Tafsir of Surah At-Taubah - Verse 48

Allah encourages His Prophet against hypocrites,

لَقَدِ ابْتَغَوُاْ الْفِتْنَةَ مِن قَبْلُ وَقَلَّبُواْ لَكَ الأُمُورَ

(Verily, they had plotted sedition before, and had upset matters for you,) `For a long time,' Allah says, hypocrites thought and plotted against you and your Companions, as well as, failing and attempting to extinguish your religion.' This occurred soon after the Prophet migrated to Al-Madinah, when pagan Arabs joined force and the Jews and hypocrites of Al-Madinah waged war against the Messenger ﷺ. When Allah gave victory to the Prophet in Badr and raised high his word, `Abdullah bin Ubayy and his fellows said, "This (Islam) is a matter that has prevailed." They embraced Islam outwardly, and whenever Allah elevated Islam and its people in might, hypocrites increased in rage and disappointment,

حَتَّى جَآءَ الْحَقُّ وَظَهَرَ أَمْرُ اللَّهِ وَهُمْ كَـرِهُونَ

(until the truth (victory) came and the decree of Allah became manifest though they hated it.)

The opening sentence of the sixth verse (48): لَقَدِ ابْتَغَوُا الْفِتْنَةَ مِن قَبْلُ (They sought disorder even earlier...) refers to what had happened in the battle of 'Uhud.

The statement وَظَهَرَ‌ أَمْرُ‌ اللَّـهِ وَهُمْ كَارِ‌هُونَ (… and the will of Allah prevailed, though they disliked it) at the end of the verse indicates that victory is in the hands of Allah. This has been proved on earlier occasions when the Holy Prophet ﷺ was blessed with victory. The same will happen in this Jihad as well when all tricks played by hypocrites will fail.

Adopting a religion may be done either with sincerity or with hypocrisy. Adopting religion sincerely means that a man makes religion the focus of his life, with a prime right over his life and property. Without sincerity, the adherent has a purely formal, external relation with religion, feeling no need to face all kinds of adversity for its sake. Admission of one’s mistakes amounts to acceptance of one’s being inferior to another: to do so is the most difficult thing for a man. That is why man always tries to somehow prove the correctness of his stand. Accordingly, those who accept Islam hypocritically are always in search of an opportunity to taunt sincere believers and to prove themselves as being in the right as compared to them. The hypocrites of Madinah were continuously engaged in such efforts. For example, when the Muslims were defeated in the battle of Uhud, the hypocrites who had remained behind in Madinah started circulating propaganda against the Prophet Muhammad to the effect that he had no experience of warfare or strategic affairs; that, spurred on by his own enthusiasm, he had taken the youngsters of the community to a dangerous place and had senselessly caused them to be killed. Among human beings there are very few people who are capable of deeply analysing problems and realising that the mere fact of a statement being cast in grammatically correct language does not in itself furnish proof of its being meaningfully correct. Many people are simple minded, and if something is presented to them in beautiful words, they are very soon affected by it. It is the presence of the hypocritical type of people in a Muslim group that is the cause of the weakening of that group. In their attempt to prove themselves right, such people frequently distort what they have to say so as give it a colour suited to their purpose. Influenced by such artifice, simple-minded people begin to be beset by doubts and uncertainty. In spite of the hypocrites’ efforts to oppose Islam, when the Muslims were victorious in the battle of Badr, ‘Abdullah ibn Ubayy and his companions are reported to have said, ‘This thing has got going now.’ The domination of Islam being obvious, they should have placed credence on the veracity of Islam, but even that fed their jealousy.