Tafseer of The Women · An-Nisaa · 4:91
You will find others who wish to obtain security from you and [to] obtain security from their people. Every time they are returned to [the influence of] disbelief, they fall back into it. So if they do not withdraw from you or offer you peace or restrain their hands, then seize them and kill them wherever you overtake them. And those - We have made for you against them a clear authorization.
Important: The Arabic source text is always authoritative. This translation is a study aid and has not been verified by scholars — do not use it as a basis for religious proof or for deriving rulings (ahkam). When in doubt, always consult the Arabic text and a qualified scholar.
The explanation of His word: سَتَجِدُونَ آخَرِينَ يُرِيدُونَ أَنْ يَأْمَنُوكُمْ وَيَأْمَنُوا قَوْمَهُمْ كُلَّمَا رُدُّوا إِلَى الْفِتْنَةِ أُرْكِسُوا فِيهَا (You will find others who wish to be secure from you and secure from the side of their people; every time they are brought back to the trial (fitna), they are plunged into it) (91).
Abū Jaʿfar said: And these are another group of the hypocrites (munāfiqūn), who openly displayed Islam to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and his companions, so as thereby to be secure among them from killing, captivity (sabī), and the taking of possessions, while they were disbelievers (kuffār) — their people knew that of them; when they met them, they were together with them and worshipped that which they worshipped besides Allah, so as to be secure among them for their lives, their possessions, their women, and their children. Allah says: "every time they are brought back to the trial, they are plunged into it," that is: every time [their people] summon them to ascribing partners to Allah (shirk), (47) they return and become polytheists (mushrikīn) like them.
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And the scholars of exegesis differed concerning who was intended by this verse.
Some of them said: they are people who were among the inhabitants of Mecca and embraced Islam — in accordance with the manner in which Allah has described them, out of dissimulation (taqiyya) — while they were disbelievers, so as to be secure for their lives, their possessions, their children, and their women. Allah says: "every time they are brought back to the trial, they are plunged into it," that is: every time [their people] summon them to ascribing partners to Allah (shirk), (48) they return and become polytheists like them, so as to be secure among these and those.
*Mention of who said that:
10078 - Muḥammad ibn ʿAmr related to me, he said: Abū ʿĀṣim related to us, on the authority of ʿĪsā, on the authority of Ibn Abī Najīḥ, on the authority of Mujāhid: "who wish to be secure from you and secure from the side of their people," he said: They were people who came to the Prophet ﷺ and submitted out of eye-service (showing themselves Muslim), then returned to the Quraysh and plunged again into the idols, intending thereby to be secure here and there. Then it was commanded to fight them if they did not withdraw and mend their conduct.
10079 - Al-Muthannā related to me, he said: Abū Ḥudhayfa related to us, he said: Shibl related to us, on the authority of Ibn Abī Najīḥ, on the authority of Mujāhid, the same.
10080 - Muḥammad ibn Saʿd related to me, he said: My father related to me, he said: My uncle related to me, he said: My father related to me, on the authority of his father, on the authority of Ibn ʿAbbās: "You will find others who wish to be secure from you and secure from the side of their people; every time they are brought back to the trial, they are plunged into it," he says: every time they wish to come out of it, out of the trial, they are plunged into it. And that is because the man who was found to have pronounced Islam was brought to a piece of wood, a stone, a scorpion, or a beetle, and the polytheists would then say to that person who had pronounced Islam: "Say: this is my lord," concerning the beetle and the scorpion.
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And others said: Rather, they were people from those who ascribe partners (shirk), who had asked for protection (amān) from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, so as to be secure with him and with his companions, and with the polytheists.
*Mention of who said that:
10081 - Bishr ibn Muʿādh related to us, he said: Yazīd related to us, he said: Saʿīd related to us, on the authority of Qatāda, concerning his word: "You will find others who wish to be secure from you and secure from the side of their people," he said: It was a tribe that was in Tihāma; they said: "O Prophet of Allah, we do not fight you and we do not fight our people," and they wished to be secure from the Prophet of Allah and secure from their people. But Allah refused that to them, and said: "every time they are brought back to the trial, they are plunged into it," He says: every time a calamity befalls them, they perish in it.
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And others said: This verse was revealed concerning Nuʿaym ibn Masʿūd al-Ashjaʿī.
*Mention of who said that:
10082 - Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn related to us, he said: Aḥmad ibn al-Mufaḍḍal related to us, he said: Asbāṭ related to us, on the authority of al-Suddī, who said: Then he mentioned Nuʿaym ibn Masʿūd al-Ashjaʿī, who was secure among the Muslims and the polytheists, and conveyed the reports between the Prophet ﷺ and the polytheists. Then He said: "You will find others who wish to be secure from you and secure from the side of their people; every time they are brought back to the trial," He says: to ascribing partners (shirk).
