Transliteration:( Zaalika bi annahum aamanoo summa kafaroo fatubi'a 'alaa quloobihim fahum laa yafqahoon )
8. Now, their inner infidelity is revealed to the people. Here, 'reveal' denotes infidelity. otherwise even at the time of reciting the Kalimah these hypocrites had infidelity in their hearts. Thus,there is no objection to this verse.
9. This means due to their evil practices, the hearts of the hypocrites have been sealed. How can faith now enter their hearts? Thus, there is no objection against the verse, that since their hearts have been sealed, they are innocent.
The tafsir of Surah Munafiqun verse 3 by Ibn Kathir is unavailable here.
Please refer to Surah Munafiqun ayat 1 which provides the complete commentary from verse 1 through 4.
(63:3) All that is because they first believed and then disbelieved, and therefore a seal was set on their hearts; as a result they understand nothing.[4]
4. In this verse believing means professing the faith in order to be counted among Muslims, and disbelieving means not to believe sincerely and to persist in disbelief as usual. The verse means to say that when they, after due thought, decided to adopt this hypocritical attitude instead of adopting either belief or disbelief plainly, Allah caused a seal to be set on their hearts and deprived them of the grace to adopt the attitude and conduct of a true, sincere and noble person. Now, their power of understanding has been lost, their moral sense has become dead, and while following this way they never even feel that their habit of always telling lies, their deceitful behavior and the ever present contradictions between their word and deed is a wretched state in which they have involved themselves.
This is one of those verses in which the meaning of “causing a seal to be set on the heart of somebody by Allah” has been made clear. These people did not become hypocrites because Allah had set a seal on their hearts; so faith did not enter them, and they became hypocrites under compulsion. But, in fact, Allah set a seal on their hearts only when they decided to persist in disbelief in spite of professing the faith outwardly. Then, they were deprived of the capacity to believe sincerely and of the grace of the moral attitude resulting from it, and were helped to persist in the hypocrisy and hypocritical morals, which they had chosen to adopt for themselves.
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