The Tafsir of Surat at-Tawbah: the Verses of Tabuk

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

From verse 38 to the end of the sūrah, the subject is Tabūk. What follows is a rapid pass over as many of those verses as can be covered, linking each back to the incidents already narrated, because the point of pausing the Sīrah to do tafsīr is exactly this, to connect you to the Qurʾān.

❧Go forth: the opening rebuke

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا مَا لَكُمْ إِذَا قِيلَ لَكُمُ انفِرُوا فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ اثَّاقَلْتُمْ إِلَى الْأَرْضِ, what is the matter with you, that when you are told to march out in the way of Allah you sink heavily to the earth? Are you content with this world in place of the Hereafter? Then إِلَّا تَنفِرُوا يُعَذِّبْكُمْ عَذَابًا أَلِيمًا, if you do not go forth He will punish you painfully and replace you with another people, and you will not harm Him at all.

These are powerful verses of jihād, and they must be kept in their context. There are groups today who lift them out of it and apply them to their own causes. The verses are valid, and every legitimate cause has a share of them, but for a Muslim to say that Allah revealed this verse about my expedition is to speak as though revelation were descending upon him, and that is the road to extremism. Allah is speaking about the Battle of Tabūk.

These verses also settle, in the shaykh's view, the question of why Tabūk happened at all. No convincing political cause could be found; nothing of substance occurred when the army arrived. The purpose was a test and a command, to raise the bar so that after the Prophet's ﷺ death the Ṣaḥābah would carry the fight outward to the nations, as they did.

❧Allah does not need you

إِلَّا تَنصُرُوهُ فَقَدْ نَصَرَهُ اللَّهُ, if you will not help him, Allah has already helped him. At Tabūk the Muslims were more numerous than they had ever been, and Allah recalls the moment when there was no one at all: إِذْ أَخْرَجَهُ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُوا ثَانِيَ اثْنَيْنِ إِذْ هُمَا فِي الْغَارِ إِذْ يَقُولُ لِصَاحِبِهِ لَا تَحْزَنْ إِنَّ اللَّهَ مَعَنَا. Thāniya athnayn, the second of two, is simply Arabic idiom for one of two, the second of two, the third of three, and implies no hierarchy. Allah sent down His tranquillity and supported him with soldiers you cannot see; some scholars identify these with the pigeon and the spider's web, others with angels who turned the pagans away, and there is legitimacy in both.

This is also the verse that explicitly affirms Abū Bakr's companionship, إِذْ يَقُولُ لِصَاحِبِهِ, and no other verse names any individual as ṣāḥib. Whoever denies that Abū Bakr was a Companion of the Prophet ﷺ has contradicted the testimony of the Qurʾān, and that is not something we consider to be part of Islam.

❧Light or heavy

انفِرُوا خِفَافًا وَثِقَالًا, the most powerful verse about Tabūk. Literally: go forth light or heavy; meaning sick or healthy, poor or rich, with the means or without, whatever your state. This is what shows that Tabūk was farḍ ʿayn on every able-bodied Muslim, unlike Badr and unlike the many voluntary expeditions. وَجَاهِدُوا بِأَمْوَالِكُمْ وَأَنفُسِكُمْ فِي سَبِيلِ اللَّهِ ذَٰلِكُمْ خَيْرٌ لَّكُمْ إِن كُنتُمْ تَعْلَمُونَ, strive with your wealth and your persons; that is better for you, if only you knew.

❧The excuses begin

لَوْ كَانَ عَرَضًا قَرِيبًا وَسَفَرًا قَاصِدًا لَّاتَّبَعُوكَ, had it been easy gain and a short journey they would have followed you, but بَعُدَتْ عَلَيْهِمُ الشُّقَّةُ, the distance was too much for them. They will swear by Allah that they would have come out had they been able, and in swearing they destroy themselves, for Allah knows they are lying. Here the long criticism of the Munāfiqūn begins.

