Tafsir of Al-An'am 6:131

(That) is a reference to the coming of the messengers, or to the question understood from "Has there not come to you...", or to what was recounted of their affairs, namely their testimony against themselves of disbelief and their deserving of punishment.

It is in the nominative case as the predicate of an implicit subject (i.e., "the matter is that"), or it is the subject with an implicit predicate, or its predicate is His saying—Exalted is He—(that your Lord would not destroy the towns), with the lam omitted, on the basis that an is a source-form (masdariyyah) or is the an of the "affair" (mukhaffafah min al-thaqilah) with its pronoun being the subject. It is also in the accusative case as the object of an implicit verb, such as "take" or "we have done," and so forth. It has been permitted that "(that your Lord would not)..." be in apposition to the demonstrative noun.

His saying—Exalted is He—(for [their] injustice) is connected either to "destroying" (i.e., by reason of injustice) or to an implicit word acting as a state (hal) for "the towns," or "being involved in injustice," or as a state for "your Lord" or for the pronoun within "destroying." The intended meaning is destroying the people of the towns; however, it is a metaphorical attribution, or the possessor is omitted and the possessed is raised to its place—a construction which His saying—Exalted is He—(while their people are unaware) does not refute, because the origin is "while they are unaware," and when the possessor was omitted, the pronoun was raised to its place.

The Shaykh al-Islam objected to treating "(for their) injustice" as a state for "your Lord" or its pronoun, arguing that the unawareness of its people is inevitably inherent in the meaning and reality of the injustice, so it is not appropriate to qualify it with the clause thereafter. It was countered that injustice might be conceived without unawareness, such as in a state of wakefulness and concurrent stubbornness. If the intention here is destruction while in a state of unawareness, the benefit of the qualification is to specify the intended meaning, and its elegance is not hidden, nor is the subtlety within it.

He—may his secret be sanctified—chose from the probabilities of what is referred to and the facets of the demonstrative noun's inflection that it is the third, saying: The meaning is, "That is established because of the negation of your Lord's being, or because the 'affair' is that your Lord would not destroy the towns due to any injustice they committed—among the types of injustice—before they were forbidden from it, warned of its falsity by messengers and books, even if the intellects judge it [as wrong] intuitively, and warned of the consequence of their crimes."

That is to say, were it not for the negation of His—Exalted is He—being a punisher of them before the sending of messengers and the revealing of books, the reproach mentioned would not have been possible, nor would they have testified against themselves regarding disbelief and deserving of punishment, nor would they have offered the excuse of the messengers not having come to them, as in His saying—Exalted is He—("And if We had destroyed them with a punishment before him, they would have said, 'Our Lord, why did You not send to us a messenger so that we could have followed Your verses before we were humiliated and disgraced?'").

He qualified what was mentioned by the negation of worldly punishment—which is the destroying of towns—before the warning, even though the approach of qualifying it by the negation of absolute punishment without the sending of messengers is more complete, according to what His saying—Exalted is He—speaks: ("And We would never punish until We have sent a messenger"), according to what the People of the Sunnah have chosen regarding its meaning, to manifest His—Exalted is He—transcendence from both kinds of punishment without warning, in the most eloquent and emphatic way.

It is not hidden that what he chose is a sound perspective, except that his statement later—that if "that" is made a reference to the sending of messengers and their warning, and the predicate of the subject is omitted, as the majority have agreed, it is far removed from the requirements of the context—is prohibited. As for the other probabilities, the address is to the Messenger (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) by way of changing the mode of address.

It is apparent that the negation of destruction before warning is not restricted to humans; the jinn are likewise not destroyed before they are warned, even if the application of "people of the towns" to them is not common. This is based on the sheer grace of Allah—Exalted is He—according to us. The Mu'tazilah say: It is incumbent upon Allah—Exalted is He—not to punish before warning and the establishment of proof, and they built this upon the principle of rational good and evil. Our Imams affirm that, but they do not make it the basis of the ruling, as the Mu'tazilah claim.