Why does the Holy Qur’an mention women separately when forbidding mockery?

Because two different evils are meant. Mockery between peoples is about pride in one’s own group, which can endanger whole nations. The mention of women concerns everyday mockery in small things, which can destroy families and marriages.

When the verse above speaks of peoples, it means groups, tribes, castes and nations. Many of them take pride in certain values. As long as that pride helps to preserve what is good, it does no harm. But it turns into arrogance when one group looks down on others and claims that only it holds such values. At its worst this becomes a racial ideology like that of the Nazis, which destroyed the peace of the whole world. The second verse above states clearly that before Allah only righteousness counts, not descent.

This kind of arrogance has nothing to do with being a man or a woman. That is why women are named separately in another part of the verse. A different weakness is meant, one that concerns individuals more: laughing at others over small things, such as a plain dress, an old-fashioned habit or a particular way of speaking.

Men are not free of this. Yet in daily life this tendency often shows itself among women, and so the Holy Qur’an addresses them directly. It is not a small evil. When, for example, a mother-in-law keeps belittling her son’s young wife and her family and comparing them unfavourably, this can destroy a marriage and the peace of a whole household.

So the verse points precisely to the two places where mockery causes the most suffering: the arrogance of whole groups and the small, daily mockery within families. Both are forbidden, because both degrade human beings and Allah does not love arrogance.