عَفَا اللَّهُ عَنكَ لِمَ أَذِنتَ لَهُمْ, one of the most beautiful verses in the Qurʾān: before Allah asks why, He says that He has already pardoned. The rebuke is very mild, and its reference is that every hypocrite who came with the flimsiest excuse, I am unwell, my family, my affairs, had that excuse accepted by the Prophet ﷺ. حَتَّىٰ يَتَبَيَّنَ لَكَ الَّذِينَ صَدَقُوا وَتَعْلَمَ الْكَاذِبِينَ: you should not have accepted them all, so that the truthful might be distinguished from the liars. Then: إِنَّمَا يَسْتَأْذِنُكَ الَّذِينَ لَا يُؤْمِنُونَ بِاللَّهِ وَالْيَوْمِ الْآخِرِ, those who believe in Allah and the Last Day do not come asking to be excused; only those whose hearts are in doubt, vacillating. Before we read that comfortably, count how many excuses we produce for ṣalāh, for zakāh, for every obligation Allah has placed on us.

لَوْ أَرَادُوا الْخُرُوجَ لَأَعَدُّوا لَهُ عُدَّةً, had they intended to go they would have prepared for it; they had not bought an animal or looked to their gardens, they had done nothing, so the excuse was never serious. وَلَٰكِن كَرِهَ اللَّهُ انبِعَاثَهُمْ, Allah Himself did not want them in the ranks, وَقِيلَ اقْعُدُوا مَعَ الْقَاعِدِينَ, sit with those who sit.

❧Three kinds of people

لَوْ خَرَجُوا فِيكُم مَّا زَادُوكُمْ إِلَّا خَبَالًا وَلَأَوْضَعُوا خِلَالَكُمْ يَبْغُونَكُمُ الْفِتْنَةَ وَفِيكُمْ سَمَّاعُونَ لَهُمْ, had they gone out with you they would only have added confusion and spread discord through your ranks, and among you there are those who would listen to them. Three groups, then: the fitnah-mongers; those who are not fitnah-mongers but whose hearts would be swayed by them; and those who would not be swayed at all. There are people of weak hearts. When we think of the Ṣaḥābah we picture Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, ʿAlī, Ṭalḥah, the elite. But for every Companion whose name we know there are at least ten thousand whose names we do not, and the reason we do not know them is that they did not reach that level. If even in his ﷺ time there were men who could be talked into evil, what of our own age? Allah spared them by keeping the hypocrites out of the army. لَقَدِ ابْتَغَوُا الْفِتْنَةَ مِن قَبْلُ وَقَلَّبُوا لَكَ الْأُمُورَ, they had sought fitnah before and overturned matters against you: Uḥud, al-Aḥzāb, Banū al-Muṣṭaliq. حَتَّىٰ جَاءَ الْحَقُّ, until the truth came and the command of Allah prevailed despite them all.

❧"Do not put me to trial"

Verse 49: وَمِنْهُم مَّن يَقُولُ ائْذَن لِّي وَلَا تَفْتِنِّي أَلَا فِي الْفِتْنَةِ سَقَطُوا. This is al-Jadd's excuse, the women of the Banū al-Aṣfar, the "yellow" being what we would call white: the Roman women are too great a temptation for me, excuse me and do not put me to trial. The flimsiest of pretexts, from a man supposedly marching to battle. Allah's reply is itself a mockery of the excuse: they have fallen into the very fitnah they claimed to be avoiding.

Then: if good comes to you it grieves them, and if disaster strikes you they say قَدْ أَخَذْنَا أَمْرَنَا مِن قَبْلُ وَيَتَوَلَّوا وَّهُمْ فَرِحُونَ, we took our precautions beforehand, and turn away rejoicing. Good news angers them and calamity delights them; what kind of faith is that? The verse gives us a measure: a Muslim who is pleased when Islam is humiliated is no Muslim, and one who feels pain at it has a sign of īmān. Then the answer we all love: قُل لَّن يُصِيبَنَا إِلَّا مَا كَتَبَ اللَّهُ لَنَا هُوَ مَوْلَانَا وَعَلَى اللَّهِ فَلْيَتَوَكَّلِ الْمُؤْمِنُونَ, nothing will reach us but what Allah has decreed for us. And say: what do you await for us except one of the two best things? Victory in this world, or martyrdom and victory in the next, we win either way, and you lose either way. قُلْ أَنفِقُوا طَوْعًا أَوْ كَرْهًا لَّن يُتَقَبَّلَ مِنكُمْ, spend willingly or unwillingly, it will not be accepted from you.

