Exegesis of the saying of Allah the Exalted: "The hypocrites fear..."

The Shaykh : We listened in this Fajr prayer on Thursday, the twenty-second of Ramadan in the year 1420, to the saying of Allah, Blessed and Exalted is He: . means they fear and are on their guard. And are a group that emerged when the Muslims were victorious in the Battle of Badr, which Allah, Blessed and Exalted is He, named the Day of Decision. When was this battle? Yes? In Ramadan. Which year? The sixth year of the Hijrah? No? In the second year of the Hijrah. May Allah reward you. Rest. In this blessed battle, the Muslims achieved a brilliant victory. And, praise be to Allah, many of the chiefs and leaders of Quraysh were killed, by which Allah humiliated Quraysh. On this occasion, I wish that my Muslim brothers would maintain a connection with the life of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family), his battles, and his history, so that their faith increases and their love for the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) increases. It is regrettable that many Muslims know only a very little about the life of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), or only what relates to their acts of worship, if they know that at all. Whereas knowing the battles of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) endows a person with the character of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family), about which Allah said: . When the Muslims were victorious in this blessed battle, the Battle of Badr, hypocrisy appeared, and they are a third group, because people are three groups: the pure believers, the pure disbelievers, and the hypocrites. And Allah the Exalted mentioned these groups at the beginning of Surat al-Baqarah, starting with the pure believers, then the pure disbelievers, then the hypocrites. The discussion of the hypocrites came after the discussion of the believers and the disbelievers because of the length of the discourse about them, because the hypocrites—my brothers—require that a person know them completely in order to guard against them and fear them. As Allah, Blessed and Exalted is He, said in a surah He revealed entirely about the hypocrites, Allah the Exalted said: . The phrase "they are the enemy" is a compound nominal sentence consisting of a subject and a predicate, both of which are definite. Such a construction is considered an exclusive statement, as if He said: "There is no enemy for you, O believers, except the hypocrites." And true is Allah, Mighty and Majestic, for the hypocrite is more dangerous than the pure disbeliever. The pure disbeliever who declares that he is a disbeliever is known to you, and you are not deceived by him. But the calamity, the whole calamity, is in the one who says he is with you, and he is what? He is against you. And they are the hypocrites. For this reason, Allah, Blessed and Exalted is He, said: . On its surface, is this speech Islam or disbelief? It is Islam. They say, "We bear witness that you are the Messenger of Allah," confirming this with three confirmations: the testimony, and what? And "in" and the lam. Listen to the response to them. Allah, Mighty and Majestic, said: . Exactly the same, balanced with balance. He bears witness that the hypocrites are liars, a sentence confirmed by three confirmations: the testimony, what? And "in" and the lam. Then He mentioned their conditions. Among that is His saying: . When you see the hypocrite, his body and appearance please you, and you say, "This is the sincere believer," because his signs are the signs of the believer. So his appearance pleases you, , because they have eloquence and fluency, so that they almost turn falsehood into truth and truth into falsehood with what they have of what? Of eloquence. , because it is eloquent speech, so when a person hears it, he says, "This is the true believer." But . And the leaning piece of wood has no good in it, because it itself is not standing on its own. It is only leaning. If it were not for the wall it is leaning against, it would not stand upright. And He described them as wood because wood is hard and nothing enters it. Therefore, people say even today, "So-and-so is wood," or "So-and-so is a piece of wood," meaning what? He does not understand or comprehend; he relies on others. They fear being exposed. . For this reason, Allah the Exalted exposed them in Surat al-Tawbah with an exposure such that the reader almost knows them by name from their exposure. Some of the Salaf named Surat al-Tawbah "The Exposing Surah," the exposing one, because it exposed the hypocrites completely. Among that is what we heard in the recitation of our imam for the Fajr prayer today.