يَقُولُونَ لَئِنْ رَجَعْنَا إِلَى الْمَدِينَةِ لَيُخْرِجَنَّ الْأَعَزُّ مِنْهَا الْأَذَلَّ ۚ وَلِلَّهِ الْعِزَّةُ وَلِرَسُولِهِ وَلِلْمُؤْمِنِينَ وَلَٰكِنَّ الْمُنَافِقِينَ لَا يَعْلَمُونَ
Yaqūlūna la-in rajaʿnā ila'l-Madīnati la-yukhrijanna'l-aʿazzu minha'l-adhall. Wa li'llāhi'l-ʿizzatu wa li-rasūlihi wa li'l-muʾminīna wa lākinna'l-munāfiqīna lā yaʿlamūn
"They say, 'If we return to Medina, the mightier will surely drive out the lowlier from it.' Yet might belongs to God, and to His Messenger, and to the believers; but the hypocrites do not know it."
"The mightier will drive out the lowlier" — who is the mightier? Who is the lowlier? The sentence does not state it.
And its not stating it is a choice. The speaker does not name himself "the mightier"; he frames a sentence stating a general rule and places himself somewhere inside that rule. This is the safest way to advance a claim: it does not look like a direct claim, it looks like an observation.
The same technique is widespread today: instead of praising oneself, to set down a criterion and leave unsaid who stands where on it.
And the Qurʾān transmits this sentence as it is. It adds no name, does not say "he meant himself". The sentence is recorded just as it was framed — and the answer is given in the sentence's own terms.
A nicety of word order: la-in + la-yukhrijanna — Arabic's strongest oath-and-condition structure. The conditional particle beginning with a lām (la-in) carries the sense of an oath, and its answer too comes with a lām + the heavy nūn (the nūn of emphasis).
That is, the sentence is not an ordinary prediction; it is a threat reinforced with an oath. And this connects with the finding of the second verse: in the mouths of these people an oath is an instrument.
The root ع-ز-ز. It was opened out at al-Jumuʿa 62/1 in the discussion of the name al-ʿAzīz: the concrete sense of the root is hardness, impenetrability, resistance to wear; and from there fewness, rarity. In Arabic arḍun ʿazāz means "hard ground that cannot be dug".
The bond between the two branches of the root matters: what is hard does not wear away, what does not wear away does not diminish, what is few becomes valuable. ʿIzza, in the word's own logic, is not being able to be worn away.
And the most concrete use of this root in the Qurʾān is in Sūrat al-Baqara. At al-Baqara 2/71, in the counting out of the qualities of the cow that was to be slaughtered: لَا ذَلُولٌ تُثِيرُ الْأَرْضَ — "not broken to the yoke, not having ploughed the soil". This passage was taken up in al-Baqara, and the table was recorded there thus: "Not broken to the yoke, not having ploughed a field, not having watered a crop, without blemish, without a spot — very nearly a single animal."
ذَلُول (dhalūl) is the animal that has been broken in, domesticated, brought under the yoke. This is the concrete sense of the root.
That is, al-adhall, in the word's own logic, is not "worthless" but "the one made to submit". The opposition comes to this:
| Root | Concrete sense | Figurative sense | |
|---|---|---|---|
| الْأَعَزّ | ع-ز-ز | Hard ground that cannot be dug | What cannot be worn away, what cannot be made to submit |
| الْأَذَلّ | ذ-ل-ل | The animal accustomed to the yoke | The one made to submit |
The two words describe a relation of domination. The matter is not standing but who has made whom submit.
The elative pattern. Both are on the afʿal pattern: "the more mighty", "the more lowly". That is, not an absolute attribute but a comparison is being established. The whole logic of the sentence rests on a comparison.
And this comes out at the same place as the finding recorded at al-Baqara 2/34 and 2/90: "Envy, like arrogance, is born of a comparison." So it is here too: the claim is not a claim of worth in itself but a claim of ranking.
What would the expected answer have been? "The truly mighty are the believers." That would have been to play the same game — merely to reverse the ranking.
That is, the answer does not correct the ranking; it corrects whom the thing being ranked belongs to. ʿIzza is not goods to be shared out between the parties. Its owner is known.
A nicety of word order — and an important one: li'llāhi'l-ʿizzatu — in the sentence li'llāhi (belonging to God) has been brought forward, and al-ʿizzatu, the subject, has been left behind.
In Arabic the bringing forward of the predicate denotes restriction (ḥaṣr). That is, the expression is not "might belongs to God" but "might belongs to God alone".
And this structure is exactly the same as the answer in the seventh verse: wa li'llāhi khazāʾinu's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ. Two verses one after the other, with the same word order, doing the same work:
| Verse | What was claimed | The answer |
|---|---|---|
| 63/7 | The source is in our hands | Li'llāhi the treasuries |
| 63/8 | The might is ours | Li'llāhi the ʿizza |
Both plans rest on an assumption of ownership; both answers correct the ownership. The sūra shows the same error in two different fields.
The sentence continues with a lām repeated in three places: li'llāhi… wa li-rasūlihi… wa li'l-muʾminīn.
The repetition of the lām each time is meaningful. It could have said li'llāhi wa rasūlihi wa'l-muʾminīn; that would have been shorter. The repetition makes each of them counted separately.
The order too is meaningful: God, the Messenger, the believers. The ʿizza is given first to its owner, then downwards in two steps.
And the conclusion that follows is important: the believers' ʿizza does not come from themselves. They are third in the list, and they are there by way of connection. That is, the verse does not give the believers a superiority; it counts them as bound to the source of the ʿizza.
This distinction prevents the verse from being turned into a claim of group superiority. The measure recorded at al-Baqara 2/62 holds here too: a label does not save. ʿIzza is not the automatic output of a membership; it is the consequence of remaining bound to the source.
The seventh verse ended with lā yafqahūn (they do not grasp). The eighth verse ends with lā yaʿlamūn (they do not know).
Two verses one after the other, the same structure, a different verb. This is the same technique as at al-Baqara 2/12-13, and it was recorded there: "The change of word is not idle."
| Verse | Subject | Verb | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| 63/7 | The treasuries belong to God | lā yafqahūn — they do not grasp | This knowledge requires an inference: if the source is there, the reckoning here is empty. Fiqh is the seeing of what lies behind a word. |
| 63/8 | The ʿizza belongs to God | lā yaʿlamūn — they do not know | This is a basic piece of knowledge; it requires no inference. If it is not known, it is not known from the very beginning. |
That is, in the first verse what is missing is the capacity for inference; in the second, the knowledge itself.
I present this as my own reading. Differences of verse-ending of this kind are dwelt on in the classical sources; the establishing of the distinction here in this way is my own inference, and it is not binding.
Another reading is also possible: one may look for no meaningful difference between the two verbs, and it may be said that the verse-ending changed for the harmony of sound. I do not exclude this possibility.
The claim is this: in a place there are two parties, one of them is the mightier, and the mightier drives out the other.
1. Might is something measurable. 2. Might confers the right to exclude. 3. The place belongs to the mightier.
The verse's answer does not target all three assumptions; it only changes the subject of the first. And this is enough: if might is something measurable and belongs to neither of the parties, the second and third assumptions collapse of themselves.
As a way of framing an argument this is striking. The verse does not enter into the dispute and say "no, it is we who are the mightier". It pulls away the ground of the dispute.