فَضْلًا مِّنَ اللَّهِ وَنِعْمَةً ۚ وَاللَّهُ عَلِيمٌ حَكِيمٌ (8)
(49:8) by Allah's favour and bounty. *10 Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise. *11
*10) It means this: The whole community of the believers has not committed the error that was committed by those few people who wanted the Holy Prophet to act as they counseled, and the believing community s remaining steadfast on the right path was due to the reason that Allah by His bounty and grace had endeared to them the path of the Faith and made unbelief, wrongdoing and disobedience abhorrent to them. The addressees in the two parts of this verse are two separate groups. The sentence beginning with lau yuti'ukum is not addressed to the entire class of the Companions but only to those particular Companions who were insisting that the Bani al-Mustaliq should be attacked at once, and the sentence beginning with wa lakin-naIlaha . . , is addressed to the general class of the Companions who would never dare insist on their own opinion and view before the Holy Messenger of Allah, but had full faith in his leadership and remained steadfast on the path of obedience, which is, and should he, the demand of true Faith. From this it cannot be concluded that those who had insisted on their own opinion were devoid of the love of the Faith, but what becomes obvious from this is that they had become forgetful of this demand of the Faith because of which they made the error of insisting on their own opinion in the presence of the Holy Prophet. Therefore, Allah first warned them of their error, then of its evil consequences, and finally stated that the right attitude for a believer was the one that had been adopted by the generality of the Companions.
*11) That is, "Allah does not bestow His bounty and favour blindly, but He grants this great blessing to whomever He grants on the basis of wisdom and His knowledge that he is worthy of it. "