al-Mumtaḥana 60:12

Yā ayyuha'n-nabiyyu idhā jāʾaka'l-muʾminātu yubāyiʿnaka ʿalā an lā yushrikna billāhi shayʾan wa lā yasriqna wa lā yaznīna wa lā yaqtulna awlādahunna wa lā yaʾtīna bi-buhtānin yaftarīnahū bayna aydīhinna wa arjulihinna wa lā yaʿṣīnaka fī maʿrūfin fa-bāyiʿhunna wa'staghfir lahunnallāh, innallāha Ghafūrun Raḥīm

"O Prophet! When believing women come to you to pledge allegiance to you — that they will associate nothing with God, will not steal, will not commit fornication, will not kill their children, will not bring a slander they have fabricated between their hands and their feet, and will not disobey you in what is right — then accept their pledge and ask God's forgiveness for them. Indeed God is forgiving, merciful."

The root ب-ي-ع: to sell, and to buy. The root is counted among the aḍdād — the same verb states both selling and buying; because in Arabic the word has become the name of the transaction that covers both sides of a sale.

And the concrete source of bayʿa is this: in Arab custom a transaction was made final by the parties striking hands. A bayʿa is this striking of hands. That is, at its origin the pledge is an act of contract — not a rite of worship, of veneration, of surrender.

This knowledge of the root is decisive for understanding the word correctly. A pledge is a contract: there are two parties, it has a content, and the content consists of countable articles. Indeed in this verse the articles are counted one by one.

The Qurʾān uses this language of trade openly in the context of the pledge: "God has bought from the believers their lives and their wealth, in return for the Garden" (al-Tawba 9/111). The same root, the same logic.

Attend to the word order of the verse: the women come (jāʾaka), they pledge (yubāyiʿnaka), and their pledge is accepted (fa-bāyiʿhunna). There is no intermediary in between — no father, no husband, no representative of a tribe passes through.

This is a fact the verse records, and it must be said as it is: here the women become parties in their own name to a political and legal contract.

This must be said without exaggeration. The verse is not making a declaration of equality; it is describing a procedure. But the procedure itself says something: the owner of an undertaking is the one who gives it.

فَبَايِعْهُنَّ — an imperative. The Prophet is commanded to accept their pledge. That is, the acceptance of the other party is laid down as an obligation too; the contract is completed on both sides.

The most striking feature of the list: five are negative, and the sixth too is in a negative pattern. That is, the pledge is essentially an undertaking about what will not be done. A contract of limits.

The second striking feature: there is no prayer, no fasting, no pilgrimage. This shows that the list is not a list of piety. Everything counted is a deed that directly concerns someone else — someone's property, someone's body, someone's life, someone's good name. That is, the pledge describes the minimum of the public order.

The list has kin among other lists in the Qurʾān; in subject matter it overlaps with the series of commands at al-Anʿām 6/151-152.

In this article the matter treated in the section on Sūrat al-Takwīr returns.

At al-Takwīr 81/8-9 ٱلْمَوْءُۥدَة (the girl buried alive) had been treated: the root و-أ-د, "to press a weight upon"; the word is a passive participle, that is, it speaks from the position of the victim and does not mention the agent. There a comparison was also made with al-Naḥl 16/59, and it was shown that in that verse the act is ascribed to the father.

Now a third position is added and the picture is completed:

Two observations emerge.

First: the deed is not laid upon one sex. The Qurʾān mentions the same offence in three separate places with three separate subjects. In al-Naḥl it is the father who deliberates; here it is the mother who gives the undertaking. The text does not fix the killing of children as "the crime of fathers".

Second: here the object is not feminine. In al-Takwīr al-mawʾūda was feminine, and as was recorded in that section the Qurʾān appears to distinguish two separate phenomena: the killing of girls out of shame (mawʾūda) and the killing of children out of poverty (awlād — al-Isrāʾ 17/31, al-Anʿām 6/151). The word occurring in this verse is أَوْلَٰدَهُنَّ, that is, the sex is not specified. The article covers both at once.

And that the article should be laid down as a condition of the pledge is meaningful in itself. This is no longer a censure or a warning; it is an article written as a condition of entry into the community. The reckoning opened in al-Takwīr turns here into a clause of a contract.

The root ب-ه-ت: to strike dumb, to leave one dumbfounded.

The Qurʾān uses this root in a striking place: after the answer Abraham gave, by way of the direction of the sun's rising, to the ruler who disputed with him — "فَبُهِتَ ٱلَّذِى كَفَرَ" — "the one who disbelieved was struck dumb" (al-Baqara 2/258).

That is, buhtān is not an ordinary lie: it is a slander so unexpected as to leave the hearer dumbfounded, one before which he does not know what to say. The word itself describes the effect of the slander.

يَفْتَرِينَهُۥ بَيْنَ أَيْدِيهِنَّ وَأَرْجُلِهِنَّ — "which they fabricate between their hands and their feet". There are two readings of this expression:

The first reading is the more widespread and agrees with the context. The second is also a reading the wording permits. I make no definite choice between them; and I record this: both readings forbid the same thing — to destroy a lineage or a reputation by a fabricated word.

A detail to be noted: the list places this article immediately after the killing of children. Both articles concern the child — one the child's life, the other whose the child is. The Qurʾān's sensitivity on the subject of lineage is seen elsewhere too.

The last article of the list, and perhaps the most important.

مَعْرُوف — the root ع-ر-ف: to know, to recognise. Maʿrūf is a passive participle: what is known, recognised, not found strange. Its opposite is munkar: root ن-ك-ر, not recognised, found strange.

This structure of the word carries an important feature of Qurʾānic morality: the good is named as "the known". That is, the moral right does not come from outside as a command wholly foreign to people; it is familiar, and a person recognises it when he sees it.

And the caveat the article establishes is this: obedience is bounded by what is right.

To see the weight of this one must look at who is being addressed. This is not an article about obedience to some ordinary authority; it is an article about obedience to the Prophet. That is, even obedience to the highest authority is not unconditional. And the text writes the caveat into a contract set out by that very authority.

This is not a caveat that stands alone in the Qurʾān; the caveat of obedience in what is right has been one of the supports of the later Islamic discussion of the limits of authority.

After the pledge is accepted, one further command comes: ask forgiveness for them.

This is a noteworthy completion. A contract has been made; the parties have given their undertakings. And the close of the contract is not a sanction but a prayer.

And now look at the link within the sūra. In the fourth verse, Abraham's asking forgiveness for his father had been excepted from the exemplarity. Here, asking forgiveness is commanded.

The same act, in the same sūra, with two opposite rulings. And the difference lies in the addressee — not in the act itself.

This symmetry makes the exception of the fourth verse rightly understood. Asking forgiveness is not a forbidden thing; the sūra commands it twelve verses later. What was excepted was asking forgiveness in a particular situation and for a particular addressee.

إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ — and the verse closes with the same two names as the seventh verse. That the sūra should repeat these two names is another way in which the text holds within itself the balance between severity and forgiveness.