Tafsir of An-Nisa' 4:53

This is an initiation into detailing another part of their vile traits. The "Or" (Am) is disjunctive (munqati’ah), to be interpreted as "Nay" (bal) and an interrogative hamza; meaning: "Nay, do they have a share?" The intent is to deny that they possess any share of the kingdom, and to reject what the Jews claim—that kingship will return to them in the end times.

It has been narrated from al-Juba’i that what is meant by "the kingdom" here is prophethood; meaning, they have no share of prophethood such that it would become binding upon people to follow and obey them. The first interpretation is more evident, due to the Almighty’s saying:

Meaning: anyone, or the poor, or Muhammad (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) and his followers, as narrated from Ibn ‘Abbas (may Allah be pleased with them both).

Meaning: a trivial thing. Its origin is what we have previously pointed out. Ibn Jarir extracted, via the path of Abu al-‘Aliyah from Ibn ‘Abbas (may Allah be pleased with them both), that he said: "This is the naqir," and he placed the tip of his thumb upon the inside of his index finger, then clicked it.

The gist of the meaning, according to what has been said, is: they have no share of the kingdom because they do not deserve it; rather, they deserve to be deprived of it, because if they were given a share of it, they would not give people even the smallest trifle of it. It is the right of one who is granted the kingdom to give, and they are not such people.

The fa (then) in fa-idha is for causality and retribution for a conditional clause that is omitted; it is as if it were said: "If they were to obtain a share, then..."—not "if they had a share," as al-Zamakhshari estimated, because the fa does not appear in the answer to law (if), especially when paired with idha (when/if) and a present-tense verb.

It is permissible for the fa to be a conjunction, with the hamza serving to deny the combination of the conjoined and the conjunction, in the sense that it is not fitting that what has occurred—their being granted a share of the kingdom, inasmuch as they had wealth, gardens, and lofty palaces like kings—should be followed by their stinginess with the smallest trifle. The benefit of idha is the intensification of denial and rebuke, as they make the existence of a share—which is a reason for giving—into a reason for withholding.

The difference between the two approaches is that the denial in the first is directed at the first sentence, in the sense of denying its occurrence, while in the second, it is directed at the combination of both matters, in the sense of denying what has actually occurred.

Idha in both approaches is non-operational (mulgha). However, it is permissible to consider it operational (tu’mal) because it has been stipulated that for it to be operational, it must be at the beginning of a clause. If one looks at it being at the beginning of its clause, it is treated as operational; if one looks at its conjunction and its status as a follower of something else, it is treated as non-operational. For this reason, Ibn ‘Abbas and Ibn Mas‘ud (may Allah be pleased with them all) recited fa-idha la yu’tu al-nasa (with the accusative case) based on it being operational.