Al-Ankaboot (The Spider)

10. “And among the people there are those who say: ‘We believe in Allah,’ and when they are hurt in Allah’s cause, they think the persecution of men as it were Allah’s chastisement, and if help comes from your Lord, they would certainly say: ‘Verily we were with you’. What! Is not Allah the Best-Knower of what is in the breasts of mankind?”

The expression of Faith by some people is only oral and it is not said by heart. The true faith will often be made manifest at the time of afflictions.

Imam Ali (as) said:

“The reality (and essence) of man will be known in the change of circumstances.”1

In view of the fact that there were mentioned some explicit statements about the ‘righteous believers’ and ‘polytheists’ in the former verses, in this verse the words are about the third group, viz.: ‘hypocrites’.

It says:

“And among the people there are those who say: ‘We believe in Allah,’ and when they are hurt in Allah’s cause, they think the persecution of men as it were Allah’s chastisement, and if help comes from your Lord, they would certainly say: ‘Verily we were with you’. What! Is not Allah the Best-Knower of what is in the breasts of mankind?”

The Arabic word /’amanna/ (we believe), is used in the verse in plural form, while the next phrase is in singular and it may be for the reason that this group of hypocrites want to be counted among the group of believers then they say /’amanna/ (we believe) and they mean that they have believed like other people.

The application of ‘they are hurt in Allah’s cause’ is in the sense of ‘they are hurt in the way of Allah’, that is, they sometimes are hurt in the way of Allah and Faith by their enemy.

It is interesting that when speaking about the punishment of Allah, the Qur’anic word /‘aŏab/ is used, but when it speaks about people’s hurts it uses /fitnah/ (trial) indicating that people’s hurts are not in fact ‘punishment’ but they are trials in order to complete man.

In this way it teaches them that they might not compare these two with each other, and by the pretext that the opponents hurt and torture them they leave out their Faith, because this is a part of total program of trial in this world.

There arises a question here that which victory had Allah bestowed on the Muslims in Mecca that hypocrites demanded share in it?

The answer of it is that the above sentence is a conditional sentence, and we know that a conditional sentence is not an evidence for the existence of condition, but its concept is that if there will be some victories for the Muslims in future, these feeble-faith hypocrites will demand share in them.

Moreover, the Muslims gained some victories against enemies in Mecca, although they were not martial and they were some victories in the fields of propagation, penetration in public thoughts, and the development of Islam amongst the different levels of people.

Besides, the application of the word ‘hurt’ fits with the environment of Mecca, else in the environment of Medina such a thing rarely happened.

However, this point was also made clear that the term ‘hypocrites’ is not only used for those who have never Faith inwardly and do not express Faith, but those feeble-Faith persons who, under the pressure of this and that individuals soon change their belief are counted among hypocrites, and the holy verse under discussion apparently speaks of this kind of hypocrites and announces that Allah (s.w.t.) is aware of their intentions.