Tafsir of Luqman 31:6

"The idle talk" (lahw al-hadith): Everything that is false and distracts from goodness and what is beneficial. This includes:

• Tales of legends (asatir) and baseless stories.
• Idle chatter, myths, jokes, and superfluous speech.
• Inappropriate talk about "this happened and that happened."
• Singing and learning music, and the like.

Historical Context: It is said this was revealed regarding al-Nadr ibn al-Harith. He would travel to Persia, buy books of the non-Arabs (al-a'ajim), and recite them to the Quraysh, saying: "If Muhammad tells you stories of 'Ad and Thamud, I tell you the stories of Rustam, Bahram, the Chosroes, and the kings of al-Hira." They would find his stories delightful and abandon listening to the Qur'an.

It is also said he would buy singing girls. Whenever he found someone inclined toward Islam, he would take them to his songstress and say: "Feed him, give him drink, and sing to him," adding, "This is better than what Muhammad calls you to—prayer, fasting, and fighting before him."

Prophetic Traditions:

• "It is not lawful to sell singing girls, nor to buy them, nor to trade in them, nor are their earnings lawful."
• "No man raises his voice in song but that Allah sends two devils upon him, one on this shoulder and one on that, who strike him with their feet until he is the one who falls silent."
• It is said: "Singing is a squandering of wealth, a cause of the Lord’s wrath, and a corruption of the heart."

Linguistic Analysis:

• The Genitive Construction (Idafa): Why is "idle" (lahw) added to "talk" (hadith)? It is for clarification (al-tabyin), similar to saying "a garment of silk" or "a door of teak." It means: "He who buys the idle from among talk," because idle talk can be speech or something else, so it is specified as speech. The intended meaning is "reprehensible speech," as in the Hadith: "Talk in the mosque consumes good deeds just as a beast consumes grass."
• Alternatively, it may be a partitive idafa (meaning "some of"), as if to say: "He who buys some of the talk that is idle."
• "Buys" (yashtari): Either literal purchase (as in buying books or slave girls) or metaphorical, meaning "to exchange/choose" (as in "they bought disbelief for belief"). Qatada says it means "to prefer," choosing the talk of falsehood over the talk of truth.

"To mislead" (li-yudilla): Read with both damma (to mislead others) and fatha (to remain in his own misguidance).

• If read with fatha (li-yadilla): It means he persists in his misguidance, increasing in it, as he was stubborn in his enmity toward the religion. Or, it is used as a synonym, for one who leads others astray is inevitably astray himself.

"Without knowledge": Because he bought idle talk in exchange for the Qur'an, he did so without knowledge of trade or insight, exchanging guidance for misguidance and truth for falsehood.

"And he takes it" (wa-yattakhidhaha): Read in both the accusative and nominative cases, as a conjunction to "buys" or "to mislead." The pronoun refers to "the path" (al-sabil), which is feminine.

"Turning away in arrogance": He does not care for it, nor does he raise his head toward it. His state is like one who does not hear it, even though he is a listener: "As if in his ears is deafness" (waqr), meaning a heaviness.