Sūrah 30 · Āyāt 31–45

Synthesis — Sūrat al-Rūm 31–45 (Sects, Provision, the Kinsman's Due, and Corruption)

The passage commands turning to God, prayer, and not being of the idolaters "who split their religion into sects" (31–32); exposes the fickle who pray under harm then associate partners when relieved, rejoicing in mercy and despairing at evil (33–36); affirms that God alone expands and restricts provision (37); enjoins giving the kinsman, the needy, and the wayfarer their due, and contrasts ribā with zakāt (38–39); reasserts that God alone creates, provides, gives death and life (40); and warns that "corruption has appeared on land and sea by what people's hands earned," bidding the Prophet set his face to the upright religion before the Day of separation (41–45).

Convergence. All sources read "splitting the religion into sects" (32) as the building of religion on caprice rather than reason — [tusi_al_tibyan] putting it sharply as "severing the religion from the dictate of reason," [tabatabai_al_mizan] grounding the sects' fragmentation in the earlier "they follow desire." On the distress→relief→shirk cycle (33) and the mercy→joy/evil→despair pattern (36), [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan], [tusi_al_tibyan], and [tabatabai_al_mizan] agree the verses indict a shallow gaze that sees only the surface of fortune; al-Mīzān harmonizes the two passages (calling on God in despair vs. mere joy/despair) as no contradiction. On v.40 all read the chain "created → provided → causes death → gives life" as the proof that only the Creator is Lord; [tabatabai_al_mizan] adds the subtlety that provision is inseparable from creation, so the idolaters cannot assign it to a lesser god, and [bahrani_al_burhan] anchors it to al-Riḍā's doctrine of tafwīḍ — God delegated religion to the Prophet (ṣ) but never creation and provision.

The kinsman's due (38) — a heavy Imāmī accent. All four Arabic strands tie "give the kinsman his due" to the grant of Fadak to Fāṭima (ʿa): [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and [tusi_al_tibyan] note it briefly (the Prophet handed her Fadak, on Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī's report and from al-Bāqir and al-Ṣādiq) and read the "due" as the khums; [bahrani_al_burhan] and [qummi] carry the full polemical narration — Fāṭima's claim, Umm Ayman's and ʿAlī's testimony, ʿUmar's tearing of the deed, the alleged plot against ʿAlī, and her graveside elegy. [tabatabai_al_mizan] reads the verse as the khums if Medinan, general charity if Meccan. This is the passage's sharpest sectarian divergence: the narration-works turn an ethical injunction into a foundational grievance over the caliphate.

Ribā vs zakāt (39) — a shared juristic distinction. Remarkably, [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan], [tusi_al_tibyan], [bahrani_al_burhan], and [qummi] all transmit the Imāmī ḥadīth (from al-Bāqir/al-Ṣādiq, via Ḥafṣ b. Ghiyāth and Ibrāhīm b. ʿUmar) distinguishing a lawful ribā — an unconditioned gift or loan given in hope of a better return, carrying "neither reward nor sin" — from the forbidden, stipulated usury; [qummi] and [bahrani_al_burhan] add the maxim "on the gate of Paradise is written: the loan at eighteen, the charity at ten." [tabatabai_al_mizan] frames it conditionally (lawful gift-ribā if Meccan; forbidden usury if Medinan), judging these two verses "more like the Medinan."

Corruption on land and sea (41) — the widest split. Here the readings diverge most. [bahrani_al_burhan] and [qummi] carry a doubled interpretation: a naturalistic one (the death of land- and sea-creatures when rain is withheld "because sins multiply," from al-Ṣādiq) and a pointed Imāmī one — that "the corruption" was the Saqīfa dispute, "the day the Helpers said 'a leader from us and a leader from you.'" [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan] and [tusi_al_tibyan] preserve a spread of classical glosses (the Meccan drought at the Prophet's supplication per Ibn ʿAbbās; Cain's murder and the seizing of ships per Mujāhid; sins generally). [tabatabai_al_mizan] stands apart, insisting the verse is general — all the disorders of the earth (earthquakes, drought, plague, war, lost security) linked to human deeds — and explicitly rejecting the narrow Mecca/Cain/ship readings as forced harmonizations with an occasion of revelation. [bahrani_al_burhan] uniquely expands the theme into a homiletic catalogue of "sins and their worldly effects" (from al-Ṣādiq and Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn).

Setting the face, and reward as grace (43–45). All read "set your face to the upright religion before the Day" with "they will be split asunder" (44) as the parting into the people of the Garden and the Fire. On "for themselves they are paving the way" (44), [tabarsi_majma_al_bayan], [bahrani_al_burhan], and [tabatabai_al_mizan] all cite the same ḥadīth (Manṣūr b. Ḥāzim from al-Ṣādiq): "the righteous deed precedes its doer to the Garden and paves for him as a servant spreads his master's bed." [tabatabai_al_mizan] alone develops the theology of "reward… from His grace" (45): since the servant and his deeds are wholly God's property, no wage is merited — yet God, out of love for those who turned to Him, conferred upon them an ownership of their deeds and so a real, requitable right, the conferral itself a further grace; hence "He loves not the disbelievers" grounds both the giving and the withholding.

Coverage note: al-Mīzān's unit and al-Burhān's/al-Qummī's blocks here run through vv.46–53 (the winds, the rain, the messengers), formally the next passage; that material is carried in these sources' entries and revisited in passage 5.