineage does not generate authority. And this rule is not bent even for a prophet who asks.

Al-Baqara 2/134 (and 2/141) — "That was a community that has passed away. Theirs is what they earned, and yours is what you earn." The same sentence occurs twice in the sūra, each time immediately after the enumeration of a chain of ancestry. The finding established there: lineage does not generate a record. Neither for nor against.

Al-Mujādala 58/22 — the third link: lineage does not generate a rank.

The three together build a system:

That is, the tie of lineage neither gives an office, nor transfers a merit or a sin, nor determines whose side one stands on. When all three are cut, one measure remains: the person's own choice.

Other links in the Qurʾān:

• Hūd 11/45-46 — Noah says of his son, "he is of my family". The answer: "He is not of your family; what he did was not righteous." The place in the Qurʾān where the tie of lineage is cut most plainly.
• Al-Tawba 9/23-24 — "If your fathers, your sons, your brothers, your spouses, your clan… are dearer to you than God, His Messenger and struggle in His way, then wait." The same list, in almost the same order.

When the list at al-Tawba 9/24 is compared with the list in this verse an interesting difference is seen: there the measure is the quantity of love ("if they are dearer"), here the measure is taking one's place in the ranks. Al-Tawba regulates priority, al-Mujādala position.

And now return to the preceding verse: كَتَبَ ٱللَّهُ لَأَغْلِبَنَّ — "God has written: I shall prevail."

The same verb, one verse apart, writes in two different places:

The two writings are part of a single logic. The ruling written into history and the faith written on the heart are named with the same verb. I record this as a reading, but the repetition of the verb stands in the text.

What does "to write on the heart" mean? Writing conveys permanence and unchangeability. What is spoken is forgotten; what is written stays. That faith has been written on the heart says that it is not a temporary acceptance but a state made fixed.

And note the sequence: this sentence comes as a consequence of going beyond the tie of lineage. That is, the order is: the person chooses his rank → God writes faith on his heart. After the hard choice comes a strengthening.

أَيَّدَ — Root: أ-ي-د. Power, strength. Ayd: strength. Taʾyīd: to strengthen, to support.

The word has a resemblance in sound to yad (hand), and the lexicographers sometimes connect them; but the roots are different (أ-ي-د / ي-د-ي). I record this as a possibility; I do not establish a firm link.

بِرُوحٍ مِّنْهُ — "with a spirit from Himself". This expression is disputed among the exegetes:

There is a strong indication in favour of the first view: the expression used of Jesus (ʿĪsā) at al-Baqara 2/87 is almost identical — wa ayyadnāhu bi-rūḥi'l-qudus. The same verb, the same particle, the same structure. This parallel is striking.

But here I adopt no preference. The word rūḥ is a word used in more than one sense in the Qurʾān, and there is not enough data to speak with certainty. I content myself with conveying the views.

And its coming indefinite: bi-rūḥin — "a spirit". Indefinite. This indefiniteness suggests that what exactly the word points to has been deliberately left open.

Root: ر-ض-و. Contentment, being well pleased. At the centre of the root lie "to accept, to find sufficient, not to object".

A two-directional construction: God is well pleased with them, they are well pleased with God. The same verb, with two agents.

This expression occurs in several places in the Qurʾān and each time comes as a concluding sentence. And in Sūrat al-Fajr the same pair met us in a different pattern:

"O soul at rest! Return to your Lord — rāḍiya (well pleased) and marḍiyya (well pleasing)." (al-Fajr 89/27-28)

There we had an active participle and a passive participle; here two verbs. The same pair, in two different forms.

The weight of the second direction. The sentence "God is well pleased with them" is what one expects. The sentence "and they are well pleased with Him" is less spoken of and is harder.

Because this means the person's being at peace with what has befallen him — and in the context of this verse what has befallen is concrete: separating from his father, his son, his brother, his clan. For a person to be well pleased after doing that is not easy.

The setting of the two contentments side by side says that the relationship is not one-directional. The servant is not merely the one with whom there is good pleasure; he too is well pleased.

Root: ف-ل-ح. This root was treated at al-Baqara 2/5, and the finding established there sits directly on the close of the sūra:

The root f-l-ḥ: to split, to crack open, to divide. From the same root comes fallāḥ — the farmer. The farmer is given this name because he splits the soil. The work of the plough is to break the crust of the earth. So falāḥ — deliverance — within the word's own logic: to split an obstacle and come out, to break the shell, to come into a state of bearing fruit.

And now look at the content of the verse.

The last verse of the sūra describes man's thickest shell: the tie of lineage. The ring that surrounds a person, that gives him his identity, and that is hardest to step out of. Fathers, sons, brothers, clan — these are the sturdiest walls around a person.

And those who split that wall and come out are called mufliḥūn: those who split through.

This overlap between the root of the word and the content of the verse can also be read as an accident; but given the consistency of the Qurʾān's word choices, it is at least worth recording. At al-Baqara 2/5 mufliḥūn was said, and seventy verses later the opposite picture came: the heart that does not split (2/74). Here a third position is added: the tie of lineage that is split.

And the next sūra, al-Ḥashr 59/9, will close another section with the same word: "Those who are guarded against the shuḥḥ of their own souls — it is they who are the mufliḥūn." Two neighbouring sūras name, with the same word, those who split two different shells: one the tie of lineage, the other the closedness of the soul.

The last sentence of the sūra is one of the most abused Qurʾānic expressions throughout history. For this reason what it says and what it does not say must be written out plainly.

Note the structure of the verse: "It is they who are the ḥizb of God." The demonstrative pronoun (ulāʾika) refers back to the attributes just enumerated:

1. To believe in God and the last day. 2. Not to form an alliance with those who stand on the opposite side — even were they kin. 3. To have faith written on their hearts. 4. To have been supported with a spirit. 5. To be well pleased and to be one with whom there is good pleasure.

That is, ḥizb Allāh is not a name but the result of these attributes. The attributes are enumerated first, and the construct is given afterwards.

The meaning of this is: no community, movement, institution or structure can take this construct as a title for itself. Because the granting of the construct has been tied to a list, and the last item of the list — God's good pleasure — is not a ruling any human being can issue about himself.

And the root of the word ḥizb supports this too: as we saw above, a ḥizb is those gathered around a shared affair. Not an inherited or a declared belonging; a togetherness formed around a burden that is carried.

Per the method (Method) I do not enter into current political disputes. But to say how this construct cannot be used lies within the bounds of exegesis: whoever names himself with this construct has closed the verse's list in his own favour. Whereas the list is open, and the ruling on its last item lies with no one.