يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا لَا تَعْتَذِرُوا الْيَوْمَ إِنَّمَا تُجْزَوْنَ مَا كُنتُمْ تَعْمَلُونَ
This verse is the shortest and the harshest verse of the sūra. And in point of word order it is striking.
The previous verse was said in this world: "O you who believe, guard." This verse is said on the day of resurrection: "do not offer excuses today."
That is, in passing from one verse to another the text skips over time. The reader is carried from a command in this world to the moment in which the consequence of that command is seen. The whole distance in between — a lifetime, a resurrection — is compressed into the gap of a single verse.
This leap is common in the Qurʾān's technique of narration and its effect is this: the distance between the warning and the subject of the warning is removed. A finding recorded in the discussion of al-Maʿārij was close to this: the text carries the reader over to the other side of the happening.
And one detail: the formula of address stays the same. The sixth verse yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū, the seventh yā ayyuha'lladhīna kafarū. The same frame, a single word changed. Two groups are called in the same manner — and the difference is only in the verb.
Root ع ذ ر (ʿ-dh-r). The field of meaning of the root is wide and it has an interesting centre: to wipe out the trace of a thing, to cover a fault, to make excusable.
- عُذْر (ʿudhr) — an excuse, a reason that lightens a fault. The Turkish özür is a direct borrowing from this.
- مَعْذِرَة (maʿdhira) — the offering of an excuse.
- اعْتَذَرَ (iʿtadhara) — the iftiʿāl form: he produced an excuse for himself, he tried to make himself excusable.
What the pattern adds is decisive here. The iftiʿāl form, as was treated at the first verse in connection with ibtighāʾ, states reflexivity and effort: a person's doing something for himself, with exertion.
That is, iʿtidhār is not a passive "having an excuse"; it is an effort spent in producing an excuse. The verse forbids not the existence of an excuse but the search for one.
And this difference is needed in order to understand the verse exactly. The sentence does not say "you have no excuse" — that would be a finding. It says "do not look for an excuse" — that is a command and it aims at a behaviour.
The parallel usage in the Qurʾān. The same verb occurs once more in a similar scene: expressions to the effect that "that day their excuses will not profit them" and the formula "do not offer excuses today" are repeated in the Qurʾān. What they have in common is that the time for excuses has passed.
What the verse says is not the invalidity of the excuse but the closing of its time. An excuse is meaningful when it can change something.
إِنَّمَا — in Arabic the particle of ḥaṣr (restriction): "only, solely, nothing else." In al-Bayyina at 98/4 the restriction built with the mā … illā structure was treated; innamā does the same work in a single word.
This restriction cuts off the search for an excuse at the root. For an excuse is an attempt to put a distance between the outcome and the act: "I did it, but for such a reason", "I did it, but others did too", "I did it, but I did not know". The sentence closes this distance — there is nothing at all between the outcome and the act.
Root ج ز ي (j-z-y): to give in return, to pay what is equivalent. The usual English rendering, penalty, is used only for a negative return; in Arabic the word is neutral and is used for the return of good as well. This distinction is needed in order to read most of the uses of jazāʾ in the Qurʾān correctly.
مَا كُنتُمْ تَعْمَلُونَ — note the combination of forms: kuntum (perfect) + taʿmalūn (imperfect). In Arabic this combination states a continuous past: "what you were doing", "what you kept doing".
That is, what is repaid is not single events but a behaviour kept up. In al-Māʿūn the imperfect's stating of continuity was dwelt on several times; here the same principle comes in its backward-looking form.
The verse's place within the sūra is strange at first sight. The sixth verse addresses the believers, the eighth verse addresses the believers again; between them this verse addresses those who deny.
In the classical commentaries it is noted that this is an iʿtirāḍ (an interposition). But its function can be seen and it is twofold:
First: it shows the other side of the sixth verse. The sixth verse commanded guarding against a fire. The seventh shows what one who has not been guarded says beside that fire. That is, between the command and the ground of the command, the living scene of the ground is set.
Second: it prepares the ground for the eighth verse. The eighth verse will command repentance. And the opposite of repentance is what is shown in the seventh verse: the excuse.
| Excuse (66/7) | Repentance (66/8) | |
|---|---|---|
| Who takes on the act | No one — the act is referred to a cause | The person himself |
| Its direction | To recount the past again | To turn towards the future |
| Its time | Closed | Open |
| Its result | It does not change | It changes |
At al-Baqara 2/37, where Adam (Ādam) and Iblīs are compared, exactly this distinction was recorded: "The two beings were in the same situation: they broke a command. What made the difference is what they did afterwards." Adam took the fault upon himself, Iblīs gave grounds for it.
The seventh and eighth verses of Sūrat al-Taḥrīm place the same distinction in two neighbouring verses.
The verse does not describe an excuse as a lie. This is important: excuses are most often true. The person really was tired, really did not know, others really were doing it too.
What the verse touches is not the truth of the excuse but its function. An excuse puts a distance between the act and the person. And when that distance is set, the act becomes impossible to work on — because the act is no longer the person's.
The sense of effort added by the iftiʿāl form falls exactly into place here: an excuse is not found, it is produced. And its production requires labour; the human mind most often spends this labour without noticing.
Its practical consequence is this: the first thing a person who wants to change a behaviour has to do is to be able to see the behaviour itself and not its explanation. So long as the explanation stands in front of the behaviour, the behaviour stays where it is.
And the close of the verse says this in a single sentence: innamā tujzawna mā kuntum taʿmalūn. What is measured is not the explanation but what was done.