al-Mulk 67:22

A-fa-man yamshī mukibban ʿalā wajhihi ahdā amman yamshī sawiyyan ʿalā ṣirāṭin mustaqīm "Is one who walks fallen forward on his face better guided, or one who walks upright on a straight path?"

The most visual verse of the sūra. And the place where the sound structure breaks: the twenty-one verses of rāʾ rhyme end here.

The most important feature of the sentence is this: on both sides there is the same verb. Yamshī — he walks. Both are walking.

This settles where the comparison lies. The verse is not comparing one who walks with one who stands still; it is comparing two who walk. That is, the matter is not moving but how one moves.

And this connects with the fifteenth verse of the sūra: there the command was fa'mshū (walk). The command was given; now the measure is given.

Root: ك-ب-ب. To overturn a thing on its face, to turn it over and pour it out. Kabba — he overturned it, threw it face down. Akabba — he fell forward on his face.

Its pattern calls for attention: mukibb is the active participle of Form IV. One function of this form in Arabic is entering into a state (aṣbaḥa — he entered upon the morning, amsā — he entered upon the evening). That is, mukibb means "one who has entered the state of being on his face".

What is the picture? — there are three readings and all three occur in the classical sources:

My preference is the first view, and its ground is the comparison itself: the other side walks sawiyyan (upright). The opposite of uprightness is not being dragged but being bent. It is not binding; the third view is also defensible and has support in the Qurʾān.

وَجْه — face. In the discussion of al-Ghāshiya it was dwelt on why the word "face" is chosen: the face is the part of a person that cannot be hidden, the seat of identity. Here one more function is added: the face is where direction is determined. The eye is in the face; where you look determines where you go.

And the face of the one who walks on his face is turned to the ground. That is, the organ that determines direction is seeing not the direction but the floor.

Root: ه-د-ي. Treated in the discussion of al-Fātiḥa: hidāya is the showing of the way that brings one to the goal; in the root there is going ahead and leading.

Ahdā is an elative: "the one more rightly on the way".

And the comparative form carries a fine point here. The verse does not say "which of them is on the right way?"; it says "which of them goes better?" That is, the question assumes that both are going somewhere; what is asked about is efficiency.

This agrees with the finding recorded for mustaqīm in the discussion of al-Fātiḥa: "the shortest distance between two points is a straight line; the straight road is at the same time the shortest, most economical road. Crookedness does not only take you wrong; even when it takes you there it tires you and lengthens the way."

The one who walks on his face is also advancing. But how.

Root: س-و-ي. This root was treated at length in the discussion of al-Shams (91/7); I do not repeat it here. The summary of the finding there: the idea beneath the root is equality and proportion; in Form II (sawwā) the verb takes on the sense "to bring the parts of a thing into proportion with one another, to get its ratios right, to make it complete and flawless". And the Qurʾān uses this verb insistently for the creation of the human being: fa-sawwāka (al-Infiṭār 82/7), fa-sawwāhā (al-Shams 91/7).

Now the word sawiyy is the adjectival form of that root: brought into balance, complete, well-formed.

And from here comes one of the strongest links of the sūra, as my own reading:

The human being was created by being made sawwā — by having his parts brought into balance. In the twenty-second verse the walk that is asked for is sawiyy — from the same root. That is, the walk that is asked for is the walk that preserves the balance of one's creation.

To walk on one's face is the breaking of this balance. That a human being stands upright is a feature of his creation; to bend is to abandon that feature.

This is akin to the matter of aḥsan-i taqwīm treated in Sūrat al-Tīn: the being created in the finest form is asked whether it preserves that form.

This construction was treated in the discussion of al-Fātiḥa; I do not repeat it here. The summary of the findings there:

• صراط — a broad, open, main road; a well-travelled route that everyone can pass along. This is its difference from sabīl and ṭarīq: not a private path but an open highway.
• مستقيم — root q-w-m: to stand, to be erect, to straighten. The word says two things at once: straightness and upright stance.

And now al-Mulk 67/22 joins these two findings.

In al-Fātiḥa it was recorded that the word mustaqīm carries the sense of "upright stance", but in that verse it was a quality of the road. Here the quality of the one who walks is stated separately: sawiyyan.

What emerges when the two verses are read together is this, as my own reading: being on the right road and walking rightly are separate things.

The verse does not count the road's being right as sufficient; it counts the walker's posture too. One can walk on one's face on a right road as well.

And the reverse is also true: the verse of the one who walks on his face does not say which road he is on. Perhaps he is on the same road. The difference is not in the road but in the posture.

I do not present this reading as a settled exegesis. Most classical exegetes divide the two sides as "denier" and "believer", and this too suits the text. The layer I add is that the two sides' doing the same act (walking) says something.

The first twenty-one verses of the sūra ended with rāʾ. This verse ends with mīm: mustaqīm.

And after this the verse-endings change: tashkurūn, tuḥsharūn, ṣādiqīn, mubīn, taddaʿūn, alīm, mubīn, maʿīn. Now nūn and mīm predominate.

I record this as an observation and construct no claim of miracle. But this aspect of the observation is worth recording: the verse in which the sound changes is the verse of the sūra that lays down the measure. For twenty-one verses proofs and threats had been set out; here a question is asked, and the question calls the one addressed to look at his own posture.

The sound too changes direction at that point. I set up no relation of cause and effect between the two; I only record that the two changes meet in the same verse.

The distinction the verse produces is the distinction between "movement" and "direction" — and this distinction works particularly well today.

The strongest feeling of modern life is busyness. A person is constantly doing something, constantly advancing, constantly moving on to the next task. Movement is not questioned; stillness is questioned.

The verse does not question movement — both sides are walking anyway. What it questions is where the head is.

And the feature of the one who walks on his face is that he does not see ahead. This may be a result not of laziness but of intensity: the person who looks at his toes is generally the one who is in a hurry. He attends to his steps and does not look at the horizon.

The concrete question that comes out of this is: how many times a year does a person raise his head in his own life and look at where he is going? Taking steps is easy and rewarding; checking direction slows the step.

A second aspect: the moral counterpart of the word sawiyy.

To walk upright is not only a posture. The sense carried by the English expression "to stand up straight" overlaps with the Arabic sawiyy: to do what befits one, not to bend, to keep one's balance.

And the finding recorded in the discussion of al-Ghāshiya works here in reverse: there khushūʿ (lowering) could be of two kinds — voluntary and compelled. Here too uprightness can be towards two things: a person may bend before God and stand straight before people, or the reverse. The uprightness the sūra asks for is the uprightness that is on the road — that is, an uprightness that has accepted the direction.