Verse 56: وَيَحْلِفُونَ بِاللَّهِ إِنَّهُمْ لَمِنكُمْ وَمَا هُم مِّنكُم وَلَٰكِنَّهُمْ قَوْمٌ يَفْرَقُونَ, they swear they are of you, and they are not; they are a people in terror. Could they find a refuge or a cave or any hole to crawl into, they would bolt for it; they have no stomach for an open battlefield, as Sūrat al-Ḥashr also says of them.

❧Charity, and the eight categories

Verses 58 and 59, those who slander you concerning the ṣadaqāt, pleased if they are given from it and angry if they are not, do not refer to Tabūk but to Ḥunayn, after the conquest of Makkah: the Bedouin who stood up and said iʿdil yā Muḥammad, the man the shaykh has called the first of the Khawārij. He too was a Munāfiq, outwardly professing Islam. They ought rather to have been content with what Allah willed for them. And verse 60 is the primary verse of the Qurʾān on the eight categories of zakāh, the āyah that delineates them all.

❧"He is an ear"

Verse 61: وَمِنْهُمُ الَّذِينَ يُؤْذُونَ النَّبِيَّ وَيَقُولُونَ هُوَ أُذُنٌ, they harm the Prophet ﷺ and say, he is an ear, he listens to everything, mocking him for being too lenient, meaning: he listens to them and not to us, and he believes them when they accuse us. Allah turns it back: قُلْ أُذُنُ خَيْرٍ لَّكُمْ, an ear of good for you. It is better for you that he only listens, because if he dealt with you as you deserve you would not still be alive. يُؤْمِنُ بِاللَّهِ وَيُؤْمِنُ لِلْمُؤْمِنِينَ, that he believes the believers rather than you is precisely what Allah praises; he is a mercy to those of you who believe, and for those who harm the Messenger of Allah ﷺ there is a painful punishment.

So respect for the Messenger ﷺ is a function of īmān. It is impossible for a Muslim to ridicule, mock, joke about, or denigrate him ﷺ, every Muslim understands this without needing evidence for it, the way one understands that you do not mock your own mother and father, and he ﷺ deserves a million times more than they do.

❧Exposed by their fear of exposure

يَحْلِفُونَ بِاللَّهِ لَكُمْ لِيُرْضُوكُمْ, they swear by Allah to please you, when Allah and His Messenger have more right to be pleased, if they were believers. Then the hypocrites are described as afraid that a sūrah will be revealed exposing what is in their hearts. Consider the strangeness of that faith: they know that Allah knows their hearts, and they dread the disclosure. And the eloquence of it, Allah exposes them by narrating their fear of being exposed. That alone was enough.

وَلَئِن سَأَلْتَهُمْ لَيَقُولُنَّ إِنَّمَا كُنَّا نَخُوضُ وَنَلْعَبُ, if you ask them they say, we were only talking and joking; قُلْ أَبِاللَّهِ وَآيَاتِهِ وَرَسُولِهِ كُنتُمْ تَسْتَهْزِئُونَ لَا تَعْتَذِرُوا قَدْ كَفَرْتُم بَعْدَ إِيمَانِكُمْ, was it Allah, His signs and His Messenger you were mocking? Make no excuse; you have disbelieved after your belief. This is the mockery on the road back from Tabūk. Verses 67 to 74 continue in that vein and can be read through directly.

