“When it is said to them, ‘Come, and the Messenger of Allah will seek forgiveness for you,’ they turn their heads aside, and you see them turning away in arrogance. It is all the same to them whether you seek forgiveness for them or do not seek forgiveness for them: Allah will never forgive them. Indeed, Allah does not guide the defiantly disobedient people.”

“When it is said to them, ‘Come, and the Messenger of Allah will seek forgiveness for you,’ they turn their heads aside”: that is, they turn away and avert their faces, unwilling to seek forgiveness. Nafiʿ and Yaʿqub recited it as lawaw, without gemination, while the others recited it with gemination, because they did so time after time.

“And you see them turning away”: they turn away from that to which they were called, “while they are arrogant”: too proud for the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, to seek forgiveness for them. “It is all the same to them whether you seek forgiveness for them,” O Muhammad, “or do not seek forgiveness for them: Allah will never forgive them. Indeed, Allah does not guide the defiantly disobedient people.”

Muhammad ibn Ishaq and others related from a group of scholars of prophetic biography that word reached the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, that the Banu al-Mustaliq were gathering to wage war against him, and that their commander was al-Harith ibn Abi Dirar, the father of [Juwayriyyah] (1), the Prophet’s wife