al-Tawba 9:107-110 — Two foundations

Wa'lladhīna'ttakhadhū masjidan ḍirāran wa kufran wa tafrīqan bayna'l-muʾminīna wa irṣādan li-man ḥāraba'llāha wa rasūlahū min qabl

"And those who took a mosque in order to do harm, and out of rejection, and to divide the believers, and as a watch-post for one who had before made war on God and His Messenger…"

Four grounds are enumerated, and all four state a purpose: ḍirāran, kufran, tafrīqan, irṣādan.

The root ض-ر-ر was treated in al-Baqara at 2/231 (wa lā tumsikūhunna ḍirāran li-taʿtadū) and it was recorded there: the same act receives two different rulings by a difference of intention. I rely on that treatment — and here the same thing is said of a building: the structure the same, the purpose different.

I record this as my own reading: the verse rules not on the building itself but on what it was built for. And it comes from the same place as the line treated in al-Anfāl at 8/35: the form is kept, the function emptied out.

The likeness is built on two foundations, and its elements can be separated one by one:

جُرُف — a bank of earth whose underside has been scoured away by floodwater: the top still standing, the base emptied. Hār — on the point of collapse.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the word itself: a juruf is a ground that looks firm from outside; the hollow is underneath. The likeness, that is, separates apparent firmness from the real support — and this is the very difference between the mosque's form and its purpose.

And the verb must be recorded: fa'nhāra bihī — "it collapsed with him." The structure does not merely fall; it takes its builder with it.

In al-ʿAnkabūt at 29/41 the likeness of the spider's house was treated (awhana'l-buyūti la-baytu'l-ʿankabūt) and it was recorded there: the point is not that the web is useless but that it cannot be a shelter. The two likenesses cut at the same place: one an unsound wall, the other an unsound ground.