And among them are people without knowledge of scripture (ummiyyun), who have no knowledge of the Book except recitations and wishful notions (amani); and they do nothing but suppose (yazunnun).
In the preceding verses, the Qur'an spoke of a group who heard the word of The God, grasped its meaning through reason, and then knowingly distorted it. They were not suffering from ignorance; they understood and knew. Then, in private, they worried that what The God had opened to them might be told to others and become evidence against them. Now verse 78 shows another part of that same society: among them are people without knowledge of scripture (ummiyyun), people who have no grounding in the knowledge of the Book.
This distinction matters. Not everyone caught up in religious deviation is necessarily a knowledgeable scholar or a deliberate distorter. Some people may not know the Book themselves. They accept what has reached them, repeat it, and build their beliefs upon what they have heard, until they no longer distinguish between what is actually in the Book and what they have been told about it.
The verse itself clarifies the condition of those without scriptural learning (ummiyyun) through the next statement: they do not know the Book. There is therefore no need to invent an account of the word's derivation or equate it with a derogatory description such as ignorant. The Qur'an also uses this description for its own Prophet. Being unlettered or outside scriptural learning (ummi) is therefore not, in itself, a sin, hypocrisy, a weakness of intellect, or a moral condemnation.
Concerning the Prophet, what can be said with confidence from the Qur'an itself is that, before revelation, his knowledge did not come from instruction in the scriptures of the People of the Book. The Qur'an says that, before this Book was sent down, he did not read a book or write one with his own hand. He had not been brought up within the educational institutions of the People of the Book, nor had he acquired his knowledge from earlier written traditions in the manner of scribes, monks, jurists, judges, and other specialists in religious learning.
But this description never means that the Prophet remained without knowledge of the Book after revelation came. The Qur'an itself says that The God taught him the Book and wisdom, and taught him what he had not known before. The Prophet's lack of prior scriptural schooling (ummi) therefore cannot be taken to mean that he was ignorant after receiving revelation. He had not learned the earlier scriptures through the specialized instruction of the People of the Book, but divine revelation then reached him, and The God taught him.
The problem with the group in verse 78 is therefore not simply their lack of scriptural learning or specialized education. The problem begins after that: they do not know the Book, but they do not leave the absence of knowledge unfilled; they fill it with notions and suppositions that often agree with their own preconceptions.
The Qur'an says that they have nothing beyond recitations and wishful notions (amani). What they possess concerning the Book is not sound knowledge of it; it consists of these recitations and notions.
Recitations and wishful notions (amani) has a wider range of meaning than wishes alone. In classical Arabic, reading and reciting a book can also be expressed by the construction tamanna al-kitab. In the established expression tamanna kitab Allah, the meaning is that someone recited the Book of The God. For this reason, recitations (amani) in this verse can refer to reading or recitation that never develops into real knowledge of the Book's contents.
This meaning also fits the structure of the verse closely. The Qur'an does not say that they do not read the Book. It says that they do not know the Book. Someone may be able to read the text, memorize it, recite it repeatedly, and even become skilled in its recitation, yet not know what the Book says. Recitation and knowledge are not the same.
This danger is very familiar to readers of the Qur'an. Someone may spend years reading the Qur'an, completing recitations of it, memorizing surahs, and repeating verses in worship, yet never seriously ask what these words mean, why they appear in this context, what their roots are, what other verses say about the same subject, or whether what they have heard about a verse since childhood really follows from the Qur'an itself.
In such a condition, the Qur'an is present, but knowledge of the Qur'an is absent.
Another branch of the meaning of wishful notions (amani) concerns wishes, suppositions, and ideas that a person cultivates in the mind. Here too, the problem is the same: someone does not know the Book, but has an idea about it, and gradually puts that inherited or self-generated idea in the place of direct knowledge of the Book.
For this reason, the ending of the verse is decisive:
They do nothing but suppose.
They rely on supposition alone.
