al-ʿAnkabūt 29:10-11

"There are people who say, 'We have believed in God'; but when such a one is made to suffer for God's sake, he counts the affliction people inflict as though it were the punishment of God."

An equation is set up in the sentence, and the two sides of the equation must be recorded:

And the verb is jaʿala — "he made, he counted". That is, the person sets up this equation himself.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the particle of comparison (kāf): the verse diagnoses not the presence of fear but a slippage of scale. A pressure that is temporary and limited is weighed as having the same weight as what is lasting and unlimited. The person is not denying — he is using the wrong balance.

فِتْنَة — root ف-ت-ن: to melt gold in fire in order to test its purity. The root was treated at al-Burūj and at al-Baqara 2/191. I do not repeat it here.

The place of the root in this sūra is worth recording: in the second verse it had occurred as lā yuftanūn (they will not be tested); here the same root is used for the affliction inflicted by people. That is, trial does not remain an abstract concept — it is named as a concrete pressure.