Tafsir of Al-Furqan 25:4

The speakers—as narrated by a group from Qatadah—are the polytheists of the Arabs, not all disbelievers, given the context of claiming the assistance of some of the People of the Book for him, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. In some narrations, they are named as al-Nadr ibn al-Harith, Abdullah ibn Umayyah, and Nawfal ibn Khuwaylid. It is permissible that what is meant are their extremists, such as these individuals and those who joined them. This is supported by a narration from Ibn Abbas. It is also narrated from al-Kalbi and Muqatil that the speaker was al-Nadr, and the plural was used because the others supported him in that. Those who restrict the pronoun in "they took" (attakhadhu) to the polytheists of the Arabs, and consider the relative pronoun (al-ladhina) here to refer to all of them, believe that the usage of the relative pronoun in place of their personal pronoun is intended to disparage them through what is contained in the silah (relative clause) and to signify that what they uttered is a grave act of disbelief. In the word "this" (hadha), there is a belittlement of the status of that which is being pointed to; meaning, they said: "This is nothing but a lie turned away from its truth."

"He fabricated it" (iftarahu): They mean that the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, invented it and that it was not sent down upon him.

"And helped him with it" (wa-a'anahu 'alayhi): That is, with its fabrication and invention, or with the lie.

"Other people" (qawmun akharun): They mean the Jews, by their casting the stories of past nations to him, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and he, peace and blessings be upon him, expressing them in his own words. It is said they are Addas, or 'Aish (a client of Huwaytib ibn 'Abd al-'Uzza), or Yasar (a client of al-'Ala' ibn al-Hadrami), or Jibril (a client of 'Amir). These were People of the Book who read the Torah and converted to Islam, and the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, used to frequent them, so what was said was said. Al-Mubarrad said: By "other people," they meant the believers, because "other" must be of the same genus as the first. However, this is countered by the fact that sharing a common description is not necessary; do you not see His saying, the Exalted: "A faction fighting in the way of Allah and another [faction] which is disbelieving"?

"They have brought" (faqad ja'u): That is, those who disbelieved, as is apparent.

"A falsehood" (zulman): This is in the accusative case as the object of "brought," for ja'a and ata are used in the sense of fa'ala (to do) and thus they take the same direct object, as al-Kisa'i stated. Al-Tabarsi preferred this view and cited the verse of Tarafa: "For a crime I did not commit, I came to it, except that I was summoned and I did not neglect the mounts of Ma'bad." Al-Zajjaj said: It is in the accusative through the removal of the preposition, falling under the category of omission and arrival (al-hadhf wa al-isul). Abu al-Baqa' permitted it to be a hal (state/adverbial), meaning "while they were wrongdoers," but the first is more appropriate. The tanwin in it is for magnification; meaning, they brought what they said as a massive, grave injustice whose magnitude cannot be estimated. This is because they rendered the pure truth—to which falsehood does not come from before it or from behind it—as a fabricated lie from human beings, despite its refined structure and superior style, such that if mankind and jinn were to gather to challenge it, they would be unable to produce even one verse like its verses; and because of its containment of hidden wisdom, rulings that result in religious and worldly felicity, and metaphysical matters that human intellects cannot reach and which human powers and capacities cannot encompass. Similarly, the tanwin in "and a forgery" (wa-zuran): meaning, and a great lie, the extremity of which cannot be reached, as they said what has no possibility of truth in it at all. A lie is called zur due to its izwirar—that is, its deviation/leaning away from the direction of truth.

The fa (in faqad) is for the sequencing of what follows it to what preceded it, but not because they are two distinct matters, one occurring after the other or the second resulting from the first. Rather, it is because the second is the very essence of the first, and the sequencing is only according to conventional differentiation. For that meaning to be realized: what he brought of injustice and forgery is the very same thing he narrated from them; yet, since it differs from it in concept and is more manifest in its falsehood, he sequenced it using the fa, the sequencing of the necessary upon the necessitated, to emphasize the enormity of the matter, as the Shaykh al-Islam said.

It is also said: the pronoun in "they brought" (ja'u) returns to "other people," and the sentence is part of the disbelievers' speech; they meant that those specific individuals brought an injustice through their assistance, and a forgery through what they helped with. And this is as you see.