وَرَأَيْتَ ٱلنَّاسَ يَدْخُلُونَ فِى دِينِ ٱللَّهِ أَفْوَاجًا
Wa raʾayta'l-nāsa yadkhulūna fī dīni'llāhi afwājā "and you see people entering the religion of God in throngs,"
The second part of the condition. And what is striking is this: an act of witnessing is placed inside the condition.
The sentence could have said "when people enter". It does not; it says "when you see them entering". The one addressed is singular, and he is the Prophet. The occurrence of the event and the seeing of it thus become two distinct conditions.
First, the measure of victory is redefined. The opening was mentioned in the first verse; but the condition did not close there. For the condition to be completed, something further must be seen: people entering. That is, the taking of the city is not yet an outcome by the measure of the sūra. The outcome is the opening not of the city but of people.
Second, it carries the character of good news. In struggles that last a long time most people do not see the outcome. Here the one addressed is told that he will see the outcome with his own eyes.
The root r-ʾ-y in Arabic covers both seeing with the eye and grasping with the mind (from the same root, raʾy — opinion, view). That the object here is a concrete event brings seeing with the eye to the fore.
With the definite article: al-nās — people, the crowd, the populace. Not restricted, not reduced to a tribe or a group.
The scholars of the language differ about the root of the word — it is said to derive from ʾ-n-s (closeness, familiarity) or from n-w-s (to move, to sway). This debate will be taken up in its place in Sūrat al-Nās; the real point here is the word's scope.
The comparison is this: this call had begun with two or three people. In the early years those who believed could be counted one by one; the sources record their names individually. The word now used is not "a group of people" but, straightforwardly, "people". The move from counting individuals to a collective noun is the summary of the process.
The verb is in the imperfect. It does not say "they entered" (dakhalū) but "they are entering". The imperfect here forms a circumstantial clause: what is seen is not a completed event but a movement flowing before the eye. What is described is not a finished statistic but an ongoing stream.
The particle فى (fī) means "into", and here it completes the spatial image. Religion is depicted as a space that is entered — a place that has a door, that one goes into, that one is inside. In the previous verse a door was opened; here people are going in.
The root analysis of the word دِين was carried out in Sūrat al-Māʿūn (d-y-n: debt, submission, receiving what is due, an order in operation). Here the word means "religion in operation, the order that is followed".
The construct دِينِ ٱللَّه also draws a boundary: what is entered is the religion of God; not the religion of a person, of a tribe, or of the winning side. This distinction matters in the context of a conquest, because it is usual in history for the religion of the victor to be called by the victor's name. The verse names the owner of what is entered.
Root f-w-j. Fawj: a body of people moving together, a company, a cluster. Its plural is afwāj. The word can also be understood like a military unit, but in Arabic it carries a more general sense of "group".
The word is plural and indefinite. These two features together give this sense: not one company, but an indefinite number of companies coming one after another. The English renderings "in throngs", "in waves", "in droves" catch this repetition.
Its place in the grammar. The word is in the accusative as a ḥāl (an element expressing state); that is, it tells how the act of entering took place. What is described is not how many entered but the manner of the entering. No number is given; a rhythm is given.
This word is the one-word summary of a twenty-year process, and its force comes exactly from this contrast.
In the first period of the call, to believe was an individual and costly decision. A person set himself against his own tribe, and often against his own family; what he lost was concrete — protection, trade, standing, sometimes safety of life. Under these conditions people came not in floods but one by one, and generally in secret.
Afwājan reverses this picture. Coming no longer requires standing alone; people come as a group. That the biographical sources call the ninth year of the Hijra "the year of the delegations" is the historical counterpart of this picture: tribes joined not individually but collectively, through their representatives.
But this word is not merely a declaration of success. Mass participation has another face as well, and the Qurʾān does not cover that face. A verse revealed in the same period says precisely this to some of those who joined in a mass:
"The Bedouin say, 'We believe.' Say: You do not believe; rather say, 'We have submitted.' For faith has not yet entered your hearts." (al-Ḥujurāt 49/14)
Read inside the picture of afwājan, this verse establishes a balance: participation in crowds is no guarantee of depth. To come through the door and to be inside are not the same thing; as the number of those entering grows, a diversification of the reasons for entering is unavoidable.
This is one of the grounds needed for understanding the command to seek forgiveness in the third verse. The growth of numbers is the most gladdening and at the same time the most perilous moment for a community.