Ya-Sin · Makki · ayah 59 of 83

Ya-Sin 36:59

وَٱمْتَـٰزُوا۟ ٱلْيَوْمَ أَيُّهَا ٱلْمُجْرِمُونَ

“[Then He will say], "But stand apart today, you criminals.[1275]”

Saheeh International

Essence

The verb for this separation is the one for sorting things that look identical, so the crowd being divided had been standing together.

A reflection

They were not standing somewhere else

The word criminals conjures a familiar picture. Tyrants, murderers, people who ran fraud or torture, gathered in their own enclosure on the far side of the plain. The reader stands comfortably among the decent people, watching them led away.

Two words in this short ayah undo that picture.

The first is the verb. Imtāzū comes from a root the lexicons define with unusual precision: separating between things that resemble one another. It is not the word for parting obvious opposites, black from white. It is the word for sorting likenesses. One of the concise commentaries spells out the scene: separate yourselves from the believers, at the very moment when you were mixed in with them. The command only makes sense if, a moment before, nobody could tell the two crowds apart.

The second is the noun. Mujrim comes from a root of cutting off. Jirām was the date harvest, when the clusters were cut from the palms. Earning was jarm, as though a person cut off a share for himself. A crime, jurm, is earning of the worst kind: a harvest gathered against yourself. The criminal here is not primarily someone who broke the law of a state. He is someone who spent a lifetime harvesting the wrong crop, one handful at a time.

Put those together and the ayah stops being about other people. It describes a crowd of lookalikes who had stood side by side, in the same streets and gatherings. Then a single command reveals that they had been gathering two different harvests all along.

The question the ayah leaves is not where the criminals are. It is what you have been cutting and storing.

The full entry has 6 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.