وَلَوْ نَشَآءُ لَأَرَيْنَٰكَهُمْ فَلَعَرَفْتَهُم بِسِيمَٰهُمْ ۚ وَلَتَعْرِفَنَّهُمْ فِى لَحْنِ ٱلْقَوْلِ ۚ وَٱللَّهُ يَعْلَمُ أَعْمَٰلَكُمْ
Wa law nashaaa'u la-arainaakahum fala 'araftahum bi seemaahum; wa lata'rifan nahum fee lahnil qawl; wallaahu ya'lamu a'maalakum
And if We willed, We could show them to you, and you would know them by their mark; but you will surely know them by the tone of [their] speech. And Allah knows your deeds.
Themes in this ayah
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Hypocrisy
47:30Ayah 138
5 ayahs in Muhammad are strongly about hypocrisy. This is one of them.
Tafsir
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And if We will We could show them to you We could have pointed them out to you the lām is repeated in the following fa-la-‘araftahum then you would recognise them by their mark. And you will certainly recognise them wa-la-ta‘rifannahum the wāw is for an omitted oath and what follows it fī lahni’l-qawl is its response by their tone of speech that is to say by the meaning thereof when they speak in your presence alluding as they do to what amounts to a scathing attack upon the Muslims; and God knows your deeds.
Related Hadiths
My people would come to me on the Cistern and I would drive away persons (from it) just as a person drives away other people's camels from his camels. They (the hearers) said: Apostle of Allah, would you recognize us? He replied: Yea, you would have a mark which other people will not have. You would come to me with a white blaze on your foreheads and white marks on your feet because of the traces of ablution. A group among you would be prevented from coming to me, and they would not meet me, and I would say: O my Lord, they are my companions. Upon this an angel would reply to me saying: Do you know what these people did after you.
People were (sometimes) judged by the revealing of a Divine Inspiration during the lifetime of Allah's
Apostle but now there is no longer any more (new revelation). Now we judge you by the deeds you
practice publicly, so we will trust and favor the one who does good deeds in front of us, and we will
not call him to account about what he is really doing in secret, for Allah will judge him for that; but
we will not trust or believe the one who presents to us with an evil deed even if he claims that his
intentions were good.
"It was said: 'O Messenger of Allah, how will you recognize those whom you have not seen of your Ummah?' He said: 'From the blazes of their foreheads and feet, like horses with black and white traces (which make them distinct from others) which are the traces of ablution.'" (Hasan)
Another chain with similar wording.
I recognise the voice of the Ash'arites while they recite the Qur'an as they arrive during the night and I also recognise their station from the recital of the Qur'an during the night time, although I have not seen their encampments as they encamp during the day time. And there is a person amongst them, Hakim; when he encounters the horsemen or the enemies he says to them: My friends command you to wait for them.
If you want, I can certainly show you the marks of the hand of the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) on the wall where he took a bath because of sexual defilement.
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