The verse begins by saying that they do not know, and ends by saying that they suppose. We must not lose this contrast. Supposition (zann) does not necessarily carry one fixed degree of certainty in every Qur'anic usage; context determines its force. In this verse, however, its position is clear: it stands opposite knowledge. They do not know; they suppose.
Here one of the deepest problems in human knowing becomes visible. Lacking knowledge does not always mean lacking an opinion; sometimes precisely the opposite happens. Someone may have investigated a subject very little, yet speak about that same subject with the greatest confidence.
This phenomenon is not confined to one religion or one people. A person may be Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or a follower of any other tradition, and may have inherited much of their religious belief from family, surroundings, and society rather than from direct study of the sources and their conscious evaluation. A Christian might, without examining the history of the formation of church doctrines, regard what they hear today about Jesus and the Trinity as identical to the original teaching. A Jewish person might consider their community's inherited understanding of religion and of its people's position to need no reconsideration. Or a follower of a Hindu tradition might regard inherited beliefs about God, the world, and religious practices as established truth before undertaking any independent inquiry. The issue is not that these beliefs are necessarily false; it is that a person must know which beliefs they have accepted on the basis of knowledge and which they have merely inherited.
The same problem recurs within religions themselves. A Catholic may be certain in advance that their own church is the only correct form of Christianity, before examining the history of papal authority or the arguments of Orthodox or Protestant Christians. Meanwhile, a Protestant or Orthodox Christian may reach the opposite conclusion with the same degree of unfamiliarity. In Islam too, someone may never have read the Qur'an once from beginning to end with attention to its meaning, reflected deeply upon it, or examined the history of the emergence of the schools and the arguments on different sides, yet already be certain that Sunnis are right and Shiites are misguided. On the other side, a Twelver Shiite may be equally uninformed yet certain that only their own school represents the true path of Islam and that others have departed from the truth. Even within these two broad names, followers of different schools and movements can repeat positions received from family and surroundings with religious certainty, without ever seriously examining rival arguments or even the historical foundations of their own beliefs. In such a condition, the important question is not the name of the sect; it is this: does this certainty come from knowledge, or from repetition and an inherited environment?
Many of our beliefs reach us before we choose them. A child first hears about religion, sect, ethnicity, enemies, friends, what is permitted, what is forbidden, and the image of God from the surrounding environment. Years later, the person may no longer remember where these beliefs came from. Something that was once merely heard becomes something known in memory. Repetition takes the place of evidence, and the age of a belief takes the place of knowledge.
But the Qur'an distinguishes between feeling certain and having knowledge.
A person may be willing to die for a belief, while that belief still rests on supposition. The intensity of psychological attachment does not produce truth. A majority does not produce truth. The antiquity of a tradition does not produce truth. Nor does the name of a scholar, leader, or religious school turn supposition into knowledge.
Read after the preceding verses, this verse takes on an even greater weight. In verse 75, there were people who heard the word of The God, grasped it through reason, and then knowingly distorted it. Here there are people who do not know the Book and live by recitations and wishful notions (amani) and supposition (zann). These two conditions can sustain one another.
If a group of learned people shifts the word from its proper place, while a large part of the public does not know the Book itself, distortion can easily persist. People accept what they are given in the name of the Book because they have no direct standard by which to assess it. Gradually, the interpreter's statement takes the place of the verse, the jurist's statement takes the place of the judgment of The God, the group's tradition takes the place of the Book, and inherited interpretation takes the place of knowledge.
Here the idea of distorting words from their proper places, which the Qur'an applies elsewhere to some of the People of the Book, becomes important again. A place (mawdi') is where something is situated. Removing speech from its proper place does not necessarily mean changing the letters of the text or moving a sentence from one location to another. The wording can remain while the position, direction, and function of the statement change.
