al-Mulk 67:13-14

Wa asirrū qawlakum awi'jharū bih, innahu ʿalīmun bi-dhāti'l-ṣudūr — a-lā yaʿlamu man khalaqa wa huwa'l-laṭīfu'l-khabīr "Keep your speech secret or make it public; He knows the very substance of the breasts. Shall the one who created not know? He is the Subtle, the Aware."

Two imperatives side by side: "keep secret" and "make public". But this is not a command.

In Arabic, when the imperative offers two contrary things as options it ceases to be a command and gives the sense "it makes no difference". English has the same structure: "do it or don't" is not a command but a declaration of indifference.

That is, the verse says: whichever of the two you do, the outcome does not change.

And the particle aw (or) is at work here too — as it was three verses earlier. In the tenth verse aw separated two roads of deliverance; here two ways of speaking. The sūra uses this particle twice, in two different functions.

سَرَّ — root س-ر-ر. To keep secret. From the same root come sirr (what is hidden), sarīra (what is kept within), and — according to an explanation the lexicographers transmit — surūr (joy): because joy is born within. The reservation entered in the discussion of al-Ghāshiya for the root-link between sarīr (throne) and surūr holds here too: these explanations are accounts transmitted by the lexicographers and carry no claim of certainty.

جَهَرَ — root ج-ه-ر. To bring out into the open, to raise the voice. Jahr — reciting aloud in prayer; jahran — openly. In the concrete sense of the root there is making visible or audible.

This construct is a repeated pattern in the Qurʾān and is hard to translate exactly.

The word ذَات means "the possessor of, the very thing"; it is feminine. Dhātu'l-ṣudūr — "that which the breasts possess", that is, what is inside the breasts.

But the word does not say "what is inside" (mā fi'l-ṣudūr). ذات is deeper: not what is found inside a thing but what is one with it. The Turkish word zat still carries this sense.

That is, the verse says that He knows not the thoughts that are in the breast but the breast's own state. Not an item inside, but the thing that makes the inside what it is.

A point of grammar: the verse says "keep your speech secret", but its answer is "He knows the substance of the breasts". That is, the subject starts from speech and shifts to what is not speech. Even the furthest degree of concealment — never saying anything at all — does not fall outside the scope.

This sentence carries an ambiguity fit for the textbooks of Arabic grammar, and the ambiguity is meaningful.

The expression مَنْ خَلَقَ can be read in two ways:

Both readings are mentioned in the classical sources and both come out at the same conclusion. The difference is where the stress falls: the first makes being the creator the proof, the second makes being created the proof.

I adopt no preference; the sentence's being framed so as to carry both readings at once may also be assessed not as a deficiency but as a density.

The logic of the proof is the same on both readings and is extremely simple: the maker knows what he has made. The person who made a device knows what is inside it; the user may not. The verse takes this everyday principle and applies it to the breasts.

And this has a side-consequence, as my own reading: a human being's not being able to know his own inside fully is, in the logic of the verse, not a defect but something to be expected. The human being did not make himself; that he should not fully know the contents of what he did not make is natural. That the effort of self-knowledge is never completed is, looked at from here, not a failure but a matter of position.

Root: ل-ط-ف. And beneath this root lie two clusters of meaning; no single English word carries both.

The first cluster — fineness, smallness, penetration: Laṭīf is what is materially fine, rare, too small to be seen by the eye. Air's being laṭīf is the opposite of water's being kathīf (dense). And fineness makes penetration possible: what is fine passes through a narrow place.

The second cluster — gentleness, kindness, favour: Luṭf — courtesy, delicacy, treating someone gently. The Turkish lütuf (favour) and latif (gracious) are in this sense.

That the two clusters are found in the same root is no accident, and there is a widespread explanation among the lexicographers: a favour is a kindness done without being noticed. A coarse kindness is visible and puts the recipient under obligation; a fine kindness is invisible. That is, the second sense is the first carried over into the field of ethics.

And the use in the verse requires both senses at once:

• The one who penetrates: knowledge that reaches the substance of the breasts has reached a place only the finest could reach.
• The gracious one: and this reaching is presented not as a threat but as a nearness.

This duality sets the tone of the verse. Had the same sentence been read only with the first sense it would have been a notice of surveillance: "He knows everything about you." When the second sense is added it becomes something else: "the one who knows everything about you is gentle towards you."

Its occurrences in the Qurʾān confirm this duality:

• "Eyes do not grasp Him, but He grasps the eyes. He is the Subtle, the Aware" (al-Anʿām 6/103) — exactly the same pair of names as al-Mulk 67/14, and there too the context is the limit of seeing and grasping.
• "Truly my Lord is subtle in what He wills" (Yūsuf 12/100) — the words of Joseph at the end of a plan completed after forty years. Here luṭf plainly means "a design working unnoticed".

The link with al-Anʿām 6/103 is especially important for Sūrat al-Mulk. There it is said that eyes cannot grasp Him; here, four verses earlier, the eyes had come back exhausted. The same pair of names stands, in both places, right beside the limit of seeing. I record this as an observation.

Root: خ-ب-ر. And the concrete sense of the root is instructive: khabara'l-arḍa — he ploughed the land, he turned it over. Khabr — ploughed soil; khibra — knowledge acquired by trying a thing.

That is, khabīr is the one who knows not by looking from a distance but by entering into. The Turkish word haberdar ("informed") comes from the root's second sense (report); but the proper sense is deeper.

What the two names give together:

One states the access, the other the depth. To reach a place and to know that place are separate things; the verse sets the two side by side.

The matter of hidden speech is the most everyday side of this verse, and today it has taken on a particular character.

A significant part of human life passes on two levels: what is said and what is not said. What is spoken in a meeting and what is spoken after it; what is said to a person and what is said about him; what is written and what is deleted.

The verse makes these two levels one level. And it does so not with a threat but with a notice of fact: concealment is technically not possible.

Its moral consequence is this, as my own reading: consistency is presented here not as a virtue but as an accord with reality. The person who acts with two faces is mistaken not because he is bad but because he is relying on something that does not exist (secrecy).

And the pair of names al-Laṭīfu'l-Khabīr takes this knowledge out of being a fear of surveillance. The end of the verse is not "He sees everything, be careful" but "He is subtle and knows from within". The difference between them is two different ways of living the same reality.