al-Jinn 72:22

Qul innī lan yujīranī mina'llāhi aḥadun wa lan ajida min dūnihī multaḥadā

"Say: No one can protect me from God, and I shall find no refuge apart from Him."

Root ج-و-ر. And this root carries one of the most concrete institutions of the society in which the Qurʾān came down.

The original sense of the root is neighbourhood: jār — a neighbour. From here جِوار (jiwār) — neighbourhood, proximity, taking under protection. And إجارة (ijāra) or أجار (ajāra) — to take someone under one's protection.

In pre-Islamic Arabia jiwār was a legal institution. In the tribal order the individual's safety rested on the tribe he belonged to. Someone cut off from his tribe, come from a distant land, or fallen out with his own tribe could ask jiwār of a tribal chief or of a man of influence. If it was accepted, that person was thereafter under the protector's protection; to touch him counted as touching the protector.

Traces of this institution are plainly visible in the Qurʾān:

• "If one of the mushrikūn asks you for protection (istajāraka), grant him protection (fa-ajirhu) until he hears the word of God" (al-Tawba 9/6). A direct use of the institution.
• The word transmitted as Satan's at Badr: "I am your protector (innī jārun lakum)" — and then his withdrawal (al-Anfāl 8/48).
• And the most critical: "He protects, and against Him no one is protected" (al-Muʾminūn 23/88 — wa huwa yujīru wa lā yujāru ʿalayh). The same root, the same pattern.

That is, the verse speaks by using a legal institution the addressee knows. And what it says is: this institution does not work before God.

The addressee of the sentence has to be dwelt on.

This is not a warning. It does not say "no one can save you". It says "no one can save me".

That is, the messenger gives himself as the example. And the example he gives is unprotectedness.

Its place in the sūra is very marked: in verse 6 human beings were seeking refuge with the jinn; in verse 12 the jinn were saying that they themselves cannot escape; now the Prophet says that he too cannot be protected. The sūra completes the list of beings that cannot be a refuge and adds its own messenger to the list last.

لَن again a definitive negation: never.

أَحَدٌ — its fifth occurrence in the sūra. And note: this is the word's only occurrence in the sūra in the nominative (in the position of subject); the other five are in the accusative (as object or complement). Here, that is, aḥad is in the position of the one acting, and again it is absent: no one can save.

Root ل-ح-د. Its concrete sense: to lean to one side, to swerve from the line, to incline sideways.

Its derivatives branch from this single image of the root:

• لحد (laḥd) — the hollow cut into the side wall of a grave. In Arabic two kinds of grave are distinguished: ḍarīḥ (a pit dug straight down in the middle) and laḥd (a niche opened in the side wall). Laḥd means exactly "swerving to the side".
• إلحاد (ilḥād) — to swerve from the line, to depart from the truth. The words ilhad and mülhid in Turkish come from here.

The uses of ilḥād in the Qurʾān:

• "Leave those who twist His names" (al-Aʿrāf 7/180).
• "Those who twist Our signs are not hidden from Us" (Fuṣṣilat 41/40).
• "Whoever inclines there to wrongdoing by injustice…" (al-Ḥajj 22/25).
• And in a linguistic context: "…the tongue of the one they refer it to is foreign" (al-Naḥl 16/103 — yulḥidūna ilayh, "to whom they incline").

مُلْتَحَد is a noun of place from the iftiʿāl form: a place one swerves aside to and takes refuge in.

The image of the word is very concrete: a hollow one dodges into at the side of a road, a recess, a cover. The place where one fleeing swerves out of his line of travel and hides.

The word occurs in two places in the Qurʾān and in both with the same wording: here and "you will find no refuge apart from Him" (al-Kahf 18/27). In both there is the construct min dūnihī multaḥadā.

Dūn conveys "below, on this side of, outside" — it occurred in dūna dhālik in verse 11 too.

The structure of the sentence is one that closes a door: "I shall find no refuge apart from Him." That is, seeking refuge is not forbidden; the one address where refuge is to be sought is stated.

And this sets up an exact contrast with verse 6:

The finding in the section on al-Falaq is completed here: the act of seeking refuge is not neutral; the address is decisive. Verse 6 showed the wrong address, verse 22 declares the singleness of the right one.