ٱلْأَعْرَابُ أَشَدُّ كُفْرًا وَنِفَاقًا وَأَجْدَرُ أَلَّا يَعْلَمُوا۟ حُدُودَ مَآ أَنزَلَ ٱللَّهُ عَلَىٰ رَسُولِهِۦ … وَمِنَ ٱلْأَعْرَابِ مَن يُؤْمِنُ بِٱللَّهِ وَٱلْيَوْمِ ٱلْـَٔاخِرِ
"The bedouin are harder in rejection and hypocrisy, and more apt not to know the limits of what God has sent down upon His Messenger… And among the bedouin is one who believes in God and the last day."
A note required per the method (Method)
The ninety-seventh verse makes an observation; the ninety-eighth relates one section; and the ninety-ninth, saying wa mina'l-aʿrābi man yuʾminu bi'llāhi wa'l-yawmi'l-ākhir, names an opposite section from within the same community.
| Verse | Who | What |
|---|---|---|
| 97 | al-Aʿrāb — a general observation | Ashaddu kufran wa nifāqā |
| 98 | Wa mina'l-aʿrābi man… | One who counts what he gives a loss |
| 99 | Wa mina'l-aʿrābi man… | One who counts what he gives a nearness |
In both verses there is the particle min (partitive): "among the bedouin is one who." The verse, that is, divides the community in two and names each by its own attribute.
And the ground of the ninety-seventh verse is given in the text as well: wa ajdaru allā yaʿlamū ḥudūda mā anzala'llāh — their living far from the rulings. The observation, that is, is not a ruling about descent or identity but the observation of a situation; and its cause is geographical distance.
That the word aʿrāb means not "the Arabs" but the bedouin was treated in al-Fatḥ and in al-Ḥujurāt at 49/14; I rely on that treatment. Per the method (Method) no wholesale ruling is issued about any ethnic or social group, and the sūra itself does not issue one in any case.
مَغْرَمًا (98) — root غ-ر-م: debt, loss, a price that must be paid. The root was treated in al-Wāqiʿa at 56/66 (innā la-mughramūn) and in al-Ṭūr and al-Qalam.
قُرُبَٰتٍ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ (99) — and the opposite section counts the same act (mā yunfiqu) a nearness.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is that the two verses use the same verb: what is spent is the same; what changes is what the spender counts it to be. And in al-Tawba at 9/60 the headings of expenditure of the alms were enumerated — here what the alms amount to in their giver is related.