Al Mizan- Vol 17 Chapter 8

Volume 17 comprises the exegesis of the Qur'an's Sūrah al-Anfāl (Chapter 8). The chapter tells the Muslims to incline towards peace wherever possible, acknowledging the inevitable reality of war and the need for defence. Muslims must not be doormats. As ʿAllāmah notes in his philosophical musings in this chapter, people and societies will always disagree or have opposing interests, so it is only a matter of time before one will attempt to attack, plunder, or assimilate the other. Thus, the human animal—like other animals—is born with faculties that serve no purpose but to fight back.

In fact, Sūrah al-Anfāl is largely about the battle. The name itself, anfāl, refers here primarily to the spoils of war, although it also figures in discussions of the khums tax. Much of the chapter is specifically about the Battle of Badr, to the degree that Ibn ʿAbbās, the famous companion-exegete, is said to have spoken of it as “Sūrah al-Badr.” As usual in the Qur’anic text, Sūrah al-Anfāl provides a supra-human perspective on the Battle of Badr. Rather than providing a beginning-to-end narrative, it highlights key events with a moral component and the role of the metaphysical and the unseen: faith and unfaith, the miraculous, and the divine hand. A more human sort of account—people, places, dates, and names—emerges in the exegesis, which draws heavily upon narrative and historical reports. Thus, in the exegesis, the Battle of Badr is outlined with the sort of detail that humans demand from a story. In the exegesis, we learn who did what, who said what, and who composed which poetry.