Al-Qalam · Makki · ayah 30 of 52

Al-Qalam 68:30

فَأَقْبَلَ بَعْضُهُمْ عَلَىٰ بَعْضٍ يَتَلَـٰوَمُونَ

“Then they approached one another, blaming each other.”

Saheeh International

Essence

They turn to face each other at last — and use the moment not to comfort, but to accuse.

A reflection

A verb with no ending point

Yatalāwamūn is built on form VI, the pattern Arabic uses for an action that passes back and forth between people: not one person blaming another once, but blame thrown, caught, and thrown back, round and round. The closest English has is "blaming one another," but that phrase sounds tidier than the Arabic feels. The form carries motion without a destination — no verdict is ever reached, no single culprit named, just an exchange that could, in principle, keep circling forever.

Compare it with the sentence that preceded it one ayah earlier: innā kunnā ẓālimīn, a confession with a full stop, said together, closed. This verb has no full stop built into it. It describes a process, not a conclusion — which is exactly how real mutual blame behaves. It rarely settles anything. It simply keeps moving the weight from one set of shoulders to another, indefinitely, and everyone stays tired.

Most people recognise this shape from an argument that follows a shared mistake: each person adding one more detail that nudges the fault a fraction further onto someone else, never quite landing anywhere, long after the original problem has stopped being the point. A disagreement after a minor car accident can run this way for twenty minutes without either party changing their account of what actually happened; the exchange itself becomes the event, more than the collision that started it.

The Qur'an records this verb honestly, without rushing past it. These were sincere men, capable of exactly the confession voiced an ayah earlier. And yet grief still pulled them, for a while, into a motion with no resolution. Naming that pull for what it is — a verb that spins rather than a sentence that lands — is itself a way of starting to step out of it.

There is a practical test hiding in the grammar itself. A sentence with a subject, a verb and an object usually goes somewhere: someone did something, and the account is settled once it is said. A form VI verb like this one is built differently; by its very shape it keeps the action moving between two or more parties rather than letting it rest. If you notice a conversation has quietly become this kind of verb — circling, trading the same accusation back and forth in slightly different clothes — that is itself useful information. It tells you the conversation has stopped producing anything and started merely repeating itself, which is usually the moment to stop talking and start deciding what to actually do next.

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