Tafsir of An-Nur 24:12

[This is] an apostrophe directed at those who engaged in the slander, excluding the one who bore the brunt of it. Abu Hayyan favored the view that the address is directed at the believers to the exclusion of him [the slanderer]. The address was chosen to intensify the rebuke inherent in the particle lawla (used here for exhortation). To emphasize the rebuke, a shift was made to the third person in His saying: {ظَنَّ الْمُؤْمِنُونَ وَالْمُؤْمِنَاتُ بِأَنْفُسِهِمْ خَيْرًا} [The believing men and believing women thought well of their own people]. This, however, is not by way of turning away from those addressed or recounting their offenses to others, but rather by using it to describe them with that which necessitates the performance of the exhorted action—fully demanding it and strongly restraining them from its opposite—which is faith. Faith compels them to think well [of others] and restrains them from thinking ill of their own people, meaning the members of their own kind and their coreligionists, who are placed in the position of their own selves, as in His saying: {وَلَا تَلْمِزُوا أَنْفُسَكُمْ} [And do not insult one another (literally: yourselves)], and His saying: {ثُمَّ أَنْتُمْ هَؤُلَاءِ تَقْتُلُونَ أَنْفُسَكُمْ} [Then you are those [same people] who kill one another]. There is no need to assume an implicit noun, such as "some of the believers thought well of others of them," although its permissibility is beyond doubt; for their failure to fulfill the requirement of that description is uglier and more heinous, and the rebuke for it is more profound, alongside the fact that it serves as a means to rebuke the women who engaged in the slander, most notably Hamnah.

If "faith" is meant in its true sense, then its necessity for what was mentioned is clear, and the rebuke is specific to those who possess it. If it refers to absolute faith, which also includes what the hypocrites feigned, then its necessity for it arises from the fact that they used to refrain from displaying what contradicted their claims; thus, the rebuke in that case is directed at all of them. The subtlety in placing the object of the exhorted verb between the verb and the exhortation particle—though this is permissible in all cases, whether the placed object is an adverb or otherwise—is to restrict the exhortation to the first moment of hearing, and to limit the rebuke and blame to the delay in performing the exhorted action beyond that moment, and the hesitation in doing so. This is to imply that not performing it at all is of the utmost ugliness and heinousness. It means: It was the duty of the believing men and women, the moment they heard that [slander] from those who invented it—whether directly or indirectly—without stuttering or hesitation, to think well of the people of their own faith, the individual believing men and women, and to say—at that very moment: {هَذَا إِفْكٌ مُبِينٌ} [This is a clear slander].

12

Meaning: manifest and openly known to be slander. How much more so when it concerns the Mother of the Believers, the wife of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him), the daughter of the Muhajirun (may Allah be pleased with them both). It is also possible that the meaning is: Why did the believing men and women not think well, at the very moment they heard it, of the people of their faith, namely ‘Aisha and Safwan, and say...?