The discourse regarding the interpretation of the statement of Him Whose praise is majestic: ﴿It is those who are the losers (27)﴾

Abu Jaʿfar said: And al-khāsirūn (the losers) is the plural of khāsir (loser) (1), and the losers are those who deprive their own souls of their shares—by their disobedience to Allah—of His mercy, just as a man suffers a loss in his trade when a deduction is made from his capital in his sale (2). Likewise, the disbeliever and the hypocrite lose by Allah's depriving them of His mercy, which He created for His servants on the Day of Resurrection, at the time they are in the direst need of His mercy. It is said of it: khasira al-rajulu yakhsaru khasran wa khusrānan wa khasāran, just as Jarīr ibn ʿAṭiyya said:

Indeed, Salīṭ is in total loss; for they... Are children of a people created as slaves (3)

By his saying "in total loss," he means in that which diminishes their share of nobility and generosity. And it has been said that the meaning of "it is those who are the losers" is: it is those who are the destroyed ones. And it is possible that the one who said that intended what we have stated regarding the destruction of the one whose description Allah described with the attribute He described him with in this verse, through Allah depriving him of what He deprived him of His mercy, because of his disobedience to Him and his disbelief in Him. Thus he carried the interpretation of the discourse according to its general meaning, rather than explaining the literal interpretation of the exact word itself, for the scholars of interpretation sometimes do that due to many reasons that prompt them to it.

And some of them said concerning that what:

575- Was narrated to me on the authority of al-Minjāb, He said: Bishr ibn ʿUmāra narrated to us, from Abū Rawq, from al-Ḍaḥḥāk, from Ibn ʿAbbās, He said: Every term such as "loser" that Allah attributes to other than the people of Islam, He only means by it disbelief; and whatever He attributes to the people of Islam, He only means by it sin.

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