Exegesis of the saying of Allah the Exalted: ((And he was among the disbelievers))

Some scholars have claimed that the meaning is that he was among the disbelievers in the knowledge of Allah, based on the fact that *kana* is a past tense verb, and the past tense indicates something prior, so the meaning of is in the knowledge of Allah. However, there is a better derivation than this, which is to say: *kana* sometimes comes stripped of time, and it is intended to mean the realization of the description of the described subject with this attribute. An example of this is the saying of Allah the Exalted: and the like. The meaning here is not that it was in the past, but rather that it continues. Thus, *kana* here is stripped of time, and it is intended to confirm the attribution of the described subject to what the sentence indicates. This is the closest interpretation, and it involves no figurative interpretation (ta'wil); the statement proceeds according to its apparent meaning because he is not all of the disbelievers, but he is among them.