9. At-Tawba

And among those around you O inhabitants of Medina of the Bedouins there are hypocrites such as the tribes of Aslam Ashja‘ and Ghifār and among the townspeople of Medina there are also hypocrites who are obstinate in hypocrisy engrossed in it and persisting in it. You do not know them — an address to the Prophet s — but We know them and We shall chastise them twice by disgracing them or having them killed in this world and by way of punishment in the grave then they will be returned in the Hereafter to a terrible chastisement namely the Fire.

Take of their wealth some alms to purify them and to cleanse them thereby of their sins; he thus took a third of their wealth and gave it away as charity; and pray for them that is supplicate for them; truly your prayers are a comfort a mercy for them it is also said to mean reassurance for them that their repentance has been accepted. And God is Hearer Knower.

Do they not know that God is He Who accepts repentance from His servants and takes accepts the voluntary alms and that God is He Who is the Relenting to His servants by accepting their repentance and the Merciful? to them the interrogative is intended as an affirmative statement and is meant to incite them to offer repentance and charity.

And say to them or to people in general ‘Act as you will for God will surely see your actions and so will His Messenger and the believers and you will be returned through resurrection to the Knower of the unseen and the visible that is to God and He will tell you what you used to do’ and so requite you for it.

And there are others from among those who stayed behind who are deferred read murja’ūna or murjawna whose repentance is delayed to God’s command concerning them according to His will whether He chastises them by causing them to die without their having made any repentance or relents to them; and God is Knower of His creatures Wise in what He does with them. These others mentioned are the three who will be mentioned afterwards Murāra b. al-Rabī‘ Ka‘b b. Mālik and Hilāl b. Umayya. They stayed behind out of laziness and their inclination for peace and quiet not out of hypocrisy. Unlike the others however they did not excuse themselves before the Prophet s and so the matter regarding them was suspended for fifty days during which time people avoided them until it was later revealed that God had relented to them.

And among them those who have chosen a mosque — these were twelve men from among the hypocrites — by way of harm to cause distress for those of the mosque of Qubā’ and disbelief since they built it on the orders of the monk Abū ‘Āmir as a sanctuary for him so that whoever comes from his side may stay there he had gone to the Byzantine Emperor qaysar to bring troops to fight against the Prophet s and to cause division among the believers who pray in the mosque of Qubā’ by having some of these pray in their the hypocrites’ mosque and as an outpost an observation post for those who waged war against God and His Messenger before that is before it was built — meaning the above-mentioned Abū ‘Āmir — they will swear ‘We desired nothing by building it but to do good’ by way of kindness towards the poor in times of heavy rain or extreme heat and in order to provide a place of worship for the Muslims; and God bears witness that they are truly liars in this claim of theirs. They had asked the Prophet s to perform prayers in it and so the following was revealed

Never stand never perform prayer there and so he sent a group of men to destroy and burn it and in its place they left a refuse pit where decaying cadavers would be dumped. A mosque which was founded one whose foundations were built upon piety from the first day constructed the day you arrived in Medina dār al-hijra — this was the mosque of Qubā’ as mentioned in Bukhārī — is worthier than that other one for you to stand to perform prayer therein; in it are men namely the Ansār who love to purify themselves; and God loves those who purify themselves muttahhirīn the original tā’ of mutatahhirūn has been assimilated with the tā’ that is He will reward them. Ibn Khuzayma reported in his Sahīh by way of an isnād from ‘Uwaym b. Sā‘ida that ‘The Prophet s came to them at the mosque of Qubā’ and said “God exalted be He has praised handsomely the way you purify yourselves in the story about your mosque so what is this purification which you perform?” They said “By God O Messenger of God all that we know is that we used to have Jews in our vicinity and they used to wash their behinds after defecation and so we began to wash in the way they did”’. According to one hadīth reported by al-Bazzār they said ‘We use stones to scrape off remnants and follow this with water’; to which he the Prophet said ‘That is the way for proper purification. Let this be your way’.

Is he who founded his building upon fear of God and in hope of beatitude from Him better or he who founded his building upon the brink the edge of a bank an overhang that is crumbling about to collapse read juruf or jurf so that it toppled with him so that it collapsed taking with it the one who built it into the fire of Hell? this is an excellent similitude for building upon that which constitutes the opposite of fear of God and for what it leads to; the interrogative is meant as an affirmative in other words the former is the better which is the likeness of the building of the mosque of Qubā’ while the latter is the likeness of the mosque of ‘harm’ masjid al-dirār. And God guides not the evildoing folk.

The buildings which they have built will never cease to be a misgiving a point of doubt in their hearts unless their hearts are cut torn to pieces such that they die; and God is Knower of His creatures Wise in what He does with them.