A verse may be detached from its context and imposed upon a subject it is not addressing. A qualification placed by The God may be removed and the ruling made general. A technical meaning that arose centuries later may be projected back onto a Qur'anic word. A limited ruling may be made unlimited. A clear principle may be subjected to so many exceptions through outside reports that its opposite is put into practice. Or a verse that came to restrain power may be turned into an instrument of power.
The wording remains; its place has changed.
This problem did not end after the Qur'an. Followers of the Qur'an can commit the same error that it reveals among earlier people. The statement that there is no compulsion in religion can be recited while religious compulsion is constructed. The word for a coverer or refuser of truth (kafir) can remain in the Qur'an while being removed from its semantic field and turned into a ready-made label for a religious, intellectual, or political opponent. The concept of purifying social giving (zakat) can remain, while later institutions turn it into something whose direction has moved away from the Qur'an's semantic field.
The problem is not merely a change in wording. The problem is that the word of The God no longer functions in the place that the Qur'an itself has assigned to it.
The same principle applies to our treatment of the inherited body of reports. The issue is not to reject every historical report or every narration outright. The danger begins when a report carrying some degree of probability is elevated to the status of certain knowledge, and a clear Qur'anic verse is then restricted or displaced on its basis. At that point, the question of this verse becomes alive again: is what we possess knowledge, or supposition that has acquired the appearance of knowledge over time?
For a fuller discussion of personal responsibility in following statements whose truth we do not know with certainty, and of the different standing of the Qur'an and transmitted reports as sources of knowledge, the relevant articles in the section on the completeness of the Qur'an can be consulted. This brief reference is enough to establish the connection here.
The same care is necessary regarding earlier scriptures. The Qur'an confirms the original earlier revelation, while also speaking of conduct such as distortion, concealment, twisting the tongue, and removing words from their proper places. It then describes itself as a guardian and overseer (muhaymin) in relation to earlier scripture. For readers of the Qur'an, therefore, the earlier heritage that has reached us cannot govern the Qur'an; the Qur'an is the standard by which it is assessed.
But before reading this verse against Jews, Christians, transmitters of reports, jurists, or any other group, we must place it before ourselves.
What do I know of the Book? Have I read the verse itself, or do I only know what has been said about it? When I say that this act is permitted and that act forbidden, that this group consists of believers and that group of coverers or refusers of truth (kafir), that this religious school is right and that one false, where does my knowledge come from?
From the Book, or from recitations and wishful notions (amani)? From knowledge, or from supposition (zann)?
The real danger begins when a person does not know and does not know that they do not know. If they recognize that they are making a supposition, the path of seeking truth remains open. They can ask, read, investigate, and change their view. But if they call their supposition knowledge, they no longer see a need to investigate; they already have the answer.
In that condition, even reading the Book may cease to be a search for truth. A person reads the Book to prove what they already believe. A verse that confirms the belief is emphasized, while a verse that challenges it must be reinterpreted, restricted, subjected to exceptions, or removed from its proper place.
Then recitations and wishful notions (amani) are no longer merely what has taken the place of knowledge of the Book; they become the lens through which a person reads it.
For this reason, verse 78 is much more than a report about illiteracy among some of the Children of Israel. It concerns human responsibility toward knowing. Being unlettered or without scriptural schooling (ummi) is not condemned in itself. Lacking formal education is not condemned. Even not knowing, when a person is aware of their lack of knowledge, is not the same as the condition the verse describes.
The problem is that a person does not know the Book, does not go beyond recitation, hearsay, wishes, and personal notions, and then confidently puts these in the place of knowledge.
The next verse will take this chain one stage further. If here we see people who do not know the Book and live by recitations and wishful notions (amani) and supposition (zann), in verse 79 we will encounter people who write something with their own hands and then say: this is from The God. There we will see more clearly that popular suppositions do not always arise by themselves; sometimes there are also people who produce religious material for them.
The lesson of this verse can be expressed in one question:
When I speak with certainty about religion, do I really know, or do I merely suppose that I know?