Verse 74 carries an incident the shaykh had not previously mentioned and should have listed among the events of Tabūk: some scholars place it at Tabūk and others before it. One of the hypocrites said words to the effect that if Islam is true and the Prophet ﷺ is right, then لَنَحْنُ أَضَلُّ مِنَ الْحَمِيرِ, we are more misguided than donkeys. When it was reported, they swore they had never said it, and the verse came down: يَحْلِفُونَ بِاللَّهِ مَا قَالُوا وَلَقَدْ قَالُوا كَلِمَةَ الْكُفْرِ وَكَفَرُوا بَعْدَ إِسْلَامِهِمْ وَهَمُّوا بِمَا لَمْ يَنَالُوا. That last clause, they plotted what they could not attain, is, according to most of the books of tafsīr, the failed assassination attempt at al-ʿAqabah by the dozen or so of them on the return march.

❧The story that is not narrated

Verse 75: those who pledged that if Allah gave them of His bounty they would surely give in charity and be righteous, and who then turned miserly and away, فَأَعْقَبَهُمْ نِفَاقًا فِي قُلُوبِهِمْ إِلَىٰ يَوْمِ يَلْقَوْنَهُ. This series is famously attributed to a named Companion who is said to have pressed the Prophet ﷺ to make duʿāʾ for wealth, the Prophet ﷺ warning him each time that wealth is a fitnah, and then, having become rich, to have mocked the zakāh collectors and turned them away.

The shaykh deliberately skipped that story and explains why. Its chain is weak, which by itself would not be decisive, most of the Sīrah is transmitted through weak chains and we narrate it anyway. What is decisive is that the story contradicts something we know with certainty: in it the Companion repents and the Prophet ﷺ refuses his repentance. That is unheard of in the entire Sīrah and cuts against the Qurʾān itself; if Allah forgives shirk to the one who turns back, He forgives stinginess. When a report contradicts an established principle, it is not narrated. The verses therefore apply to some of the hypocrites, who lied to Allah and His Messenger about what they would do if made rich, and there is a great difference between a hypocrite and a Companion.

❧The mockers of the small charity

Verse 79: الَّذِينَ يَلْمِزُونَ الْمُطَّوِّعِينَ مِنَ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ فِي الصَّدَقَاتِ وَالَّذِينَ لَا يَجِدُونَ إِلَّا جُهْدَهُمْ, those who slander the believers who give generously, and those who find nothing to give but their own effort. This is the Companion who had nothing, drew water from a well all night, and brought half of what he had earned, half a handful of dates, the rest left for his wife and children, and whom the hypocrites mocked: he is only showing off; what does Allah want with half a handful of dates?

Verse 80 is the verse of the seventy times, already discussed with the death of ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy; that it was revealed before that funeral shows it was the earlier of the two. Verse 83 then forbids the Prophet ﷺ ever to let them march out with him again, interesting, since Tabūk was the last campaign of his life and the expedition of Usāmah was small and voluntary, not a general call-up. So why say it? To humiliate them: even if you beg to go, you will not go; it is an honour, and you will not be given it. Verse 84 is the prohibition on praying over them or standing at their graves.

❧The excuse-makers, the Bedouin, and the three

Verse 93: إِنَّمَا السَّبِيلُ عَلَى الَّذِينَ يَسْتَأْذِنُونَكَ وَهُمْ أَغْنِيَاءُ, the blame falls on those who sought exemption while being wealthy, with no excuse at all. Verse 94: يَعْتَذِرُونَ إِلَيْكُمْ إِذَا رَجَعْتُمْ إِلَيْهِمْ, this is the morning of the return, and the long queue of some eighty-odd men with their excuses. The Prophet ﷺ had accepted them; Allah then revealed قُل لَّا تَعْتَذِرُوا لَن نُّؤْمِنَ لَكُمْ قَدْ نَبَّأَنَا اللَّهُ مِنْ أَخْبَارِكُمْ, make no excuses, we will not believe you; Allah has already informed us about you, and you will be returned to the Knower of the unseen, who will tell you what you did. سَيَحْلِفُونَ بِاللَّهِ لَكُمْ إِذَا انقَلَبْتُمْ إِلَيْهِمْ لِتُعْرِضُوا عَنْهُمْ فَأَعْرِضُوا عَنْهُمْ إِنَّهُمْ رِجْسٌ, they swear only so that you will leave them alone; so leave them alone, they are filth, and their refuge is Jahannam.

