Tafsir of An-Nisa' 4:136

"O you who have believed": This is an address to all Muslims. The meaning of His saying, “Believe in Allah and His Messenger and the Book that He sent down upon His Messenger and the Book which He sent down before,” is: persist in that faith and remain steadfast upon it. This has been narrated from al-Hasan, and al-Juba’i favored it. It is also said that the address is to them, but the intended meaning is to increase in the tranquility and certainty of faith, or to believe in what has been mentioned in detail, based on the fact that the faith of some of them is general. In any case, this does not necessitate the realization of what is already realized (tahsil al-hasil). It is also said: the address is to the hypocrites who appear as believers; thus, the meaning of "believe" is to make your faith sincere. Az-Zajjaj and others favored this.

It is said that it is directed specifically to the believers among the Jews. This is supported by what is narrated from Ibn Abbas (may Allah be pleased with them both) that Abdullah ibn Salam, Asad and Usayd—the sons of Ka'b—Tha'labah ibn Qays, the son of the sister of Abdullah ibn Salam, and Yamin ibn Yamin came to the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and said: "We believe in you, your Book, Moses, the Torah, and Uzair, but we disbelieve in whatever else is of the books and messengers." The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: "Rather, believe in Allah, Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), His Book—the Quran—and every book that was before it." They replied: "We will not do so." Then this [verse] was revealed, and they all believed.

It is also said: [it is addressed] to the believers among the People of the Two Books; this is narrated from ad-Dahhak. It is also said: [it is addressed] to the polytheists who believed in al-Lat and al-'Uzza. And it is said: [it is addressed] to all of creation, due to their faith on the day the Covenant was taken, when the Almighty said to them: "Am I not your Lord?" and they said: "Yes." The "first Book" is the Quran, and the intent of the "second Book" is the genus that encompasses all heavenly books; the saying of the Almighty later on, "and His Books," indicates this. The intent of believing in them is to believe in them within the framework of believing in the Book revealed to the Messenger (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), in the sense that faith in each one of them is subsumed under faith in that Book, and that the rulings of each of them were true and established, requiring adherence until the arrival of that which abrogated them. That which has not been abrogated of them until now, regarding laws and rulings, remains established in the sense that they are among the rulings of that Book in which there is no doubt and which no change befalls.

From this, one learns that the command to the believers among the People of the Book to believe in their own book—based on the premise that the address is to them—is not in the sense of [continuing in] steadfastness, because this kind of belief is not [yet] realized in them, and this is the intended point. There is no need to claim that the object of the command is, in reality, to believe in what is other than their book, as if it were said: "Believe in all of them and do not restrict it to a portion."

Ibn Kathir, Ibn 'Amir, and Abu 'Amr recited nuzzila and unzila in the passive voice. The use of nuzzila first and unzila second is because the Quran was revealed gradually (mufarraqan) by consensus, and its completion took twenty-three years according to the most correct opinion, whereas the other books were not like that. So reflect upon this.

"And whoever disbelieves in Allah, His angels, His books, His messengers, and the Last Day": i.e., in any part of that. The ruling relating to matters conjoined by the particle wa (and), as the second scholar said, may return to each individual item, or it may return to the whole. Reliance is placed upon the context. Here, the context indicates the former, because faith in the whole is mandatory, and the whole is negated by the negation of a part. Something like this is not among those instances where the wa is interpreted as meaning "or." Some permitted its return to the whole due to the description of misguidance with the extreme degree of distance in His saying: "then he has certainly strayed a far straying." From this, it is derived that disbelief in any part whatsoever is a misguidance characterized by distance. It is well known that what is meant by "far straying" is straying far from the goal, such that the one characterized by it is unlikely to return to his path. It is also possible that it means a straying far from occurring [i.e., far from truth/reality]. The conditional sentence is a tadhil (supplementary clause) to the previous speech and an affirmation of it. The addition of "the angels" and "the Last Day" in the context of disbelief, as stated by the Shaykh al-Islam, is because by disbelieving in one of them, faith is not realized at all. The books and messengers are pluralized because disbelief in one book or one messenger is disbelief in the whole. The messenger was mentioned earlier because the Book was mentioned with the title of being revealed to him. The angels and books were placed before the messengers because they are intermediaries between Allah the Almighty and the messengers in the revelation of the books. It is also said that the difference in the order in the two places is a matter of stylistic variation (tafannun) and that the addition in the second is merely for emphasis. It has been recited bi-kitabihi (in His Book) with the intention of the genus.