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And as for the explanation of His word: "every time they are brought back to the trial, they are plunged into it," it is as in:-
10083 - Al-Muthannā related to me, he said: Isḥāq related to us, he said: Ibn Abī Jaʿfar related to us, on the authority of his father, on the authority of al-Rabīʿ, on the authority of Abū al-ʿĀliya, concerning his word: "every time they are brought back to the trial, they are plunged into it," he said: every time they were tried by it, they were blinded in it.
10084 - Bishr ibn Muʿādh related to us, he said: Yazīd related to us, he said: Saʿīd related to us, on the authority of Qatāda: every time a calamity befell them, they perished in it.
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And the statement concerning this is what I have clarified earlier, and that is because "al-fitna" in the language of the Arabs means "the trial," and "al-irkās" means "the return." (49)
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The explanation of the expression is therefore: every time they are brought back to the trial so as to return to disbelief (kufr) and ascribing partners (shirk), they return to it.
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The explanation of His word: فَإِنْ لَمْ يَعْتَزِلُوكُمْ وَيُلْقُوا إِلَيْكُمُ السَّلَمَ وَيَكُفُّوا أَيْدِيَهُمْ فَخُذُوهُمْ وَاقْتُلُوهُمْ حَيْثُ ثَقِفْتُمُوهُمْ وَأُولَئِكُمْ جَعَلْنَا لَكُمْ عَلَيْهِمْ سُلْطَانًا مُبِينًا (If then they do not withdraw from you, and offer you no peace, and restrain not their hands, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them; and over these precisely We have given you a clear authority (sulṭān)) (91).
Abū Jaʿfar said: He, exalted be His praise, means by it: If then they do not withdraw from you, O believers — these who wish to be secure from you and secure from the side of their people, while they, every time they are summoned to ascribing partners (shirk), respond to it = "and offer you no peace," and do not surrender to you by submitting to your authority and making peace with you, (51) as in:-
10085 - Al-Muthannā related to me, he said: Isḥāq related to us, he said: Ibn Abī Jaʿfar related to us, on the authority of his father, on the authority of al-Rabīʿ: "If then they do not withdraw from you, and offer you no peace," he said: peace (al-ṣulḥ).
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= "and restrain not their hands," He says: and do not restrain their hands from fighting you, (52) = "then seize them and kill them wherever you find them," He, exalted be His praise, says: if they do not do that, then seize them wherever you find them on the earth and meet them there, (53) and kill them, for their blood is at that moment permitted (ḥalāl) to you = "and over these precisely We have given you a clear authority," He, exalted be His praise, says: and these who wish to be secure from you and secure from the side of their people, while they remain in the state of disbelief in which they are, and do not withdraw from you, offer you no peace, and restrain not their hands, (54) — over them We have given you a proof (ḥujja) to kill them wherever you find them, on account of their persistence in their disbelief and their failing to emigrate from the abode of ascribing partners (dār al-shirk) = "clear," that is: that it [the proof] makes clear that they deserve that from you, and that you hit the mark in killing them. And that is His word: "a clear authority," and "al-sulṭān" is the proof (al-ḥujja), (55) as in:-
10086 - Al-Muthannā related to me, he said: Qabīṣa related to us, he said: Sufyān related to us, on the authority of a man, on the authority of ʿIkrima, who said: Whatever occurs in the Qurʾān of "sulṭān," it means: proof (ḥujja).
10087 - Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥusayn related to us, he said: Aḥmad ibn al-Mufaḍḍal related to us, he said: Asbāṭ related to us, on the authority of al-Suddī, concerning his word: "a clear authority," as for "the clear authority," that is the proof (al-ḥujja).
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Footnotes:
(35) See the explanation of "al-mīthāq" in the foregoing: 8: 127, note 1, and the sources mentioned there.
(36) The narration 10071 — see the two preceding narrations: 10052, 10053.
(37) It is Abū ʿUbayda in Majāz al-Qurʾān (1: 136). In the printed version of Majāz al-Qurʾān there is an inversion and transposition which the editor of the book did not subject to critical revision, so that place must be corrected.
(38) His dīwān: 59, and Majāz al-Qurʾān of Abū ʿUbayda (1: 136), and al-Nāsikh wa-l-mansūkh: 109, and al-Lisān (waṣala), and others. In al-Lisān it is attributed "to Bakr ibn Wāʾil," and "ittaṣalat" was explained as: she traced back her lineage. The commentator on the poetry of al-Aʿshā explained it as: when she called, that is, called with the call of the Jāhiliyya, and that is the lineage-call (al-iʿtizāʾ). This verse is the last verse in that qaṣīda of al-Aʿshā. He says: she is called to them and traces her lineage back to them, while she belongs to their slave-women who were taken captive (subīna), and the noses of her and of her men, who defended them, were pressed into the dust; then they fled from them and left them to captivity (sabī).
