The Impact of Ibn 'Abbas on the Interpretation of the Saying of Allah the Exalted: “And whoever does not judge by what Allah has revealed—those are the disbelievers.”

The Shaykh : First of all, the Interpreter of the Qur'an, 'Abdullah ibn 'Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him), assists us in this matter. He is one of the Companions whom all Muslims, except those from those misguided sects, acknowledged as an imam in interpretation. Therefore, some of the Salaf from among the Companions, and it may have been 'Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, named this imam in interpretation and noble Companion the Interpreter of the Qur'an. It seems that at that time he heard exactly what we hear today: that there are people who understand this verse on its apparent meaning, without the detail I mentioned earlier, which is that sometimes the intended meaning of "disbelievers" is those who have apostatized from their religion, and sometimes that is not the intended meaning, but rather something less than that. So Ibn 'Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him) said: "The matter is not as they claim or as they think, but rather it is disbelief less than disbelief." He likely meant by this the Khawarij, who rebelled against the Commander of the Faithful, and the consequence of that was that they shed the blood of the believers and did to them what they had not done to the polytheists. So he said: "The matter is not as they said or as they thought, but rather it is disbelief less than disbelief." This brief, clear answer from the Interpreter of the Qur'an in interpreting this verse is the only thing that can be understood from the texts I alluded to at the beginning of my speech. The word "disbelief" is mentioned in many texts, yet those texts cannot be interpreted with the interpretation they gave to this verse.