Transliteration:( Sammaa'oona lilkazibi akkaaloona lissuht; fa in jaaa'ooka fahkum bainahum aw a'rid anhum wa in tu'rid 'anhum falany-yadurrooka shai'anw wa in hakamta fahkum bainahum bilqist; innal laaha yuhibbul muqsiteen )
134. From this emerge a few issues:
To talk in slighting terms of a non-believer in his absence is permissible.
2 Bribery, interest, etc are totally forbidden.Â
3. It is permissible to accept gifts and enter into trade with those whose lawful and unlawful income is mixed, because the Holy Prophet ? accepted a gift from Maqwaqis, King of Alexandria, and the noble Companions took loans and entered into trade with the Yahud to whom the Holy QURAN refers as devourers of unlawful things.
135. It should be remembered that it is incumbent upon the ruler to solve the lawsuits of his subjects while it is not necessary that one arbiter should be an arbiter of another. This is left to the will of the person. Here the latter is intended because at that point in time the Yahud of Khaibar were not as yet subjects of the Holy Prophet they would always try to make the Holy Prophet ? an arbitrator to solve their lawsuits, while in the verse "And if you judge between them" the decision of the government is intended. Hence this verse is not abrogated from it. It should be remembered that the giving of a verdict on a religious issue is totally different from the decision of a arbiter. It is obligatory upon a Mufti to give a verdict on at religious issue, while the arbiter is not duty bound to the council.
136. Because Allah Almighty is the protector and the helper of the Holy Prophet.Â
137. In political matters judgement is given in accordance with Islamic law while in matters concerning inheritance and worship, according to their faith.
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The tafsir of Surah Maidah verse 42 by Ibn Kathir is unavailable here.
Please refer to Surah Maidah ayat 41 which provides the complete commentary from verse 41 through 44.
(5:42) They are listeners of falsehood and greedy devourers of unlawful earnings.[69] If they come to you you may either judge between them or turn away from them. And were you to turn away from them they shall not be able to harm you; and were you to judge between them judge with justice. Surely Allah loves the just.[70]
69. Here pointed reference is made to judges and jurisconsults who accept false evidence and invent reports in order to issue verdicts contrary to justice and in favour of either those who bribe them or with whom their illegitimate interests lie.
70. Until then the Jews had not become full-fledged subjects of the Islamic state. Their relations with that state were based on agreements according to which the Jews were to enjoy internal autonomy, and their disputes were to be decided by their own judges and in accordance with their own laws. They were not legally bound to place their disputes either before the Prophet (peace be on him) for adjudication or before the judges appointed by him. But in cases where it appeared against their interests to have their disputes judged according to their own religious law they approached the Prophet (peace be on him) in the hope that the Prophet might have a different ruling.
The particular case referred to here was that of a woman belonging to a respectable family, who was found to be involved in an unlawful sexual relationship with a man. The punishment for this in the Torah was that both be stoned to death (see Deuteronomy 22: 23-4). But the Jews did not want to enforce this punishment. Hence they deliberated among themselves and decided to put the case before the Prophet (peace be on him), with the reservation that his judgement be accepted only if it was other than stoning. The Prophet (peace be on him) decided that the punishment should, in fact, be stoning. When the Jews declined to accept the judgement, the Prophet (peace be on him) asked their rabbis what punishment had been prescribed for such a case in their religion. They replied that it was to strike the culprit with lashes, to blacken the face and to make the person concerned ride on a donkey. The Prophet (peace be on him) asked them under oath if the Torah had indeed prescribed that as punishment for adultery committed by married men and women. They repeated the same false reply. However, one of them called Ibn Sawriya who, according to the Jews themselves, was the greatest living scholar of the Torah at that time, kept silent. The Prophet (peace be on him) asked him to state on oath in the name of God, Who had emancipated them from Pharaoh and had given them the Law, whether the punishment for adultery provided for in the Torah was what they had mentioned. He replied: ‘Had you not put me under such a heavy oath, I would not have volunteered the correct information. The fact is that the prescribed punishment for adultery is indeed stoning, but when adultery became common among us our rulers adopted the rule that when respectable people committed adultery they were left unpunished, whereas when ordinary people were convicted they were punished by stoning. Later on when this caused resentment among the common people we altered the law of the Torah and adopted the rule that adulterers and adulteresses would be lashed, their faces would be blackened, and they would be made to ride on donkeys, seated in a backward-looking position.’ This left the Jews with nothing to say and the adulterer and adulteress were, in accordance with the order of the Prophet (peace be on him), stoned to death. (Ibn Kathir, Tafsir, vol. 3, pp. 574-5 – Ed.)
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