They engage in mockery of Our signs and in disparaging them. The Quraysh used to do this in their gatherings. So turn away from them and do not sit with them, and rise from them until they engage in a conversation other than this. There is no harm in sitting with them then. And if the devil causes you to forget, and he distracts you with his whispering until you forget the prohibition against sitting with them. [Mawood said: "Its meaning is that if he distracts you with his whispering until you forget the prohibition..." Ahmad said: "This second interpretation aims to apply the principle of rational good and evil, and it is sufficient even if there is no legal ruling on prohibition and other rulings if they are clear to the mind, like sitting with mockers, for its ugliness is evident to reason, so it is independent in its prohibition. Where the law has come regarding it, it reveals its ruling and is based upon it, not creating a ruling in it. You have known the invalidity of this principle and its contradiction to the Sunni beliefs, and the verse does not support it. For if the forgetfulness intended here is the forgetting of the ruling indicated by reason before the prohibition came, it would not have been expressed in the future tense in the saying: 'And if the devil causes you to forget.' Since it has come in the future tense, there is no reason to interpret it as the past. And Allah is the Grantor of success.] So do not sit with them after the reminder, after We have reminded you of the prohibition. And it has been read: 'He will cause you to forget' with emphasis.

It may be intended: And if the devil causes you to forget before the prohibition. [The saying: 'The devil causes you to forget before the prohibition' is based on the belief that there is a ruling before the law, which is the view of the Mu'tazila, while the Ahl al-Sunnah hold that there is no ruling before the law.] The ugliness of sitting with mockers is something that reason rejects. So do not sit after the reminder, after We have reminded you of its ugliness and alerted you to it. And there is no blame on those who are pious regarding their account of them. And there is nothing that the pious who sit with them are accountable for from their sins. But they should remind them as a reminder if they hear them engaging in mockery, by standing up from them, showing dislike for them, and advising them, perhaps they may be pious, perhaps they may avoid engaging in mockery out of shyness or dislike for their mockery. And it may be that the pronoun refers to those who are pious, meaning they remind them in order to remain steadfast in their piety and increase it. It has been reported that the Muslims said: 'If we were to stand every time they mocked the Qur'an, we would not be able to sit in the Sacred Mosque or perform Tawaf.' So it was made permissible for them. If you ask: What is the position of the reminder? I say: It may be in the accusative as: 'But they remind them as a reminder,' meaning as a reminder. And it may be in the nominative as: 'But they have a reminder.'

And it is not permissible for it to be an addition to the position of 'from anything,' like saying: 'There is no one in the house but Zaid,' because the phrase 'from their account' rejects that.