۞ إِنَّ شَرَّ ٱلدَّوَآبِّ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ ٱلصُّمُّ ٱلْبُكْمُ ٱلَّذِينَ لَا يَعْقِلُونَ
Inna sharrad dawaaabbi 'indal laahis summul bukmul lazeena laa ya'qiloon
Indeed, the worst of creatures in the sight of God are the deaf and the mute — those who do not use their reason.
Dawābb names creatures that move along the ground, the ordinary word for beasts and pack animals, so the comparison places these people among the herd instead of above it. The deafness is figurative: the verses on either side describe people who hear perfectly well and say so themselves. What the passage makes decisive is ʿaql, the faculty that turns sound into understanding, and Surah al-Anfal presses the point on a community still learning discipline after Badr.