al-Ghāshiya 88:10-11

Fī jannatin ʿāliya — lā tasmaʿu fīhā lāghiya "It is in a lofty garden. It hears no idle talk there."

Root: ع-ل-و. To rise, to be superior. ʿAlī, aʿlā, istiʿlāʾ, ʿālam (on one view).

The attribute has two layers, and both are at work in the text:

One. Physical height. The garden's position is high; the one who looks, looks downward.

Two. Height of rank. ʿĀlī means superior in degree.

The Qurʾān uses the same attribute in one other place in the same construction: "…in a lofty garden" (al-Ḥāqqa 69/22).

Its contrast within the sūra must also be noted: the attribute of the first group was khāshiʿa — collapsed, brought low. The place of the second group is ʿāliya — lofty. The two ends of the same vertical axis.

Now comes one of the sūra's most striking choices, and it is generally passed over.

The depiction of the garden begins. The expected order: food, drink, place, furnishings. The verse first states the place (a lofty garden), and then what does it say?

It says that something is not there.

Springs (12), couches (13), goblets (14), cushions (15), carpets (16) — before all of these, the first quality of the garden to be described is this: no idle talk is heard there.

This means that the garden's first quality is an absence. And the absence chosen is not a physical discomfort; it is a discomfort to do with speech.

The Qurʾān repeats this choice elsewhere too:

• "They hear there neither idle talk nor any word that leads to sin" (al-Wāqiʿa 56/25).
• "They hear there neither idle talk nor lying" (al-Nabaʾ 78/35).
• "They hear no idle talk there, only peace" (Maryam 19/62).

In four separate sūras, in the describing of the garden, the cleanness of speech is mentioned in its own right. This repetition shows that the matter is not a secondary detail.

Root: ل-غ-و. Laghw: null speech, speech that is not taken into account, talk that produces no result.

The word's core is best shown by its legal use:

"God will not hold you to account for the laghw in your oaths" (al-Baqara 2/225; similarly al-Māʾida 5/89).

Laghw al-yamīn is an oath that leaves the mouth without being intended — "by God, it is so", "by God, it is not". And its ruling is this: it does not count. It has been said, but in law it does not exist.

Here is the centre of the word: laghw is speech that has been said but not counted. A sound has come out, no consequence has arisen.

Its other uses in the Qurʾān confirm this core:

• "They turn away from idle talk" (al-Muʾminūn 23/3). One of the first qualities counted of the believer.
• "When they meet with idle talk they pass by with dignity" (al-Furqān 25/72).
• "When they hear idle talk they turn away from it and say, 'our work is ours and your work is yours'" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/55).

In all three verses what is recommended is the same: not to argue, but to withdraw. The answer to idle talk is not an answer given to it; it is a drawing back from it. This is an interesting measure, and I shall come back to it in what the sūra says to the present.

Both words are rendered "idle" in English, and this erases the difference between them.

لهو (lahw) was treated in the discussion of al-Takāthur (102/1), and the definition there was this: lahw is not "amusement"; it is the occupation that holds a person back from his real business, that takes his attention from there and binds it elsewhere. At the centre of the word there is not cheerfulness but displacement — attention is taken from one place and set in another.

The comparison:

The two words complete each other. Lahw steals attention; laghw empties out speech. The one has to do with "where you are", the other with "what you say".

And in al-Ghāshiya's garden the second has been removed. The sūra sets down as the first condition of peace not silence but meaningful speech.

لاغية is an active participle, feminine. It is understood in two ways: (a) kalimatan lāghiyatan — "an idle word"; (b) "a person who speaks idly". The second reading comes from the word's qualifying a person as well. Both senses come out at the same place: neither idle talk nor the one who speaks it.

A variant reading. The verb has been read in three forms:

I do not give the names of the imams of the variant readings; the existence of the differences is recorded in the sources, their distribution I cannot give with certainty. The sense does not change in essentials: on every reading the idle talk does not reach the ear.

But that the verb should be "to hear" is worth recording in its own right. The verse does not say "there is no idle talk there"; it says "no idle talk is heard there". That is, what is cut off is not the existence of the speech but its reaching the ear.

The difference looks small but is real: what disturbs a person's peace is not the existence of bad speech but its reaching him. This reading comes out of the verse's choice of verb and is my own reading.