al-Aʿlā 87:11

Wa yatajannabuha'l-ashqā "But the most wretched will avoid it."

Root: ج-ن-ب. Its original sense is side, flank, edge.

• جَنْب (janb) — the side, the flank. In the Qurʾān: "and lying on their sides" (Āl ʿImrān 3/191).
• جَانِب (jānib) — side, edge, direction.
• ٱلْجَارُ ٱلْجُنُب — the distant neighbour (al-Nisāʾ 4/36).
• ٱلصَّاحِبُ بِٱلْجَنۢبِ — the companion at one's side (al-Nisāʾ 4/36).
• ٱجْتَنَبَ / تَجَنَّبَ — to take a thing to one's own side, to draw aside from it, that is, to pass by it, to avoid it. In the Qurʾān: "…so avoid it" (al-Māʾida 5/90).

This is the image of the word: to avoid a thing is to leave it to one side and pass by it. There is an encounter — the person does meet the thing — but there is no contact.

This is the finest point of the verse.

The verse does not say "he calls it a lie". It does not say "he rejects it". It does not say "he denies it". It says he avoids it.

The verbs used for the same type in Sūrat al-Layl were these: "None enters the fire but the most wretched — the one who calls it a lie and turns away" (al-Layl 92/15-16). There are two verbs there and both are active: kadhdhaba (he called it a lie) and tawallā (he turned away).

In al-Aʿlā the verb is quieter: yatajannabuhā. No argument, no opposition, no objection. Only passing by it.

And this is the most widespread answer given to a reminder. To oppose a word requires taking that word seriously — as was treated in the section on Sūrat al-Ṭāriq, the side that opposes has at least accepted the weight of the word. The one who avoids does not even do that. He takes what comes before him aside and walks on.

I record this as my own reading; the root sense of the word is given in this way in the dictionaries, but it is I who compare the verbs of the two sūras.

Yatajannabu-hā — "he avoids it". The pronoun is feminine and refers back to al-dhikrā (verse 9).

What is avoided, that is, is the reminder itself; not the person of the one who reminds, not the subject, not the outcome. The reminding itself, directly.

Root: ش-ق-و. This word was taken up in the section on Sūrat al-Layl and had occurred at al-Shams 91/12 as ashqāhā.

The question recorded in the section on al-Layl was this: the word is an elative on the afʿal measure ("more/most wretched"), and this makes the sentence "none enters the fire but the most wretched" problematic — it comes to imply that those wretched in a middling degree will not enter. The answers given there were set out in a table, and it was stated that the first answer is the soundest in point of language: in Arabic the afʿal measure is sometimes used without comparison, simply to state the quality.

The same solution holds here; I do not repeat it.

The only point belonging here is the asymmetry of the opposition:

In al-Layl the two extremes had been built on the same pattern: al-atqā and al-ashqā. In al-Aʿlā the symmetry is broken: on one side there is a verb (yakhshā — he fears), on the other an attribute (al-ashqā).

What this means is interpretation, but a reading may be proposed: the side that remembers is described by a behaviour, the side that avoids by a position. The first is open to the door, the second has closed. I record this as my own reading; it is not binding.