al-Taghābun 64:14

Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū inna min azwājikum wa awlādikum ʿaduwwan lakum fa'ḥdharūhum, wa in taʿfū wa taṣfaḥū wa taghfirū fa-inna'llāha ghafūrun raḥīm

"O you who believe! Among your wives and your children there are enemies to you; so be on your guard against them. But if you pardon and overlook and forgive — God is forgiving, merciful."

The hardest verse of the sūra, and the one most open to abuse. And precisely for that reason it is obligatory to see both halves of the sentence at once. To read the verse cut off at its first half is to read not the verse but a corrupted copy of it.

For the first time in the sūra a community is directly addressed. For thirteen verses the address has been either general ("He created you") or singular ("say"). Here the one addressed is named: those who believe.

And the naming is meaningful: the warning is made to those who have believed. That is, the danger described is not a danger outside faith; it is a situation a person of faith may meet in his own house.

The verse does not say "your wives and your children are enemies to you".

The sentence runs: inna min azwājikum wa awlādikum ʿaduwwan lakum.

The مِنْ (min) here is the letter treated in detail in al-Bayyina in connection with 98/1. What was recorded there deserves repeating, because its function here is the same: min in Arabic conveys the partitive: a part of a whole. In "I ate of the bread", min points not to the whole loaf but to a piece of it.

That is, what the sentence reports is not "wives and children" but "some of your wives and your children".

And the rule of method recorded in al-Bayyina at the place where this letter occurs holds here exactly:

"The verse does not lay down a wholesale ruling about a group; it describes an attribute. Whoever carries that attribute is the one the verse is speaking of."

And one further detail of grammar reinforces this: عَدُوًّا is indefinite and singular. Not "enemies" but "an enemy". In Arabic this conveys the genus and can imply fewness. The verse gives no number, but it certainly frames no generalisation either.

Without entering this reservation it is not possible to read the verse. And what the readings that fail to enter it have produced through history is plain to see.

Root: ع د و. And the proper sense of the root is not enmity: to overstep the limit, to cross the boundary, to leap over a thing.

• عَدَا (ʿadā) — he ran, he passed, he overstepped. ʿAdw is running — the name of Sūrat al-ʿĀdiyāt is from this root (treated in al-ʿĀdiyāt).
• اِعْتَدَى (iʿtadā) — he overstepped the limit, he attacked. Iʿtidāʾ is transgression.
• عُدْوَان (ʿudwān) — enmity, overstepping the limit.
• عَدُوّ (ʿaduww) — enemy: the one who crosses the boundary, who comes in between and does harm.

This sense of the root determines how the verse is read. ʿAduww does not mean "one who hates you"; it means "one who oversteps your boundary, who comes in between in a way that harms you". Hatred is not required. A person may overstep your boundary while loving you very much.

And in the context of the family this is exactly meaningful. For a wife or a child to do a person harm does not require harbouring enmity towards him. Most often the opposite is the case: the bond itself makes crossing the boundary easier. He asks because he loves, he blocks because he asks, he harms because he blocks.

I write this as my own reading. The sense of the root is a datum of the text; the conclusion I draw from it is interpretation.

For this verse a group of reports of the following content is transmitted in the classical sources: in Mecca certain people became Muslims and wished to emigrate; but their wives and their children held them back, wept and pleaded, and for this reason the emigration was delayed or did not take place. Later, when they did emigrate, or when they saw what the others had learned, they wished to punish those they had left behind; the second half of the verse came to prevent this.

I relate this report with three reservations:

1. It is transmitted — I give it as a transmitted report; I am not in a position to assess its chain or its degree of soundness. 2. The details do not agree with one another. In different versions of the report the names of the persons and the details of the event change. This calls up the criterion recorded in al-Māʿūn: that more than one name is given for the same verse suggests that these names are answers, given after the event, to the question "who could have been meant?" For that reason I write no names. 3. The rule of method holds: al-ʿibratu bi-ʿumūmi'l-lafẓ lā bi-khuṣūṣi'l-sabab — the ruling goes by the generality of the wording, not by the particularity of the occasion. The verse does not say "those who prevented the emigration"; it says "those who are enemies to you".

But the report has one use and it should be recorded: if this context is correct, the "enmity" the verse describes is not a wickedness but a form of love. A weeping child is not ill-intentioned in trying to stop a departing father. And it is precisely for this reason that the verse adds its second half: the description "enemy" is not an accusation but a description.

The imperative verb has been chosen with great care and this needs seeing.

Root: ح ذ ر. Ḥadhar is being alert and taking precautions against a danger. Inside the word there is neither an attack nor a rupture; there is only attentiveness.

The verse does not say any of these:

• Fāriqūhum — separate from them.
• Ukhrujū ʿanhum — leave them.
• Qātilūhum — fight them.
• Lā tuḥibbūhum — do not love them.

It says: احْذَرُوا — be on your guard.

The difference is great. Ḥadhar does not end the relationship; it asks for an alertness within the relationship. The closest English is "to be on one's guard" — to be prepared against something without letting go of it.

