God is the only mawla (lord and master) of people. See 2:286.

The word hadith (word, utterance) occurs twice in the Quran in connection with Muhammed. One is here; the other is at 33:53. Here the sharing or reporting of the hadith heard from Muhammed is criticized and in verse 33:53, listening to the hadith of Muhammed is criticized. Knowing that polytheists would create other authorities besides His word and call them hadith, sunna and ijma, God convicted those words. See 33:38; 45:6.

This verse has been generally mistranslated in traditional translations, since they include controllers and believers to be Muhammed's mawla (lord/patron/master). There is only one mawla, and it is none other than God. See 2:286.

Traditional translations mistranslate the last three adjectives used here to describe Muslim women. They distort their meaning as “fasters, widows and virgins.” When the issue is about women, somehow, the meaning of the Quranic words passes trough rapid mutations. For instance, we know that the Sunni and Shiite scholars who could not beat cows and examples found it convenient and fair to beat women (see 4:34). Those of us who have rejected other religious sources besides the Quran are still struggling to clean our minds from these innovations that even have sneaked into the Arabic language long after the revelation of the Quran. There is, in fact, nothing whatsoever about fasting, widows and virgins in this verse. We are rediscovering and relearning the Quran.

The third word from the end of the verse, SaYiHat, which we have translated as "active in their societies" simply means to travel or move around for a cause. About two century after the revelation of the Quran, when the rights of women were one by one were taken through all-male enterprises called hadith, ijtihad and tafseer, Muslim communities found themselves thinking and living like the enemies of Islam in the Days of Ignorance. The misogynistic mind of orthodox commentators and translators simply could not fathom the notion of a Muslim woman traveling around alone to do anything – and so they pretended that the word in question was not SaYaHa, but SsaWM – fasting! Socially active women were indeed more difficult to control than the women who would fast in their homes; they were even less costly, since they would eat less. For the usage of the verb form of the root, see 9:2. The word SaYaHa has nothing to do with fasting; the Quran consistently uses the word SaWaMa for fasting (2:183; 4:92; 5:89; 19:26; 33:35; 58:4).

The second word from the end is THaYiBat, which means “those who return, or those who are responsive”. Various derivatives of the same root are used to mean “reward” or “refuge” or “cloths”. For instance, see 2:125; 3:195. The Arabic words for widow are ARMiLa or AYaMa. The Quran uses AYaMa for widow or single; see: 24:32.

The last word of this verse, aBKaR, which means those who are "young," "early risers" or "foremost," has traditionally, and implausibly, been interpreted as "virgins" in this passage. The resulting distorted meaning of the verse supports a sectarian teaching that justifies a man marrying more than one virgin. The Arabic word for virgin is BaTuL or ADRa.

This false interpretation has become so popular that it is apparently now considered beyond any challenge. Excluding Edip Yuksel's Turkish translation, Mesaj; published in 1999, we have not seen any published translation that does not duplicate this centuries-old error. For a comparative discussion of this verse, see the Sample Comparisons section in the Introduction.

See 2:48.