Saabi'uuna in 5:69 and was written Saabi'iina in 2:62 and 22:17.-ARE THEY GRAMMATICAL ERROR ???

Submitted by Ben Othman (Malaysia), May 26, 2012 at 00:28

Let us read this comment from a Muslim site:

"

THE CLAIM ; The First Error In 5:69 "Innal-laziina 'aamanuu wal-laziina haaduu was-Saabi'uuna wan-Nasaaraa man 'aamana bilaahi wal-Yawmil-'Aakhiri wa 'amila saali-hanfalaa khaw-fun 'alay-him wa laa hum yah-zanuun."

There is a grammatical error in the above verse. The word Saabi'uuna has been declined wrongly... In two other verses, the same word, in exactly the same grammatical setting was declined correctly.

THE REPLY;

Correctly and differently--nothing wrong with that. Just because words appear in the same "grammatical setting" does not mean that they have to be used exactly the same way. In Arabic as in English, there is more than one gramatically correct way to say the same thing even with similar words. (e.g."He hurriedly went to the market" or "He went to the market in a hurry"; in one case an adverbial form of HURRY is used and in one case a NOUN form is used, with an equivalent meaning.This is a matter of *style*.)

THE CLAIM: You notice that the word was written Saabi'uuna in 5:69 and was written Saabi'iina in 2:62 and 22:17. In the last two verses the word was declined correctly because the word inna in the beginning of the sentence causes a form of declension called "nasb" (as in cases of accusative or subjunctive) and the "yeh" is the "sign of nasb". But the word Saabi'uuna in 5:69 was given the 'uu, waw which is the sign of "raf'a" (as in cases of nominative or indicative). This then is an obvious grammatical error.

THE REPLY;

This is not an error. Abu Jafar Al-Nahhas in A2raab al-Qur'an[1] explains that what is meant here is "innal-laziina 'aamanuu wal-laziina haaduu man 'aamana bilaahi MIN-HUM wal-Yawmil-'Aakhiri wa 'amila saali-han falahum ajruhum ... was-Saabi'uuna wan-Nasaaraa KA-ZALIK..." (capitals are words inserted not in Qur'an to clarify meaning), with the meaning "Surely they that believe, and those of Jewry, whosoever believes in God and the Last Day, and works righteousness, no fear shall be on them, neither shall they sorrow, and the Sabaeans, and the Christians LIKEWISE."

This in no way contradicts using the words with a different style resulting with a different grammatical declination in other similar verses. Abu Jafar goes on to quote pre-Islamic Arabic poetry with a similar structure (a nominative used after a participle normally requiring the accusative) but it would be lengthy to quote and explain.Moreover these claims of grammatical errors are NOTHING NEW.

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