in the ears of the people of misguidance, and fire burning in their brains, and zaqqum scalding their palates, and Hell assaulting their faces, and like a bitter thorny tree in their stomachs. An official like Hell charged by someone with inflicting torment and torture in order to demonstrate his threats, and its splitting apart with seething rage, and its saying: “well-nigh bursting with fury”(67:8) certainly show how awesomely dreadful that person’s threats are.

Of the thousands of examples in the category of praise, the Qur’an’s manner of exposition in the five suras starting “al-Hamdulillah” is as brilliant as the sun, [^5] as adorned as the stars, as majestic as the heavens and the earth, as lovable as the angels, as compassionate as tenderness towards young in this world, and as beautiful as Paradise in the hereafter.

[^5]:In these phrases is an allusion to the matters discussed in these suras. [The five suras are al-Fātiḥa (1), al-An’ām (6), al-Kahf (18), Sabā’ (34), and al-Fāṭir (35). Tr.

Of the thousands of examples in the category of censure and restraint, in the verse, “Would any among you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother”(49:12), it censures six times. It restrains from backbiting forcibly six times over. It is like this: as is known, the Hamza at the beginning of the verse is interrogative. This seeps through all the words of the verse like water. Thus, with the first Hamza it asks: Have you no reason, the seat of question and answer, that you do not understand how ugly it is?

With the second, it asks with the word “like”: Is your heart, the seat of love and hate, so corrupted that it loves the most despicable thing?

With the third, it asks with the words “one of you”: What has happened to your social life and civilization, which receives its vitality from the community, that it finds acceptable an act which thus poisons your life?

With the fourth, it asks with the words “to eat the flesh”: What has happened to your humanity that you tear apart your friend like a savage beast?

With the fifth, it asks with the words “your brother”: Have you no compassion and fellow-feeling that you unjustly tear with your teeth at the character of the one injured, your brother in so many respects? Have you no intelligence that you bite at your own limbs like a madman?

And with the sixth it asks with the word “dead”: Where is your conscience? Is your nature so corrupted that you do the most repulsive thing to the most respected person, your brother, like eating his flesh? That is to say, backbiting is censured and despised by the reason, the heart, humanity, the conscience, human nature, and social and national solidarity. So see! How this verse restrains from this crime in six concise degrees, on six miraculous levels!