the end of the verse, he said: These are the hypocrites, they seek to deceive God, His Messenger, and those who believe, that they are believers by what they manifested (1).

And this verse is among the clearest evidence of God's, may His praise be exalted, declaring as liars those who claim: that God does not punish any of His servants except one who disbelieved in Him out of stubbornness, after his knowledge of His Oneness, and after the correctness of what he stubbornly opposed his Lord, blessed and exalted is He, regarding His Oneness, and the affirmation of His Books and His Messengers, was established with him. Because God, may His praise be exalted, has informed about those He described with what He described them of hypocrisy, and their deceiving Him and the believers - that they do not perceive that they are upon falsehood in the falsehood they are persisting in, and that by their deception - by which they reckon they are deceiving their Lord and the people of faith in Him - they are deceived. Then He, may His mention be exalted, informed that they have a painful punishment for their denial of what they used to deny of the prophethood of His Prophet, and believing in disbelief in him, and for what they used to lie in their claim that they are believers, while they are persisting in disbelief.

So if a questioner says to us: You have known that the "mufāʿala" (reciprocal form) only occurs between two doers, like your saying: "I mutually struck your brother" (ḍārabtu akhāka), and "I mutually sat with your father" (jālastu abāka) - if each one is sitting with and striking his companion. But if the action is from one of them, it is only said: "I struck your brother" (ḍarabtu akhāka), and "I sat next to your father" (jalastu ilā abīka). So who did the hypocrite mutually deceive, such that it is permissible to say of him: "He mutually deceived God and the believers"?

It is said: Some of those attributed to knowledge of the dialects of the Arabs (2) have said: That is a word that came in this form, I mean "yukhādiʿ" (seeks to deceive) in the form of "yufāʿil", while it is in the meaning of "yafʿal" (does), among similar anomalous words from the speech of the Arabs, analogous to their saying: "qātalaka Allāh" (may God fight you), meaning "qatalaka Allāh" (may God kill you).

And the statement regarding that, in my view, is not like what he said, but rather that is from "tafāʿul" (reciprocity) which only occurs between two, like the rest of what is known of the meaning of "yufāʿil" and "mufāʿil" in all the speech of the Arabs. And that is: that the hypocrite deceives God, may His praise be exalted, by his lying with his tongue - as has already preceded