Tafsir of Al-Baqarah 2:44

Then, since He, the Exalted, commanded them to perform good deeds in gratitude for the favors He had bestowed upon them, He incited them to that from another angle by His saying, the Almighty: "Do you command people to do righteousness while you forget yourselves?"

The hamza here is for the purpose of affirmation combined with reproach and astonishment. Al-birr (righteousness) is the well-known term for goodness—from which the terms al-barr (land) and al-bariyyah (creation) are derived due to their vastness—and it encompasses every good deed. Al-nisyan (forgetting), as stated in al-Bahr, is the lapse that occurs after knowledge; the intended meaning here is "abandonment," because no one truly forgets their own self, but rather they neglect and abandon it just as one abandons a forgotten thing, as an exaggeration of their lack of concern and heedlessness regarding what they ought to do.

According to what is narrated from Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with them both), this verse was revealed regarding the scholars of Medina; they would secretly order those they advised to follow Muhammad (peace be upon him) but would not follow him themselves. It is also said that they would command charity but would not practice it. Al-birr here means either faith or excellence (ihsan). Others left it in its general sense, covering every good deed, based on the statement of al-Suddi: they would command people to obey Allah, the Exalted, and forbid them from disobeying Him, while they themselves would abandon obedience and proceed to commit disobedience. The reproach is not upon the act of commanding people to righteousness itself, but upon its combination with the aforementioned neglect.

"While you read the Scripture"—meaning the Torah. This sentence is a hal (state) clause qualifying the subject of "Do you command." The intent is to shame them and increase the ugliness of their actions. "So will you not use your reason?" The origin of this expression and its like, according to the majority, would have been the placing of the conjunction before the hamza. However, because the hamza occupies the beginning of the sentence, it preceded the conjunction. Some have argued that there is no transposition (taqdim or ta'khir), and that one should understand a word between the hamza and the conjunction to which the conjunction could properly refer.

Al-'aql (reason) in its origin means restraint and withholding—hence the term 'iqal (hobble) for a camel. It is used to name the spiritual light through which souls grasp necessary and theoretical knowledge, because it restrains one from engaging in what is ugly and holds one to what is beautiful. The verb can be treated as intransitive, or it may be transitive with an implied object. The meaning is: "Do you not possess an intellect that restrains you from what you know will have an evil end and dire consequences?" Or: "Do you not use your reason to perceive the ugliness of your action according to the Law (due to contradicting what you read in the Torah) and according to reason (because it constitutes a combination of two mutually exclusive things)?"

Indeed, the intent of commanding righteousness is to encourage excellence and compliance, and to provide deterrence against disobedience; their forgetting their own selves contradicts all these purposes. There is no dispute that the ugliness of combining these is rational, in the sense of it being futile. Thus, there is no argument for the Mu'tazilah in this verse regarding the "rational ugliness" they claim; rather, some scholars have argued that it is evidence against their position, because He, the Exalted, ordered the reproach based on what they did after reading the Scripture.

Likewise, there is no argument in it for those who claim that the sinner has no right to command good and forbid evil, for the reproach is upon combining the two things, focusing only on the latter. It does not forbid the sinner from preaching, for forbidding evil is a mandatory duty even for the one who commits it; neglecting the prohibition is one sin, and committing the act is another sin, and failing in one does not necessitate failing in the other.

Furthermore, although this reproach and censure was an address to the Children of Israel, it is general in meaning to every preacher who commands but does not follow, who forbids but does not refrain, who calls out to people, "Haste, haste!" while being content with his own delay and ruin, who invites others to the truth while alienating them from it, and who demands truths from the common folk while he himself has not even caught a scent of them. This is the one whose punishment will begin before that of the idolaters, and his suffering will be great due to the abundance of his negligence, on a day when there is no ruler except the King, the Requiter.

Muhammad ibn Wasi' said: "It has reached me that people from the inhabitants of Paradise will look down upon people from the inhabitants of the Fire and say to them: 'You used to command us to do things which we performed, and so we entered Paradise.' They will reply: 'We used to command you to do them, but we ourselves did the opposite.'"

Finally, some have considered this address to be directed toward the believers and have interpreted the "Scripture" as the Quran; this would be an instance of changing the address, as in: "O Yusuf, turn away from this, and [you, woman,] ask forgiveness for your sin." However, the apparent meaning makes this view unlikely.