relating My verses to you and warning you of the meeting of this Day of yours? They will say, ‘We testify against ourselves.’”

As for their illustrating this with His words,

“Garments that protect you from the heat,”

meaning, “and protect you from the cold,” there are two answers.

First, unlike the passage under discussion, this contains no conditional particle upon which the ruling depends. If a command is made conditional, yet the action is commanded just as much when the condition is absent as when it is present, mentioning the condition would lengthen the discourse, diminish its benefit, and mislead the listener.

The majority hold that the contrary implication of a condition constitutes evidence. Those who dispute this say that the wording leaves unaddressed the circumstances outside the stated condition. They do not say that the wording indicates what is left unstated just as it indicates what is explicitly stated. No one maintains that.

Second, His words,

“Protect you from the heat,”

retain their ordinary meaning; the verse makes no mention of cold. It is al-Farrā’ and others like him who say that “a coordinated term has been omitted.” The leading scholars criticized them for interpreting the Quran solely on the basis of their own conjecture and their understanding of some aspect of Arabic linguistic scholarship. Often, their interpretations do not fit the text. Nothing in the wording indicates any mention of cold. Yet Allah mentions in