al-Fatḥ 48:16

Qul li'l-mukhallafīna mina'l-aʿrābi sa-tudʿawna ilā qawmin ulī baʾsin shadīdin tuqātilūnahum aw yuslimūn; fa-in tuṭīʿū yuʾtikumu'llāhu ajran ḥasanā; wa in tatawallaw kamā tawallaytum min qablu yuʿadhdhibkum ʿadhāban alīmā

"Say to those of the bedouin who were left behind: You will be called against a people of great might in war; you will fight them, or they will submit. If you obey, God will give you a good reward. But if you turn away as you turned away before, He will punish you with a painful punishment."

This verse is the place where the moral balance of the sūra is established, and it must be read carefully.

In the preceding verse a request was refused, and the refusal was absolute: lan tattabiʿūnā — "never". Now, immediately afterwards, a new call comes.

What was refused, that is, was not the persons but that particular request to take part. The text does not extend a past choice into the future.

This is the practical counterpart of the distinction between name and attribute recorded at verse 13. And it is the textual support for the principle in Method that no wholesale ruling is issued about any group: the Qurʾān itself attaches the ruling to a behaviour rather than to persons, and because behaviour can change, the ruling stays open to change too.

The verb is passive and in the future: "you will be summoned". Who will call is not said.

And this sets up a symmetry with the word. The name of this group is mukhallafūn — "those who were left", passive. Now the opportunity given them comes in a passive verb too: "you will be called". The same passivity, this time in their favour.

I record this as an observation about the word order.

بَأْس — root ب-أ-س: violence, hardship, difficulty; and might in war. From the same root baʾsāʾ (hardship), bāʾis (severe), and also: lā baʾsa — "no harm done" (a common usage in Arabic).

Ulī baʾsin shadīd — "those possessed of a fierce might".

Who this people are is not stated in the Qurʾān. In classical exegesis there is more than one view, and the disagreement must not be concealed:

Various names are mentioned in the classical commentaries; I do not give these names, because the reports differ from one another and none of them is certain. Per the method (Method) I do not write an ascription of which I am not sure.

What the text says amounts to this: a situation will come in which a fierce might is met, and this group will be called at that time. Neither its name nor its date is given.

Two possibilities are set out, and both are given as outcomes: either there is fighting, or the other side submits.

أَوْ — "or". This particle separates possibilities; it commands neither of them. The verse, that is, does not frame a command to fight; it describes a situation, and in that situation participation is asked.

يُسْلِمُونَ — root س-ل-م: to be sound, to be without flaw, to submit. Islām, salām, salāma, muslim are from the same root. At the centre of the root lie wholeness and submission.

A note: the verse does not say which of the two possibilities is preferred. And in view of the sūra as a whole this is striking — for the event the sūra recounts is itself an event in which fighting was stopped (24). The sūra names fighting as an option, not as an objective.

Two conditions, two outcomes. The structure is symmetrical.

أَطَاعَ — root ط-و-ع: to do something willingly, without being forced. The primary sense of the root is willingness; the ṭawʿ in the expression ṭawʿan wa karhan (willingly and unwillingly) is this. Ṭāʿa, that is, is at root a word of consent, not of compulsion.

تَوَلَّىٰ — root و-ل-ي: to be near, to be adjoining; walī, mawlā, walāya. In Form تَفَعُّل (tawallā) the sense becomes to turn away, to turn one's back.

This is an interesting behaviour of the root, and it must be recorded: the same root means both "to be near" and "to turn one's back". The link is this: walāʾ states a turning towards; and the man who turns his back has also turned in a direction — only in another one. The English "to turn away" works on the same logic: the face that is turned does not turn into empty space but towards some other side.

كَمَا تَوَلَّيْتُم مِّن قَبْلُ — "as you turned away before". The past is named, but not as a verdict — as a measure: if it is repeated, it will have its consequence.

The "reward" is named several times in the sūra, and its adjectives differ:

The difference of adjective is striking. The reward promised to those left behind is "good"; the one promised to those who pledged, and to the community of the last verse, is "great".

I record this as my own reading and do not present it as a settled ruling: the difference of adjective seems to accord with the measure treated at al-Ḥadīd on verse 57/10 — "Those of you who spent and fought before the fatḥ are not equal…". It was recorded there that there is a threshold, and that what is done before that threshold and what is done after it are not of the same weight. The same measure may be at work here. But this must be recorded too: in both verses a good reward is promised to the one who joins later; the door has not been shut.