And the Qurʾān uses the same root elsewhere in this sense. Another derivative of the word, ḥidhr (precaution), occurs in Sūrat al-Nisāʾ in the context of war — and even there it does not say "flee" but "take your precautions".

So the verse gives not a command to break off but a command to pay attention. And the object of the command is determined too: fa'ḥdharūhum — the pronoun goes back to the ʿaduwwan at the head of the sentence, that is, to that part; not to all wives and children.

The balance of the verse is set up here, and this is the sūra's most delicate move.

A warning was given. And no sooner is the warning given than, inside the same verse, with no pause at all, three verbs of pardon are lined up.

The easiest way to see this is by a comparison: had the warning been in one verse and the pardon in another, the two verses could have been torn apart from each other. People could have taken the first and left the second. The sūra has made this impossible: the two are inside the same verse.

And the verse ends not with names of threat but with names of mercy: ghafūrun raḥīm.

In al-Baqara, in connection with 2/109, the first two were treated. I do not repeat what was recorded there, I recall it:

عفو — root ʿ-f-w: to erase, to wipe out the trace. It is used also of the wind's erasing the tracks on the sand. That is, pardon is not "I accept but I do not forget"; it is erasing the trace. صفح — root ṣ-f-ḥ: page, surface. The verb means "to turn the page", or "to turn one's face away". That is, to close the matter over and pass on.

To these a third is added here:

غفر — root غ ف ر: to cover, to close over, to wrap with something protective. And the concrete product of the root shows the word exactly: مِغْفَر (mighfar) — the armoured headpiece worn in battle. The Turkish miğfer (helmet) comes directly from this root. There is also ghifāra, a cover drawn over something.

That is, maghfira is the protective form of covering: to close a thing over so that no harm may come to it.

And this is the third root of covering within the sūra. In the ninth verse there was yukaffir (ك ف ر), there was jannāt (ج ن ن); here taghfirū (غ ف ر). Three separate roots, the same image: closing over.

The difference can be gathered in this table:

All three do the same act, all three with a different purpose.

The three verbs come in this order: taʿfū, taṣfaḥū, taghfirū.

In the classical commentaries it is said that this order conveys a climb. It is possible to read the sequence thus:

On this reading the order works thus: first the punishment is lifted, then the matter is closed, and finally the person is protected. That is, pardon does not end with the lifting of the punishment; it goes on to the repair of the relationship and at last to the protection of the person.

But I do not present this climb as a fixed rule. In Arabic the use together of near-synonyms may be for emphasis (the style of tarāduf), and in that case drawing meaning from the order would be forced. The table above is a possible reading, not a finding.

What can be said with certainty is plainer: all three verbs look in the same direction and none of them says "forget". All three are things done knowingly. Pardon is not not-knowing; it is not acting although one knows.

This verse can be misused in both directions and both must be explicitly excluded.

The first wrong reading: "the family is the enemy." The text does not give this:

1. There is the letter مِنْ and it conveys the partitive: some of them. 2. ʿAduwwan is indefinite and singular: an instance, not a category. 3. The command is fa'ḥdharū — attention; not rupture, abandonment or enmity. 4. The second half of the verse lines up three verbs of pardon and ends with two names of mercy. 5. And the Qurʾān names the same relationship elsewhere as a sign: "And of His signs is that He created for you mates from among yourselves, that you may find rest in them, and put love and mercy between you" (al-Rūm 30/21).

The second wrong reading: "then the warning can be disregarded." This too runs against the text. The warning is real, it is explicit and it is supported by a command. The verse does not say "sometimes it happens like this"; it reports the matter reinforced with inna.

The balance the verse sets up is this: seeing and acting are two separate tasks.

And this is exactly the same as the finding recorded in al-Baqara for 2/109:

"This distance between the severity of the diagnosis and the mildness of the command balances the general tone of the section: seeing what the other side does and how one is to act towards him are two separate tasks. Seeing does not require responding."

The parallel between the two verses is structural:

The two verses use the same method: a diagnosis is made, then the response is limited. The difference is that al-Taghābun first gives a command of precaution (iḥdharū) and then presents pardon as conditional: wa in taʿfū — "if you pardon". That is, pardon is not commanded; it is encouraged, and its return is shown.

Note the logic of the sentence. The condition: if you pardon. The answer: God is forgiving.

The expected answer would have been "God will pardon you". The verse does not say this; it states God's attribute.

This is a widespread pattern in the Qurʾān and it does something stronger: it lays down the return not as a promise but as a character. That is, pardon is not bought in return for a transaction; it is said that the one who pardons is facing in the same direction as a Being who pardons.

And the verb and the attribute are from the same root: if you do taghfirū, He is ghafūr. The servant does, God is. The servant's act is temporary and conditional; the attribute is permanent and absolute.

This agrees with a finding recorded in al-Muddaththir: there, of the construct ahlu'l-taqwā wa ahlu'l-maghfira, the following was said — "taqwā is the servant's work; God is worthy of it." The same asymmetry is here too.

And a return to the basmala. In the introduction to the sūra I entered a note: this verse ends with raḥīm — with the second name of the basmala. That is, the sentence carrying the sūra's harshest warning is sealed with the name at the sūra's opening. Warning and mercy stay inside the same frame.