8. Al-Anfaal

And when Our verses, namely, the Qur’ān, were being recited to them, they said, ‘We have already heard! If we wish we can speak the like of this — al-Nadr b. al-Hārith said this, for he used to travel on trading business to al-Hīra, where he would buy books containing the tales of the Persians, and would recount these to the Meccans; this, Qur’ān, is nothing but the fables, the lies, of the ancients’.

And when they said, ‘O God! If this, that Muhammad (s) recites, be indeed the truth, revealed, from You, then rain down stones upon us from the heaven, or bring on us a painful chastisement’, in return for [our] denial of it: this was said by al-Nadr and others, in mockery and in delusion that he had some insight and certainty about it [the Qur’ān] being false.

God then says: But God was not about to chastise them, for what they requested, while you were among them, for when chastisement is sent down it is all-encompassing, and no community was ever chastised except after its prophet and the believers had departed from it; nor was God about to chastise them while they sought forgiveness, crying, as they performed the circumambulations: ‘Your forgiveness! Your forgiveness!’; it is also said that this [last clause] refers to those oppressed believers among them, similar to where God says Had they been clearly separated, verily We would have chastised the disbelievers among them with a painful chastisement [Q. 48:25].

But what [plea] have they now, that God should not chastise them, with the sword, after your departure and that of the oppressed [believers] — if this [verse] is understood in accordance with the first opinion [that it refers to the idolaters asking forgiveness], then it abrogates the previous one, for God had chastised them at Badr and in other instances — when they bar, prevent the Prophet (s) and the Muslims, from the Sacred Mosque, [from] performing circumambulations there, though they are not its guardians?, as they claim? Its only [rightful] guardians are the God-fearing, but most of them do not know, that they have no [rightful] custodianship over it.

And their prayer at the [Sacred] House is nothing but whistling and hand-clapping: in other words they do this in place of the prayer which they were ordered to perform — therefore taste now, at Badr, the chastisement for your unbelief!

that God may distinguish (read li-yamīza, or li-yumayyiza, is semantically connected to takūnu, ‘it will be’ [from the previous verse]) the wicked, the disbeliever, from the good, the believer, and place the wicked one upon another, and heap them up all together and put them in Hell: those, they are the losers.

Say to the disbelievers, such as Abū Sufyān and his companions, that if they desist, from unbelief and from waging war against the Prophet (s), that which is past, of their deeds, will be forgiven them; but if they return, to waging war against him, the way of [dealing with] the ancients has already gone before!, that is, Our way [in dealing] with them, by destroying them: We will do the same with these ones.

And fight them until sedition, idolatry, is, exists, no more and religion is all for God, alone, none other being worshipped; then if they desist, from unbelief, surely God sees what they do, and will requite them for it.

But if they turn away, from belief, know that God is your Protector, your Helper and the One Who takes charge of your affairs — an excellent Protector, is He, and an excellent Helper!, [He is] for you.