Wrongdoers coming to the Prophet saying they meant well
Sura-4 [Al Nissa Medina 92]
The Quranic Text & Ali’s version:
أَلَمْ
تَرَ
إِلَى
الَّذِينَ
يَزْعُمُونَ
أَنَّهُمْ
آمَنُواْ
بِمَا
أُنزِلَ
إِلَيْكَ
وَمَا
أُنزِلَ
مِن
قَبْلِكَ...
4:60. Hast thou not turned thy vision to those who declare that they believe in the revelations that have come to thee and to those before thee?
... يُرِيدُونَ أَن يَتَحَاكَمُواْ إِلَى الطَّاغُوتِ وَقَدْ أُمِرُواْ أَن يَكْفُرُواْ بِهِ...
Their (real) wish is to resort together for judgment (in their disputes) to the Evil One, though they were ordered to reject him.
... وَيُرِيدُ الشَّيْطَانُ أَن يُضِلَّهُمْ ضَلاَلاً بَعِيدًا ﴿٦٠﴾
But Satan's wish is to lead them astray far away (from the Right).
C581. The immediate reference was to the Hypocrites (Munafiqin) of Madinah but the words are general, and the evil of hypocrisy has to be dealt with in all ages.
The type of these men is what is called Mr. Facing-both-ways in Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress."
Such men declare that they are always with the Right, but calmly intrigue with Evil and Injustice, and even make Injustice their judge if their personal interests are served in that way.
وَإِذَا
قِيلَ
لَهُمْ
تَعَالَوْاْ
إِلَى
مَا
أَنزَلَ
اللّهُ
وَإِلَى
الرَّسُولِ...
4:61. When it is said to them: "Come to what Allah hath revealed, and to the Messenger":
... رَأَيْتَ الْمُنَافِقِينَ يَصُدُّونَ عَنكَ صُدُودًا ﴿٦١﴾
thou seest the Hypocrites avert their faces from thee in disgust.
فَكَيْفَ
إِذَا
أَصَابَتْهُم
مُّصِيبَةٌ
بِمَا
قَدَّمَتْ
أَيْدِيهِمْ
...
4:62. How then, when they are seized by misfortune, because of the deeds which their hands have sent forth?
... ثُمَّ جَآؤُوكَ يَحْلِفُونَ بِاللّهِ إِنْ أَرَدْنَا إِلاَّ إِحْسَانًا وَتَوْفِيقًا ﴿٦٢﴾
Then they come to thee, swearing by Allah: "We meant no more than goodwill and conciliation!"
أُولَـئِكَ
الَّذِينَ
يَعْلَمُ
اللّهُ
مَا
فِي
قُلُوبِهِمْ
...
4:63. Those men, Allah knows what is in their hearts;
... فَأَعْرِضْ عَنْهُمْ وَعِظْهُمْ وَقُل لَّهُمْ فِي أَنفُسِهِمْ قَوْلاً بَلِيغًا﴿٦٣﴾
so keep clear of them,
but admonish them, and speak to them a word to reach their very souls.
C582. How should hypocrites be treated?
To take them into your confidence would of course be foolish. To wage unrelenting war against them may destroy the hope of reforming them and purging them of their hypocrisy.
The Prophet of Allah keeps clear of their wiles, but at the same time, does not hesitate to show them the error of their ways, nor to put in a word in season, to penetrate their hearts and win them back to Allah.
Asad’s version
4:60 ART THOU NOT aware of those who claim that they believe in what has been bestowed from on high upon thee, [O Prophet,] as well as in what was bestowed from on high before thee, [and yet] are willing to defer to the rule of the powers of evil79 - although they were bidden to deny it, seeing that Satan but wants to lead them far astray? (4:61) And so, whenever they are told, "Come unto that which God has bestowed from on high, and unto the Apostle," thou canst see these hypocrites turn away from thee with aversion.80
4:62 But how [will they fare] when calamity befalls them [on the Day of Judgment] because of what they have wrought in this world81 - whereupon they will come to thee, swearing by God, "Our aim was but to do good, and to bring about harmony"?82
4:63 As for them - God knows all that is in their hearts; so leave them alone, and admonish them, and speak unto them about themselves in a gravely searching manner: (4:64) for We have never sent any apostle save that he should be heeded by God's leave.83 If, then, after having sinned against themselves, they would but come round to thee and ask God to forgive them - with the Apostle, too, praying that they be forgiven - they would assuredly find that God is an acceptor of repentance, a dispenser of grace.
4: 60-62…………How then, when they are seized by misfortune, because of the deeds which their hands have sent forth? Then they come to thee, swearing by allah: " We meant no more than goodwill and conciliation!"
[[Asad’s notes –
79 Lit., "who summon one
another to the judgment [or "rule"] of the powers of evil
(at-taghut):
an allusion to people like those mentioned in
verse 51 above, who, by their deference to what
the Qur'an
describes as at-taghut (see surah 2, verse 256), nullify all the good
that they
could derive from guidance through revelation
80 The classical commentators
see in verses 60-64 a reference to the hypocrites of Medina who,
at
the time of the Prophet, outwardly professed to be his followers but
did not really
believe in his teachings. It seems to me,
however, that this passage goes far beyond the
possible
historical occasion of its revelation, inasmuch as it touches upon an
often-encountered
psychological problem of faith. People who
are not fully convinced that there exists a
reality beyond the
reach of human perception (al-ghayb, in the sense explained in surah
2,
verse 3) find it, as a rule, difficult to dissociate their
ethical views from their personal
predilections and morally
questionable desires - with the result that they are only too
often
"willing to defer to what the powers of evil tell them".
Although they may half-heartedly
concede that some of the moral
teachings based on revelation (in this case, the Qur'an)
contain
"certain verities", they instinctively recoil from those
teachings whenever they
conflict with what their own
idiosyncrasies represent to them as desirable: and so they
become
guilty of hypocrisy in the deepest, religious connotation of this
word.
81 Lit., "what their hands have sent ahead": an allusion to their ambivalent attitude and the confusion which it may have created in others.
82 I.e., they will plead that their aim was no more than a harmonization of the Qur'anic ethics with a "humanistic" (that is, man-centred) world-view: a plea which the Qur'an implicitly rejects as being hypocritical and self-deceptive (cf. 2:11-12). As regards the phrase
"whereupon they will come to thee", see verse 41 of this surah.
83
The expression "by God's leave" is to be understood, in
this context, as "with God's help" or "by God's grace"
(Zamakhshari, Razi). As so often in the Qur'an, the sudden change,
within one and the same sentence, from the pronoun "We" or
"I" to "He", or from "We" to "God",
is meant to impress upon the listener or reader of the Qur'an the
fact that God
is not a "person" but an all-embracing
Power that cannot be defined or even adequately referred
to within the limited range of any human language. ]]