Repentance
[9:97]
[The hypocrites among] the bedouin are more tenacious in [their] refusal to acknowledge the truth and in [their] hypocrisy [than are settled people], and more liable to ignore the ordinances which God has bestowed from on high upon His Apostle but God is all-knowing, wise.
* v.97 : The words interpolated by me between brackets at the beginning of this sentence are based on the interpretation given by Rāzī (see also Manār XI, 8), obviously in view of verse 99, which speaks of believers among the bedouin.
* Owing to their nomadic way of life and its inherent hardship and crudity, the bedouin find it more difficult than do settled people to be guided by ethical imperatives unconnected with their immediate tribal interests a difficulty which is still further enhanced by their physical distance from the centres of higher culture and, consequently, their comparative ignorance of most religious demands. It was for this reason that the Prophet often stressed the superiority of a settled mode of life to a nomadic one: cf. his saying, He who dwells in the desert (al-bādiyah) becomes rough in disposition, recorded by Tirmidhī, Abū Dāūd, Nasāī, and Ibn Hanbal on the authority of Ibn Abbās, and a similar Tradition, on the authority of Abū Hurayrah, by Abū Dāūd and Bayhaqī.