In al-An'âm, night falls: a star, then the moon, then the sun. Each time, “This is my lord”; each time, it sets.
When he saw the sun rising he said: “This is my lord, this is greater.”
When it set, he said: “O my people, I am clear of what you associate.”
The commentators read the scene as a debate: he leads his people step by step. What sets is no lord.
When Ibrâhîm said to his father and his people: “I am clearness itself of what you worship,
except the One who created me: He will guide me.”
And he made it a word remaining among his descendants, that they might return.
Ibn Kathîr explains: the word that remains is lâ ilâha illallâh, worship of Allah alone, left to those after him.
Al-An'âm: innî barî'un. Az-Zukhruf: innanî barâ'un. Two words, and both have changed a little.
Barî' is an adjective: the one who is clear, who has no part in it. Barâ' is a verbal noun: the clearing itself.
Az-Zamakhsharî: barâ', a masdar, keeps one form for one or many, man or woman: “we are barâ' of you”.
Ibn 'Âshûr: barâ' is the word of the people of al-'Âliya; those of Najd said barî'. Both are Arabic.
To call someone by the quality itself is a way of saying it in full: not “a just man”, but “a man who is justice”.
Barî' comes in ten verses of the Qur'an. Barâ', said of a person, once: here, on the lips of Ibrâhîm.
And innî becomes innanî: the full form of the same word, the same “I am”, written out in full.
Ibn 'Âshûr: the insistence answers his father and his people, who deny that he is guided.
Where is each said? 6:78: to “my people”, when the sun has set. 43:26: to his father and his people, face to face.
The fuller word comes where the stand costs most: before the father.
Ibn 'Âshûr sees in the scene of the stars not a youth searching, but a prophet leading his people to the truth.
The same word returns for the Prophet ﷺ: “If they disobey you, say: I am clear of what you do.”
Clear of the deed, not cut off from the people: the next chapter stays in this sûrah, with Ibrâhîm and his father.
Twice, Ibrâhîm (peace be upon him) says: I have nothing to do with what you worship.
In one sûrah he says “I am clear”. In the other: “I am clearness”. One word apart. Why?
A noun instead of an adjective: Ibrâhîm did not say he was clean of shirk. He said he was the cleanness itself.
Tonight, say lâ ilâha illallâh once, slowly, as the word he left for those who came after him.