الماعون · الآية 5

Commentary

The choice of the particle in the Book is always meant. Had it been said fī ṣalātihim sāhūn, inattentive inside their prayer, the understanding would have been that they lapse within it, that they forget some part of it, a verse, a cycle, a formula of praise. But the verse said ʿan. And the particle ʿan, in Arabic grammar, says the crossing past, the distance, the going beyond. The heart is not inside the prayer forgetting; it has crossed past the whole of it to another place.

This difference between fī and ʿan divides a passing lapse from the lapse that is the state blamed in this Surah. Inattention inside the prayer is human, it happens to everyone who prays, a moment in which the mind drifts and then comes back. But inattention away from the prayer is the absence of the meaning from the whole act: the one praying bows and his heart is not bowing, he prostrates and his heart is not prostrating. The prayer runs in the body, and he is outside it.

And the whole of the dīn in this Surah runs down this line: the act on the outside, and the absence of its meaning. The one who shoves the orphan aside was doing with his hand an act stripped of mercy. And the one inattentive away from his prayer does with his body an act stripped of heart. And both are a treating of the Reckoning as a lie. The first gives the lie to the reckoning by his aggression; the second gives the lie to it by a prayer that neither fears nor hopes.

Inattention, sahw, is in the Arabic tongue a daze that comes with presence, not an erasing of what is remembered. The inattentive one is there in his body, absent in his attention. The forgetful one has had his remembrance blotted out and no longer summons it. That is why the Book said of forgetting: ﴿وَلَا تَكُونُوا كَالَّذِينَ نَسُوا اللَّهَ فَأَنسَاهُمْ أَنفُسَهُمْ﴾ (al-Ḥashr, 19). Forgetting is a complete absence that draws the absence of the self after it. Inattention, though, is a deceived presence.

And the Surah chooses inattention in particular, because what it describes is not the severing of the one praying from the prayer. Had he severed it, he would not be one who prays at all. It describes the one who prays, standing in the prayer by his shape, absent from it by his heart. This is more dangerous than forgetting, because the forgetful one is reminded and remembers, while the inattentive one counts himself among those who remember.

And the finest thing in this description: the inattentive worshipper may leave his prayer pleased with himself. He has discharged what was upon him. He bowed, he made the two prostrations, he recited al-Fātiḥa, he said the closing witness. And he does not know that his prayer ran without him. The Surah uncovers this split with a single word, and leaves the reader to examine himself.

The verse settles why the woe fell: "Those who are inattentive in their prayer." The exactness is in the particle: ʿan, "away from," and not fī, "in." It did not say inattentive inside their prayer, but away from their prayer: a crossing past, a turning aside. The mind turns away from the prayer toward something else. Sāhūn (s-h-w), and not nāsūn: inattention is a slipping away from attention, and forgetting is a complete absence. The inattentive one knows in his depths that he ought to attend, and he does not attend. The slipping lasts, and it is, in its measure, meant. The pronoun hum, the subject on which the relative clause is built as a nominal sentence, is an emphasis: this is not an accident, it is their condition.

Two Readings

The two readings do not conflict. The first reads the inattention as neglect of timing; the second hears it as a state of the heart every reader knows. This book chooses the additional listening.