كَلَّا لَا تُطِعْهُ وَٱسْجُدْ وَٱقْتَرِب
The sūra's last kallā. And this time what is rejected is plain: the scene of threat in the preceding verse has ended, and the address turns back to the Prophet — and in his person to the reader.
The sūra began with a depiction (creating, teaching), continued with a diagnosis (transgression), went on with a threat (the forelock, the zabāniya), and now closes with three commands: do not obey, prostrate, draw near.
What is to be noticed is this: throughout the whole sūra nothing had been asked of the one addressed — apart from the "read" of the first two verses. Now at the end three commands come at once. And the order of the commands carries a logic.
Root: ط و ع. To obey, to submit, to comply. There is an interesting side to the root: ṭawʿ also means willingness. Ṭawʿan aw karhan — "willingly or unwillingly" (Āl ʿImrān 3/83, Fuṣṣilat 41/11). That is, ṭāʿa is not something done under compulsion; it is complying by accepting.
This refines the sense of the prohibition. To say "do not obey him" is more than to say "do not do what he says": do not take him as your measure, do not count his word as admissible.
The form of the prohibition. The prohibition is directed not at the threat but at the person: "do not obey him". That is, the matter is not the not carrying out of an order but the cutting of the relationship established with the one who gives the order.
And it also does not do this: it does not command retaliation, fighting, reprisal. What is commanded is not a conflict but an independence: do not listen to what he says, get on with your work.
The attitude treated in Sūrat al-Kāfirūn is at work here too: to draw a line, but not to attack. This is in accord with the sūra's context as well; in the first years of Mecca the Muslims had neither the power nor the means.
Root: س ج د. The root's original sense is to bend, to lower oneself, to bow down. The lexicographers record as concrete uses of the word things that bend and come close to the ground: the camel kneeling to take on its load, palm trees bent in the wind.
That is, in the root there is first a physical lowering; the sense of worship comes from that movement. Prostration expresses not a feeling but a position.
Why prostration? Look at what has been recounted throughout the sūra: a man who sees himself as sufficient, who holds his head erect, who restrains another's prayer. And the sūra's answer: you, prostrate.
This answer is not a debate. The verse does not say "argue with him", "answer him", "convince him". It does not set a thesis against a thesis; it sets a stance against a stance.
The architecture of the sūra: the sūra began with read and ends with prostrate. That is, it opens with knowledge and closes with prostration.
This is the summary of the sūra's whole argument. Because in the middle of the sūra there was this diagnosis: the human being who is given knowledge can transgress; the one who is taught can forget that he was taught. In that case knowledge is not by itself a sufficient destination. Knowledge can lead to transgression as well as to prostration.
The difference between the two extremes is not in the quantity of the knowledge but in whether or not the source of the knowledge is acknowledged. The one who acknowledges it prostrates; the one who does not sees himself, with the same knowledge, as sufficient.
- Verse 1: read in the name of your Lord — knowledge, in dependence upon Him.
- Verse 5: He taught him what he did not know — the source of knowledge.
- Verse 7: he saw himself as sufficient — the forgetting of the source.
- Verse 19: prostrate — the acknowledgment of the source with the body.
Pattern: Form VIII. Iqtarib. This form generally conveys that the verb is done with care, with effort, taking it upon oneself. That is, not "be near" but "strive to draw near, take the drawing near upon yourself."
The bond between the two commands. The verse says "prostrate and draw near". The two commands are joined by a wāw. But the relation between them is not an ordinary sequence: the second is the consequence of the first.
And the paradox here is the sūra's last word: the body's lowest position is its nearest position. The human being draws near not by rising but by going down.
This is in accord with everything the sūra has built from the beginning. The transgressor was rising — he saw himself as sufficient, he restrained others, he held his head erect. And the more he rose, the further off he got. The believer goes down, and the more he goes down, the nearer he draws.
In the hadith corpus a report is transmitted that expresses this relation directly: it is announced that the moment at which the servant is nearest to his Lord is the state of prostration (the report is stated to be found in Muslim; I do not quote its wording exactly). The report shows how the link the verse establishes was understood in the early period.
An observation about sound. The sūra begins with iqraʾ and ends with iqtarib. Both open with the sound ق ر and both are in the imperative.
Here one has to be careful: the roots are different. Iqraʾ is from the root ق ر أ, iqtarib from the root ق ر ب. It would be wrong to present these as though they were the same root. But the similarity of the sound, and the two commands' standing at the two ends of the sūra, set up a frame in the ear. I record this as an observation about sound; not as a proof of meaning.
This verse is one of the verses of the Qurʾān that require the prostration of recitation (sajdat al-tilāwa). It is established in the tradition that a prostration is made when it is recited or heard.
The number of the verses of prostration is fourteen or fifteen according to the schools of law. The disagreement is chiefly over two places: whether the prostration in Ṣād 38/24 is a prostration of recitation or a prostration of thanksgiving, and whether the second prostration in Sūrat al-Ḥajj (22/77) is to be counted. I do not go into the legal detail; I confine myself to transmitting this difference between the schools.
1. There is no disagreement over al-ʿAlaq 96/19. On all views it is counted a verse of prostration.
2. It is the last verse of prostration in the order of the codex. For one who reads the Qurʾān from beginning to end, this is the last place at which he prostrates. And this verse is the last verse of the first sūra to come down.
This is an arrangement established by the ordering of the codex, and it is striking: the sūra that carries the text's first words closes with the last of the prostrations. I record this not as a ruling but as a correspondence produced by the ordering.