al-Insān 76:3

Innā hadaynāhu's-sabīla immā shākiran wa immā kafūrā "We showed him the way: he is either one who gives thanks or an ingrate."

The conceptual centre of the sūra, and the place where a promise made earlier in this commentary is to be fulfilled.

One must begin with a point of grammar.

In English we say "to show someone the way"; in Arabic the expected construction would be هَدَيْنَٰهُ إِلَى ٱلسَّبِيلِ — "we guided him towards the way". In the verse there is no preposition: hadaynāhu's-sabīla, two objects bound directly to the verb.

The grammarians call this نَزْعُ ٱلْخَافِض (nazʿu'l-khāfiḍ): the dropping of the preposition. The effect of the construction is this: the particle that puts a distance in between falls away. The difference between "guiding towards the way" and "guiding the way" is the difference between pointing and handing over.

The same construction is used in al-Fātiḥa: ٱهْدِنَا ٱلصِّرَٰطَ ٱلْمُسْتَقِيمَ — "guide us the straight path", not towards the path.

So the two texts use the same structure: one asks, one gives.

In the section on al-Fātiḥa the Arabic words for way were distinguished, and I summarise the finding there:

• sabīl — a definite route of travel, an itinerary
• ṭarīq — a track, a trail followed
• ṣirāṭ — a broad, open, main road; a busy route everyone can pass along

It was also recorded there that in the Qurʾān ṣirāṭ is always singular and subul (ways) is used in the plural: one road, many turnings.

What is peculiar to this passage is that the word takes the definite article: al-sabīl — "that way", the known way. Not an indefinite route but one that has been designated.

And keep this detail in mind: the same word will come once more in the twenty-ninth verse of the sūra — but this time indefinite. Fa-man shāʾa'ttakhadha ilā rabbihī sabīlā — "whoever wills takes a way to his Lord." There the preposition will come back (ilā) and the definiteness will go.

So at the two ends of the sūra the same word stands in two different arrangements:

The way that is given is definite and is handed over directly; the way that is taken is indefinite and is towards a direction. The sūra uses the same word once in a sentence of giving and once in a sentence of taking.

I record this as my own reading; the difference of arrangement in the two verses is the data of the text.

In the section on al-Fātiḥa the layers into which guidance is divided in the classical commentaries were recorded: showing the way (giving knowledge), making one walk on the way (giving will and power), holding one fast on the way (making one continue).

This verse states the first layer plainly: the way was shown. How the other layers relate to man's own act opens onto one of the longest disputes in theology. I do not enter that dispute here; the sūra itself saves it for the thirtieth verse, and it will be taken up there.

It is enough to record this much: the verse gives guidance before the two outcomes and independently of both outcomes. The fork comes after the way is shown; the showing is not made conditional on the fork.

إِمَّا (immā) denotes taqsīm (the dividing up of possibilities) in Arabic. The difference between it and aw ("or") is this: aw leaves room for preferring one option to the other; immā … wa immā sets out two possibilities as of equal weight and exhaustive. It leaves no third alternative.

Grammatically shākiran and kafūran are circumstantial (ḥāl): two states of the pronoun hu ("him"), the object of the sentence. That is, the verse says:

"We showed him the way — whether as one who gives thanks or as one who covers over."

This reading says something important: the showing of the way was done without regard to what the person would turn out to be. Guidance is not a privilege reserved for the one who gives thanks; it is something given to both.

The Qurʾān sets this up elsewhere too: "As for Thamūd, We showed them the way, but they preferred blindness to guidance" (Fuṣṣilat 41/17). The showing took place; the outcome differed.

In the discussion of al-Baqara 2/6 the following finding was made, and this very verse was given as its example:

Root k-f-r: to cover, to close over, to hide. In Arabic the farmer is called kāfir, because he covers the seed with earth; the night is called kāfir, because it covers everything over. The definition that follows from this is critical: unbelief is not not-knowing; it is covering over what one knows. And: in the Qurʾān what is set opposite unbelief is most often not īmān but thanks — immā shākiran wa immā kafūrā, al-Insān 76/3. That is, unbelief is at bottom a notion of ingratitude.

That was the promise given there; now that verse must be analysed in its own place.

The root ش-ك-ر. The original sense the lexicographers transmit is interesting: at the centre of the root lie fullness, abundance, giving much in return for little. A she-camel that gives plentiful milk for all that she eats little is called shakūr. Shukr follows the same logic: what is received is little, what is given in return is much.

I transmit this explanation; I issue no firm ruling on the historical development of the root. But this much is clear: thanks and unbelief are so built in Arabic as to be exact opposites of one another.

The object of both is the same: what has been given. The difference lies in what is done with what is given — is it uncovered or covered over?

And this draws a picture entirely different from the load the English word "infidel" carries. The verse is not conducting a survey of belief. It treats man as a being to whom something has been given, and asks a single question: what did you do with what was given?

The first two verses of the sūra had prepared exactly this. What was given has been counted out: existence (1), a body (2), the senses (2), the way (3). Four items. And immediately after the four are counted, the fork comes.

The finest detail of the verse is here, and it is easily missed.

The two words are not on the same pattern:

• شَاكِرًا — the fāʿil pattern. A simple active participle: one who gives thanks.
• كَفُورًا — the faʿūl pattern. The intensive form: one who covers much, who has made covering a habit.

The expected symmetry would have been either shākiran wa kāfiran or shakūran wa kafūran. The verse mixes the two.

There are two explanations, and both must be taken seriously:

The two do not cancel each other. If in a language both the sound and the sense of a word fall into place, we are not obliged to choose one of the two. But while the ground of sound stands there in the open, it would not be right to present the ground of meaning by itself as a proof — the same note was entered about sound-and-sense correspondence in the sections on al-Qāriʿa and al-Inshiqāq in this commentary.

This much can be said: the difference of pattern is real and is capable of carrying meaning; but by itself it is not a ground for a ruling.

The word kafūr occurs twice in the sūra: here (3) and in the twenty-fourth verse (wa lā tuṭiʿ minhum āthiman aw kafūrā — "obey none of them who is a sinner or an ingrate").

The difference between the two shows the structure of the sūra:

• In verse 3 kafūr is one of two states man may be in. Abstract, nameless, open to anyone.
• In verse 24 kafūr is concrete persons standing opposite the one addressed: minhum — "of them".

That is, the sūra shows that what was named as a possibility in the third verse is sitting across from one in the twenty-fourth. The possibility has become a person.

I record this as my own reading; the position of the word in the two verses is in the text.