Al-Mursalat: (36) "And it will not be permitted for them..."

"And it will not be permitted for them" — it has been said: to speak at all, or to offer an excuse. Zayd ibn Ali recited it—as narrated from him by Abu Ali al-Ahwazi—in the active voice; that is: "And Allah the Exalted will not permit them."

"So they shall offer excuses" (faya‘tadhirun)—this is conjoined to "it will be permitted" (yu’dhanu), organized with it in the sequence of negation. The fa (so) denotes the consequence between the two negations in the narrative, or the consequence of the second negation itself upon the first.

It has been noted that it was not read as faya‘tadhiru (in the subjunctive mood) as a response to the negation. It is said that the speech is constructed this way to convey the negation of offering excuses entirely, since they have no excuse, and they do not offer excuses. This is in contrast to the subjunctive, which—if it were read as a response to the negation—would indicate that their lack of excuse is due to the lack of permission; this would imply they possess an excuse, but were simply not permitted to express it. Ibn ‘Atiyyah stated that it was not put in the subjunctive as a response to the negation in order to preserve the rhyme of the verses. Both readings are grammatically permissible, and the apparent meaning is the same in both, though this contradicts the stance of the grammarians, who differentiate between causality in the subjunctive and its absence in the indicative.

Yes, Abu al-Hajjaj al-A‘lam maintained that the verb may be in the indicative and still convey—albeit rarely—the meaning of the subjunctive after the fa. He argued that the grammarians only assigned a different meaning to the indicative versus the subjunctive to adhere to the most frequent usage in the speech of the Arabs, and he cited this verse as evidence for this. Ibn ‘Asfur and others followed him in this; so reflect upon it.

The apparent meaning is that the negation of offering excuses, regarding certain stations and times, is like the negation of speaking. It is also possible that what is being negated is the reality of a beneficial excuse; thus, there is no contradiction between this verse and His saying: "The Day when their excuses will not benefit the wrongdoers."