Tafsir of At-Tawbah 9:12

{And they revile your religion}: Meaning they disparage it and find fault with it.

{Then fight the leaders of disbelief}: Meaning fight them. He replaced the pronoun referring to them with the phrase "leaders of disbelief" to signal that when they break their oaths—out of rebellion, tyranny, and a rejection of the customs of noble, loyal Arabs—and then [hypothetically] believe, establish prayer, pay zakat, and become brothers to the Muslims in faith, only to then turn back, apostatize from Islam, break the faith and the covenants they pledged, and sit there reviling the religion of Allah, saying, "Muhammad’s religion is nothing," then they are indeed the leaders of disbelief, the possessors of leadership and precedence in it; no other disbeliever can match their intensity.

Some have said: If a dhimmi (protected subject) reviles the religion of Islam openly, it is permissible to kill him, because the covenant was made with him on the condition that he does not revile it. If he reviles it, he has broken his covenant and exited the state of protection.

{Indeed, they have no oaths}: The plural of yamin (oath). (It has also been recited as la imana lahum, meaning: they have no faith/Islam). Or, it means they are not to be granted security after their apostasy and breach of contract, and there is no path to it.

If you ask: How did He affirm their oaths in His saying {And if they break their oaths} and then negate them? I say: He meant the oaths they manifested, then said they have no oaths in reality; their oaths are not true oaths. Abu Hanifa (may Allah have mercy on him) used this as evidence that a disbeliever’s oath is not a valid oath. According to Al-Shafi’i (may Allah have mercy on him), their oath is a valid oath, and he said the meaning is that they do not fulfill them, as evidenced by the fact that He described them as "breaking" them.

{So that they might cease}: This is connected to His saying {Then fight the leaders of disbelief}. Meaning: Let your purpose in fighting them, after the grave offenses they have committed, be that the fighting becomes a cause for them to cease what they are upon. This is from the extremity of His generosity, grace, and His returning to the wrongdoer with mercy whenever he returns.

If you ask: How is the word a’imma (leaders) pronounced? I say: It is a hamza followed by a hamza pronounced "between-between"—that is, between the articulation point of the hamza and the ya. Realizing both hamzas is a famous reading, even if it is not accepted by the Basrans. As for explicitly pronouncing it with a ya (i.e., ayimma), it is not a reading, nor is it permissible to be a reading. Whoever pronounces it that way is committing a grammatical error and a distortion.