Tafsir of Az-Zukhruf 43:15

This is connected to His saying, "And if you ask them..." up to the end of the passage. It is a circumstantial qualifier (hal) for the subject of "they will surely say," whether with the estimated [particle] qad or without it. The intent is to demonstrate that they are contradictory and obstinate; they admitted that He, the Almighty, is the Creator of the heavens and the earth, then they described Him, Glorified be He, with the attributes of created beings, which contradicts His being the Creator of both. Thus, they assigned a portion to Him, Glorified be He, and said, "The angels are daughters of Allah," and He is Exalted and High above that with great loftiness.

He expressed the child as a "portion" (juz') because the child is a piece of the one from whom it was born, as it is said, "Our children are our livers." This signifies the extreme impossibility of this regarding the One Truth, to Whom no division can be attributed in reality, hypothesis, externally, or conceptually; Glorified is His Majesty and Exalted is He. To emphasize the degree of their contradiction, He was not content with saying "a portion," but added "from among His servants," because it necessitates, according to the requirements of their own admission, that whatever is in them [the heavens and earth] is created by Him and a servant to Him, since it is originated after them and is necessarily in need of Him.

It is said: "Portion" (juz') is a name for females. It is said, "She produced a female" (ajza'at), when a woman gives birth to a female. They cited the poet's verse: "If a free woman produces a female one day, it is no wonder; for a free woman may sometimes produce a male." And the saying: "I married her from the daughters of Al-Aws, who produce thorns." Al-Zamakhshari considered this among the innovations of interpretation and stated that the claim that this is a noun for females in the language of the Arabs is a lie against them, a fabrication invented by others, and that the two verses are forged. Al-Zajjaj said regarding the first verse: "I do not know if it is ancient or forged."

Some have explained this by saying that Eve was created from a part (juz') of Adam, peace be upon him, so it was metaphorically applied to all females. Abu Bakr, narrating from Asim, read it as juz'an with two dammahs.

The discourse, even if driven by the aforementioned hypothesis, implies their disbelief in anthropomorphizing the Creator, Exalted be He, and treating Him with triviality, Glorified and Majestic is He, as they assigned to Him, Glorified be He, the lower of the two types. Furthermore, establishing this necessitates contingency, which signals the created nature of the Creator, Exalted be He. Consequently, He would neither be a God, nor a Creator, nor a Maker—Exalted is He above what they say, and Glorified is He above what they describe. The discourse is not driven by the enumeration of [acts of] disbelief, as some have said.

His saying, "Indeed, man is clearly ungrateful" (43:15), does not necessitate this. The intended meaning is the exaggeration of ingratitude for favors, and it is more intense in the denial of the Maker than the exaggeration in their [specific] acts of disbelief, as was pointed out. "Clearly" (mubin) is derived from abana in its intransitive sense, meaning "manifest in disbelief." It is also permissible that it is from the transitive sense, meaning "one who manifests his disbelief."