9. At-Tawba

And the believers, both men and women, are allies of one another; they enjoin decency and forbid indecency; they observe prayer and pay the alms, and they obey God and His Messenger. Those, God will have mercy on them. Truly God is Mighty, nothing can prevent Him from fulfilling His promise and His threat; Wise, He puts everything in its proper place.

God has promised the believers, both men and women, Gardens underneath which rivers flow, to abide therein, and blessed dwellings in the Gardens of Eden, for residence, and beatitude from God is greater, is superior to all of that. That is the supreme triumph.

They, the hypocrites, swear by God that they said nothing, of the defamation that has reached you [as being] from them; but they did indeed say the word of disbelief and did disbelieve after their submission [to God]: they did indeed manifest disbelief after having manifested submission [to God]. And they purposed that which they never attained, in the way of assassinating the Prophet on the night of al-‘Aqaba, upon his return from Tabūk — there were about ten to twenty of them, and ‘Ammār b. Yāsir struck the faces of their riding camels when they came against him and were thus repulsed; and they were only spiteful, they detested, that God and His Messenger should have enriched them of His bounty, by way of spoils, when they had been in dire need: the meaning is that this was all that they attained from him, which is nothing to be spiteful about. So if they repent, of hypocrisy and believe in you, it will be better for them; but if they turn away, from belief, God will chastise them with a painful chastisement in this world, by having them killed, and in the Hereafter, in the Fire, and they have none on earth as protector, to guard them from Him, or helper, to defend them.

And some of them have made a covenant with God [saying]: ‘If He gives us of His bounty, we will give voluntary alms (la-nassaddaqanna: the original tā’ [of natasaddaqanna] has been assimilated with the sād) and become of the righteous’: this was Tha‘laba b. Hātib, who asked the Prophet (s) to supplicate on his behalf so that God would give him wealth, of which he would give every needy person his due. He [the Prophet] thus supplicated for him and he became wealthy, but stopped attending the Friday prayer and congregational prayers and refused to pay the alms-tax, as God, exalted be He, says:

Yet when He gave them of His bounty, they became niggardly with it and turned away, from obedience to God, in aversion.

So He made the consequence in their case hypocrisy, fixed, in their hearts, until the day they meet Him, that is, God, on the Day of Resurrection, because they failed God in what they promised Him and because, of that concerning which, they lied: he [Tha‘laba] then brought [the payment of] his alms to the Prophet (s), who said to him, ‘God has forbidden me to accept [it] from you’; so he [Tha‘laba] began to throw earth on his head [in remorse]. He then approached Abū Bakr with it, who did not accept it. He then went to ‘Umar [b. al-Khattāb], who also did not accept it. He went to ‘Uthmān [b. ‘Affān], but he did not accept it; he died during the latter’s reign.

Did they, the hypocrites, not know that God knows their secret, what they conceal within themselves, and their confidential talks, what they confide in each other, and that God is the Knower of the hidden things?, what is concealed from the eyes.

When the verse concerning ‘voluntary alms’ [Q. 9:75] was revealed, a man came and gave a large amount as voluntary alms, so the hypocrites said, ‘He is [merely] showing off!’ Another man then came and gave a [moderate] measure [of food], and so they said, ‘God has no need of this man’s charity!’ The following was then revealed: Those who (alladhīna is the subject) find fault with, defame, the believers who offer alms voluntarily, performing supererogation, and such as find nothing [to offer] but their endeavours, [nothing but] what they are capable of, and offer it; and deride them (and the predicate [of the mentioned subject] is [the following]) — God [Himself] derides them, He has requited them for their derision, and theirs will be a painful chastisement.

Ask forgiveness for them, O Muhammad (s), or do not ask forgiveness for them: this leaves the choice of asking forgiveness, or refraining, up to him; the Prophet (s) said, ‘I have been given the choice, and I made it’, meaning [the choice] to ask forgiveness, as reported by al-Bukhārī. If you ask forgiveness for them seventy times, God will not forgive them: it is said that the ‘seventy’ is intended to express [by hyperbole] a great frequency of asking forgiveness. In [the Sahīh of] al-Bukhārī there is a hadīth [which states]: ‘If I was sure that were I to ask more than seventy times, God would forgive [them], I would have done so’. It is also said, however, that the very number [seventy] is actually meant, on account of this other hadīth of his: ‘I shall ask more than seventy times’, whereupon it was made clear to him [the Prophet] that the matter regarding forgiveness had been concluded by the verse, [Q. 63:6] Alike it will be regarding them: whether you ask forgiveness for them or you do not ask forgiveness for them [God will not forgive them]; that is because they disbelieved in God and His Messenger; and God does not guide the wicked folk.