al-Muṭaffifīn 83:10-11

Waylun yawmaʾidhin li'l-mukadhdhibīn • Alladhīna yukadhdhibūna bi-yawmi'd-dīn "Woe on that day to the deniers! Those who deny the day of reckoning."

The sūra says wayl a second time. And the difference between the two must be dwelt on:

The first wayl is without time: the verdict is laid down absolutely. The second is tied to a day: yawmaʾidhin.

And yawmaʾidhin has been brought forward, before the predicate. As was recorded in the section on al-Humaza, an element brought forward gains emphasis. So the emphasis lies not on "woe to them" but on "on that day".

This ties verse 10 to verses 7-9: the record was kept, it stands in sijjīn, and on that day it will be opened.

Now we come to one of the most important moves of the sūra.

In the first verse the sūra said wayl to the muṭaffifīn. In the tenth verse it says wayl to the mukadhdhibīn.

Are these two groups the same, or separate?

The flow of the text says they are the same, and its ground is in verse 12: "None denies it but every aggressor, every sinner."

That is, the sūra sets up this chain:

Those who diminish in the measure (1-3) → these do not consider the raising (4-6) → their records are in sijjīn (7-9) → woe to the deniers (10-11) → and the deniers are precisely those who are aggressors and sinners (12).

The twelfth verse ties the head of the chain to its end. So the muṭaffif of verse 1 and the mukadhdhib of verse 10 are the same person — the one named by his act, the other by his belief.

This is the same work Sūrat al-Māʿūn does, and it was recorded there: the two halves of al-Māʿūn took two different human types and brought them together at the same point. Al-Muṭaffifīn takes a single human being and names him twice over.

The sentence وَيْلٌ يَوْمَئِذٍ لِّلْمُكَذِّبِينَ is repeated many times as a refrain in Sūrat al-Mursalāt. The structure of that sūra is built on the repetition.

That the same sentence should occur once in al-Muṭaffifīn sets up a shared wording between the two sūras. I record this as an observation; I make no claim that there is a deliberate reference between the two sūras.

The analysis of the verb was made in the section on al-Māʿūn: kadhdhaba (tafʿīl) is "to call another's true word a lie"; it differs from kadhaba (to lie). And takdhīb is not a silent unbelief but an active attitude and a taking of a position.

The function of the particle bāʾ was also recorded there: in the structure kadhdhaba bi- the particle carries a sense of adhesion — what is rejected is not an idea standing at a distance but something taken hold of and pushed away.

In this sūra the verb occurs four times: 10 (mukadhdhibīn), 11 (yukadhdhibūna), 12 (yukadhdhibu), 17 (tukadhdhibūn). The root is the backbone of the second half of the sūra.

And the last of these occurrences, in verse 17, is striking: there the verb will be put in the past tense and turned towards the addressee: "This is what you used to deny."

The construct occurred three times in Sūrat al-Infiṭār (82/15, 17, 18) and was taken up there. The analysis of the root was made in the section on al-Māʿūn: at the centre of the root د-ي-ن lies the idea of requital.

And in the section on al-Māʿūn this verse — al-Muṭaffifīn 83/11 — was shown as the evidence that dīn carries the sense "the day of reckoning": "at al-Muṭaffifīn 83/11 the same structure is written out plainly: those who deny the day of reckoning."

And there is something further here: the word dīn meant "requital". The subject of the sūra is measure — that is, the very transaction of giving in return. In a sale, what is given and what is taken must be equal; and dīn is "the return of what was given".

So the sūra is saying that those who diminish the return in a transaction reject the day of return. The same idea rejected in two fields.

I offer this link as my own reading. The root sense of the word was established in the section on al-Māʿūn; the relation I set up with the subject of the sūra is an interpretation.