al-Muṭaffifīn 83:15

Kallā innahum ʿan Rabbihim yawmaʾidhin la-maḥjūbūn "No! On that day they will be veiled from their Lord."

This verse is the first link in the sūra's sequence of punishment. And the order is striking:

1. Verse 15: they are veiled from their Lord. 2. Verse 16: then they enter the fire. 3. Verse 17: then it is said to them.

The fire comes second.

Most of the classical exegetes find this order meaningful and explain it thus: the particle thumma (then) may convey here not time but rank — this use was taken up at al-Infiṭār 82/18. That is, the fire is not a stage coming after the veil; it is a degree lower than the veil.

On this reading the order of the verses says: the heaviest punishment is not the fire but the veil.

This reading has support from the text: the verse carries three reinforcements (kallā, inna, the lām), and the phrase ʿan Rabbihim has been brought forward before the predicate — the emphasis lies not on "they are veiled" but on "from their Lord". The punishment is described not as being put somewhere but as being cut off from something.

Root: ح-ج-ب. Its concrete sense: to come between two things and prevent them from seeing one another.

The derivatives:

• حِجَاب (ḥijāb) — a curtain, a covering, a barrier. What is stretched between two things.
• حَاجِب (ḥājib) — one who blocks; and in the language of the court, the chamberlain — the officer who stands between the sovereign and the people.
• حاجب — the eyebrow. What stands above the eye and protects it; what blocks the sweat and the light coming from the forehead.
• مَحْجُوب — veiled, blocked; one between whom and a thing a curtain has come.

At the centre of the root there is a blocking, but a particular kind of blocking: a ḥijāb does not close the road — it closes the view. This is the difference between a wall and a curtain.

The uses in the Qurʾān:

• "It is not for a human being that God should speak to him except by revelation or from behind a veil." (al-Shūrā 42/51). Here the ḥijāb does not block the speaking; it blocks the seeing.
• "And between them is a veil." (al-Aʿrāf 7/46). Between the people of the garden and the people of the fire.
• "And they said: between us and you there is a veil." (Fuṣṣilat 41/5). The words of the deniers — an interesting detail: they declare the veil themselves.

Read together, Fuṣṣilat 41/5 and al-Muṭaffifīn 83/15 yield a result, and I offer it as my own reading: in this world they placed the veil themselves; in the hereafter the veil is placed upon them. What was asked for is given.

Now we come to the most important matter of the verse.

As the content of the punishment the verse puts not a pain but a deprivation. And what they are deprived of is something they did not possess in this world in any case: nobody was seeing his Lord in this world.

That is, the punishment is not the taking away of something possessed; it is the closing off of what could be.

This can count as a punishment only if that thing is genuinely possible and genuinely valuable. And this is exactly the conclusion drawn from the verse in the classical sources.

This verse is one of the most disputed in the history of theology. The views have to be recorded as they are.

The first view is the one widely accepted in Sunnī theology, and its strongest support is the Qurʾān itself:

"On that day faces will be radiant; looking towards their Lord." (al-Qiyāma 75/22-23)

These two verses are the exact opposite of al-Muṭaffifīn 83/15: there, being veiled; here, gazing. And both carry the qualification yawmaʾidhin.

This verse has a particular place for this sūra as well, and it will be returned to at verse 24: the two words occurring in al-Qiyāma 75/22-23 — nāḍira and nāẓira — occur in al-Muṭaffifīn too, in two consecutive verses (83/23 yanẓurūn, 83/24 naḍrata). The two sūras use the same two roots in the same order.

The second view is that of the Muʿtazilī theologians, and its ground is the principle that God is not a body: seeing requires direction, distance and orientation; these cannot be thought concerning God. For this reason they count the ḥijāb a metaphor.

No side is taken in this commentary on this question. The balance struck on the question of intercession in the section on al-Baqara holds here too: the views are recorded, no preference is counted binding. But this much can be said from the text: the verse presents being veiled as a punishment and assigns it to a particular group. The assigning itself is a datum of the text.

Drawing from this verse an argument that the believers will see their Lord is very widespread in the literature of exegesis and theology. The logic of the inference is this: if being deprived of a thing is mentioned as a punishment, then that thing exists for those who are not deprived of it.

In the sources this inference is widely ascribed to al-Shāfiʿī. Since I cannot give the soundness of the ascription with certainty, I do not transmit its wording; I confine myself to recording that the inference itself is widespread in the literature and is ascribed to al-Shāfiʿī.

Between the fourteenth and fifteenth verses there is a link established by the words' own data.

Both are acts of covering. And both block sight: a mirror that has rusted does not reflect, what is behind a curtain is not seen.

And there is a relation of direction between the two verses: the first covering is their own earnings; the second covering is placed upon them.

That is, the sūra says: the covering they placed themselves becomes the covering placed upon them. What was voluntary in this world becomes a verdict in the hereafter.

I offer this reading as my own inference. That both words carry the sense of covering is a datum of the language; the relation I set up between them is an interpretation.

And this completes the idea at the head of the sūra: taṭfīf was a shaving too thin to be noticed. Rayn is a layer too thin to be noticed. Ḥijāb is a thin curtain. All the objects of the sūra are thin — and all three are complete in their effects.