Then the Bedouin are addressed, because the bulk of the army at Tabūk came from outside Madīnah, all of Madīnah went, and the greater number came from beyond it. Many of those recent converts had not yet had faith enter their hearts and were hypocrites, as the end of Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt also says; but not all of them, and verse 99 names the good among them. Verse 100 praises the Muhājirūn and the Anṣār. Verse 102: وَآخَرُونَ اعْتَرَفُوا بِذُنُوبِهِمْ خَلَطُوا عَمَلًا صَالِحًا وَآخَرَ سَيِّئًا عَسَى اللَّهُ أَن يَتُوبَ عَلَيْهِمْ, those who confessed their sins, having mixed a righteous deed with an evil one. These are the men who offered no excuse and admitted their guilt; among them were Badrīs and men of ʿAqabah, that is the good, and they disobeyed at Tabūk, which is the evil. Verse 106: وَآخَرُونَ مُرْجَوْنَ لِأَمْرِ اللَّهِ, others deferred for Allah's decree, whether He punishes them or turns to them. This is the implicit command to boycott the three: you three are cut off, and Allah will decide. Verses 107 through 110 are Masjid al-Ḍirār.

❧The forgiveness, and the closing verses

Verses 117 and 118 are the announcement that the repentance was accepted, and there is a subtlety in the order: before reaching the three, Allah first declares the Muhājirūn and the Anṣār already forgiven, لَّقَد تَّابَ اللَّهُ عَلَى النَّبِيِّ وَالْمُهَاجِرِينَ وَالْأَنصَارِ الَّذِينَ اتَّبَعُوهُ فِي سَاعَةِ الْعُسْرَةِ, the hour of hardship, Tabūk itself, after a party of them had almost inclined away, and then He turned to them. وَعَلَى الثَّلَاثَةِ الَّذِينَ خُلِّفُوا, and to the three who were left behind. You who obeyed are forgiven; and the three of you as well.

The sūrah then speaks of those who could not go and yet receive the reward of those who went, because the intention was there; returns once more to the danger of the hypocrites and their dread of a sūrah being revealed about them; and closes with the two verses about the Messenger ﷺ himself: لَقَدْ جَاءَكُمْ رَسُولٌ مِّنْ أَنفُسِكُمْ عَزِيزٌ عَلَيْهِ مَا عَنِتُّمْ حَرِيصٌ عَلَيْكُم بِالْمُؤْمِنِينَ رَءُوفٌ رَّحِيمٌ, a Messenger has come to you from among yourselves; what causes you hardship weighs on him, he is deeply concerned for you, and to the believers kind and merciful. We saw exactly that in the case of ʿAbdullāh ibn Ubayy: he grieved over the punishment awaiting a man who died a hypocrite. And then: فَإِن تَوَلَّوْا فَقُلْ حَسْبِيَ اللَّهُ لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ عَلَيْهِ تَوَكَّلْتُ وَهُوَ رَبُّ الْعَرْشِ الْعَظِيمِ.

❧Where we now stand

The first third of the sūrah remains, and it will be taken up in a few weeks with the story of the Ḥajj. We are in Dhū al-Qaʿdah of the ninth year. The next incident is the Ḥajj led by Abū Bakr, the Ḥajj before the Prophet's ﷺ own; then one or two episodes and the Year of Delegations, and then the final days. The bulk of the Qurʾān has been revealed, the laws are largely settled, the conquests are secured, and with Makkah in Muslim hands and central Arabia united, the remaining tribes will come in one after another, وَرَأَيْتَ النَّاسَ يَدْخُلُونَ فِي دِينِ اللَّهِ أَفْوَاجًا.