(39) In the manuscript and the printed edition it reads: "for the scholars of exegesis are agreed that that is a reading which was abrogated (nāsikh), which was revealed after the conquest of Mecca and the Quraysh's entering into Islam," and that is a meaningless error and a gross confusion. I have determined that what I have written is the correct version and that he meant "Sūrat Barāʾa," on the basis of al-Nāsikh wa-l-mansūkh: 109, and the tafsīr of Abū Ḥayyān (3: 315), and the tafsīr of al-Qurṭubī (5: 308), and they all attributed it to al-Ṭabarī as well.
(40) See the explanation of "al-ḥaṣr" in the foregoing (6: 376, 377), and see Majāz al-Qurʾān of Abū ʿUbayda (1: 136), and Maʿānī al-Qurʾān of al-Farrāʾ (1: 282).
(41) This is the statement of al-Farrāʾ in Maʿānī al-Qurʾān (1: 282). And "Dhāt al-Tanānīr" is a region between al-Kūfa and the land of Ghaṭafān; Yāqūt said in his lexicon: "a mountain pass opposite Zubāla."
(42) In the printed edition it reads "wa-ashbaha al-asmāʾ," but what is in the manuscript is correct; what is meant is: and the completed verbs resembled the nouns.
(43) See Maʿānī al-Qurʾān of al-Farrāʾ (1: 282).
(44) The purport is: and had Allah willed, He would have set these ... in authority over you.
(45) See also the explanation of "al-islām" in the foregoing, in the language indexes under "slm."
(46) His dīwān: 145, from his qaṣīda with which he reviled al-Farazdaq and the houses of Banū Dārim and Banū Saʿd; before it he said:
And Dārim — we cast a hundred of them into the blazing Fire, when they were thrown into the ditches;
they leapt up from what was roasted of them, and ʿAmr stoked the fire, and were it not for the flesh of the people, it would not have burned;
and that is because Tamīm ............ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
He claimed that ʿAmr ibn al-Mundhir al-Lakhmī burned Banū Dārim, the tribe of al-Farazdaq. Abū ʿUbayda said: al-Ṭirimmāḥ had no knowledge of this story — he means the story of the day of Uwāra, and that is the day on which ʿAmr ibn al-Mundhir attacked Banū Dārim and killed ninety-nine men of them. And "al-asad" (the lion) denotes ʿAmr ibn al-Mundhir and those who were with him. And "al-ḥaṣān" is the chaste woman. In the printed edition and the manuscript it stood: "kullu miṣānin waʿthatu l-libadi," and that is a meaningless error. A "waʿtha" woman is: rich in flesh, as though the fingers sink into it on account of the abundance and softness of her flesh. And "a woman waʿthat al-ardāf" (with heavy hindquarters) is likewise so. And "al-libad" is the plural of "libda" (with kasra and sukūn): that is a lined garment which is spread out to be sat upon. By it he meant that she has heavy hindquarters, there where she sits upon the garment; that is why the hindquarters were called "libad." He says: Tamīm delivered up its women to us and to the army of ʿAmr ibn al-Mundhir, and fled from its honor; their weakness to defend themselves did not hold them back from turning toward them, and the terror made them forget their noble and pampered women.
(47) The insertion between brackets is indispensable for the sense of the text.
(48) The insertion between brackets is indispensable for the sense of the text.
(49) See "the explanation of al-fitna" in the foregoing (2: 444 / 3: 565, 566, 570, 571 / 4: 301 / 6: 196, 197) = and see the explanation of "al-irkās" in the foregoing, p. 7, 15, 16.
(50) In the printed edition and the manuscript it reads: "If they do not withdraw from you (yaʿtazilūkum)," but the sense requires what I have determined.
(51) See the explanation of "alqaw al-salam" in the foregoing, p. 23, 24.
(52) See the explanation of "al-kaff" in the foregoing (8: 548).
(53) See the explanation of "thaqifa" in the foregoing (3: 564).
(54) In the printed edition and the manuscript it reads: "lam yaʿtazilūkum," with the omission of the wāw, but it is more correct to retain it.
(55) See the explanation of "al-sulṭān" in the foregoing (7: 279) = and the explanation of "al-mubīn" in the foregoing (8: 124, note 1), and the sources mentioned there.