4:162 is a grammatical construction where case markers are switched, having the effect of highlighting a particular thing. It says muqimin instead of muqimun. Highlighting prayer here is understandable in the light of the stress laid several times in this same sura on its observance.
In 5:69 it is the nominative sabiun instead of sabiin like other accusative nouns in the sentence. In the passage, the Jews and the Christians are repeatedly alluded to. Now the verse mentions a third group not spoken of before and thus marks a sudden shift in pronoun so as to turn the reader/audience's attention on them, integrating them in the passage's overall notions of forgiveness and good deeds. Arabic is known to be a highly elliptical language, with omissions involving all elements within a sentence. This is seen as a major feature of its eloquence.
These types of sentence structures are the reason why we may find different valid grammatical explanations for an elliptical construction.
In 22:25 it says
"The unbelievers who debar others from the path of God and the Sacred Mosque.."
It does not say what happens to them, or what punishment they will receive. Their mere description is enough to determine their fate. In 41:41 it says
"Indeed, those who disbelieve in the message after it has come to them... And indeed, it is a mighty Book".
The sentence is again left without a predicate; the mere mention of their condition is enough to deduce the horrible consequences.
Another example is
9:31"They have taken their rabbis and their monks (as) Lords besides Allah and the Messiah, son (of) Maryam. And not they were commanded except that they worship One God. (There) is no god except Him. Glory be to Him from what they associate (with Him)."
The ellipsis allows for a more concise statement. Rendered fully it would be 9:31"They have taken their rabbis and their monks (as) Lords besides Allah and the Messiah, son (of) Maryam has been taken too as Lord besides Allah. And not they were commanded except that they worship One God. (There) is no god except Him. Glory be to Him from what they associate (with Him)." The verse warns to worship only one God, besides Whom there are none and Who has no associates. It would have made no sense to include that warning had it meant that Allah and Jesus are to be worshiped together. Jesus' deification is on a different level than that of the religious scholars. It was appropriate for the verse to mention him apart from that group, especially considering the message of divine unity at the end.
These types of sentence structures are the reason why we may find different valid grammatical explanations for an elliptical construction.
That is why some have stated that sabiun is in the nominative/mobtada because of the omitted "khadhalika", ie "the Sabeans AS WELL". That literary feature allows for a concise speech, and the Quran initially was uttered as a piecemeal oral discourse, whenever the revelation came to the prophet. This very recurrent feature of the Arabic of the Quran makes its translation difficult, hence the addition of many words in brackets that we see so as to convey the full meaning. For instance in the famous aya of birr 2:177 it literally says
"It is not righteousness that you turn your faces towards the East and the West, but righteousness is those who believed in Allah and the last day and the angels and the Book and the prophets..."
This genitive construction allows for an obvious omission. The full rendering would be
"It is not righteousness that you turn your faces towards the East and the West, but righteousness is THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF those who believed in Allah and the last day and the angels and the Book and the prophets..."
Some reports attributed to Uthman and Aisha state that 5:69 quoted earlier, along with 4:162 and 20:63 are scribal mistakes. Before getting to the reports, in 20:63, the grammatical construction combines negation "in" and restriction "la" hence the reason why haadhani is declined as such. Other grammarians have said that in the Kinaanah dialect, the dual form always appears with the alif. Still in accordance with grammar rules, the subject of inna is omitted and thus in the accusative. These and other valid grammatical constructions that apply to the verse were reported by Al-Suyuti, who himself quotes the reports attributed to Uthman and Aisha stating this verse and a few others are erroneous.
Further, these reports, narrated by Urwah in his Iraqi period are considered weak due to the hadith scholars, including imam adhahabi recognizing that
"when he, ie Urwah, came to Iraq at the end of his life...there were a few hadith that he reported that were not sound".
But that is not the sole reason undermining the authenticity of these reports. The one attributed to Uthman has a broken chain of transmission, as well as contains narrators whom no scholars vouched for their integrity, such as ibn Aamir. Neither Yahya ibn Ya'mur nor Ikrimah were contemporaries of Uthman to have heard anything from him, as corroborated by ad Daani. Bukhari deemed the chain broken and Qataadah said it was ambiguous. Further, the various names in the chain appear in different chronological orders depending on the channel of transmission. At Tabari even quotes Ubay ibn Kaab's recitation of 4:162 as "walmuqimeena", just as in the mushaf of Uthman we have today.
This further undermines the notion of a widespread grammatical error among several independant masaahif. And why didnt anyone else notice the "errors" among the multiple independant channels of transmission of the Uthmanic text, other than Uthman and Aisha? How could the exact same "errors" be repeated in the multiple copies which Uthman had compiled? Lastly, why would Uthman, whose task was to harmonize and standardize the Quranic text, destroying all imperfect copies, leave erroneous manuscripts to be disseminated under his watch?
Al Suyuti himself considered these rational implications and others as damaging to the report's authenticity. Al Suyuti also reports from abu Ubayd how Uthman would immediately correct scribal mistakes which were brought to his attention, citing the examples of 30:30, 86:17 and 2:259 containing very slight errors by the copyists. Why would he then neglect supposedly blatant grammatical mistakes elsewhere? Al Zamakhshari states in Al Kashshaf says those who talk of orthographical error here or elsewhere simply do not know the various ways the Arabs use their language. When the Arab grammarians and philologists, such as those of Kufa and Basra, disputed the grammatical validity of a reading known for its authentic transmission, it was because they neglected the principle of the 7 revealed ahruf which integrated various Arab dialects. They began instead reflecting their own criteria of fluency to these dialects. The fact is that both grammar schools did not assimilate every parts of Arabic into their rules. Many parts of the Arabic is transmitted by the Kufans and others parts by the Basran (al bahr al muhit).
More recently, the Islamicist Nicolai Sinai while quoting John Burton's claim of grammatical error in 20:63 based on that hadith from Aisha says
"The Hafs aan Asim reading of Q 20:63 (in hadhani la-sahirani..) is of course not, strictly speaking, incorrect, for in al-mukhaffafa does not require the accusative (see Wright, Grammar, vol. 2, 81D). On the other hand, it is noteworthy that the majority of canonical readers seem to have read inna hadhani, at the price of linguistic correctness (Ahmad Mukhtar Umar and Abd al-Al Salim Makram, Mujam al-qiraat al-qur'aniyya, 2nd ed., 8 vols (Kuwait: Dhat al-Salasil, 1988, vol. 4, 89–90). There must consequently have been a strong oral tradition in favour of inna instead of in al-mukhaffafa; and it seems probable that this was the original wording, as it is surely the lectio difficilior. Abu Amr and others read inna hadhayn la-sahiran, probably by tacitly going against the rasm. What is significant in the present context is that this oral tradition in favour of inna did not result in an emendation of the rasm".
Further reading answering The Islam Issue "Aisha testifies to Quranic corruption"
- Islam critiqued on the lookout; Where are the stoning and suckling verses? (Aisha on 2:238)
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