التَّأوِيلُ الإِسمَاعِيلِيُّ لِلحَقِّ وَالبَاطِل — الحَقُّ وَالبَاطِل: كَيفَ تُقرَأُ المُقَابَلَةُ القُرآنِيَّةُ بَينَ الحَقِّ [الصِّدقُ وَالوَاقِعُ وَالحَقِيقَة] وَالبَاطِلِ [الزُّورُ وَالعَبَثُ وَالفَرَاغ] فِي التَّأوِيلِ الإِسمَاعِيلِيِّ بِوَصفِهَا التَّقَابُلَ البِنيَوِيَّ بَينَ التَّأوِيلِ المُوجَّهِ بِالإِمَامِ وَالتَّفسِيرِ غَيرِ المُوجَّه وَكَيفَ يُعَدُّ 'مَجِيءُ الحَقِّ' فِي 17:81 وُصُولَ الكَشفِ البَاطِنِيِّ لِلإِمَام
In Ismaili ta'wil, al-Haqq wal-Batil (الحَقُّ وَالبَاطِل — Truth and Falsehood; *haqq*: truth, right, reality, what is due; from *h-q-q*: to be true, real, established; *batil*: falsehood, vanity, void, what has no substance; from *b-t-l*: to be null, void, invalid; the Quranic opposition: 17:81 'And say: Truth has come and falsehood has vanished; indeed falsehood is ever bound to vanish'; 21:18 'Rather, We hurl truth against falsehood and it destroys it, and it disappears'; 34:49 'Truth has come, and falsehood can neither begin nor repeat'; the classical reading: haqq = the revelation of Islam; batil = pre-Islamic falsehood, idolatry, false doctrine; the arrival of the Prophet with Quran was the arrival of haqq; idolatry and false belief are batil; Ismaili ta'wil of al-haqq wal-batil: [1] haqq as the batin of the text: the 'truth' in 17:81 is the batin — the inner meaning that the Imam's ta'wil discloses; the 'falsehood' that vanishes is the zahiri reading without batin — not wrong in itself, but a void (batil = 'having no substance') without the batin that fills it; [2] batil as interpretation without authority: unauthorized interpretation — the ta'wil practiced by those without the Imam's authorization — is batil in the technical sense: it has no substance, no connection to the actual batin; it may be clever and may sound convincing, but it is hollow; [3] the dynamics of 21:18: 'We hurl truth against falsehood and it destroys it' — the Imam's ta'wil disclosure does not coexist peacefully with unauthorized interpretation; truth destroys falsehood by making the batin plain; once the Imam's ta'wil is disclosed, the hollow cleverness of unauthorized interpretation is exposed; [4] the haqq/batil distinction and zahir/batin: the opposition haqq/batil in ta'wil operates at the level of batin reception, not at the level of zahiri practice; a person performing the zahir correctly can be in batil (if they have no walayah and practice ta'wil without authority); a person with walayah is in haqq even when their zahiri practice has occasional imperfection; [5] God as al-Haqq: one of God's most theologically rich names is al-Haqq [59:23]; in Ismaili ta'wil, the Imam's disclosure of the divine batin is the primary worldly manifestation of al-Haqq; the Imam's ta'wil is the haqq because it is the communication of divine reality [al-Haqq = the Real] to the human world) is the Ismaili theology of true and false religious knowledge.
Batil as the Void
The Quranic word batil means not just “false” but “void” — having no substance, no content, no reality. This is a stronger claim than mere incorrectness. The batil religious position is not one that got something wrong; it is one that was never filled with the content that would make it real.
In Ismaili ta’wil, the zahiri practice without batin is batil in exactly this sense: the external forms are present but the substance — the Imam’s ta’wil that gives the forms their meaning — is absent. The zahiri prayer has the form of connection with God; without batin, it is form without connection.
”Truth Has Come and Falsehood Has Vanished”
17:81’s proclamation — delivered in the context of the Prophet’s entry into Mecca and the destruction of the Ka’ba’s idols — is in Ismaili ta’wil the paradigmatic statement of what happens when the Imam’s batin disclosure arrives. The idols (unauthorized interpretations, hollow zahiri practice) cannot persist when the batin arrives; they vanish not because they are actively destroyed but because they have no substance to sustain them against the disclosure of the real.
The Imam’s ta’wil is the continuing arrival of haqq in each era; the batil that vanishes is whatever unauthorized interpretation had occupied the field.
The Distinction That Matters
The haqq/batil distinction in Ismaili ta’wil cuts differently from how it cuts in zahiri Islam. In zahiri Islam, the distinction is between correct doctrinal positions (orthodox Sunni Islam = haqq) and incorrect ones (all heterodoxies = batil). In Ismaili ta’wil, the distinction is between Imam-authorized reception of batin (haqq) and any reception of religion — however orthodox-looking zahirly — without walayah (batil, because void of substance).
See also: Tawil Esoteric Interpretation, Bayah And Walayah, Ismaili Tawil Of Al Nifaq, Ismaili Tawil Of Al Mumin, Ismaili Tawil Of Al Tanzil Wal Tawil