Al-Mumtahanah · Madani · ayah 8 of 13

Al-Mumtahanah 60:8

لَّا يَنْهَىٰكُمُ ٱللَّهُ عَنِ ٱلَّذِينَ لَمْ يُقَـٰتِلُوكُمْ فِى ٱلدِّينِ وَلَمْ يُخْرِجُوكُم مِّن دِيَـٰرِكُمْ أَن تَبَرُّوهُمْ وَتُقْسِطُوٓا۟ إِلَيْهِمْ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ يُحِبُّ ٱلْمُقْسِطِينَ

“Allāh does not forbid you from those who do not fight you because of religion and do not expel you from your homes - from being righteous toward them and acting justly toward them. Indeed, Allāh loves those who act justly.”

Saheeh International

Essence

Toward anyone who has genuinely not fought you or driven you from your own home, Allah does not merely permit kindness and fairness, He actively loves it.

A reflection

Not tolerated. Loved.

The ayah could have stopped after its first half, having simply lifted a restriction: Allah does not forbid you from kindness and justice toward these people. That alone would have settled the question. Instead it adds a second sentence that changes the whole register of what is being said: Allah loves those who act justly.

This is a meaningfully different claim from bare permission. A rule that merely tolerates something treats it as a neutral option among others, acceptable but unremarkable. A rule that names something as loved by Allah places it among the deliberately cultivated virtues, the ones worth actively seeking out rather than simply not avoiding. The ayah does not leave kindness toward peaceful non-believers in the first category. It places it firmly in the second.

This matters for how the instruction should actually be lived. A person who treats fairness toward someone of a different faith as a reluctant concession, the minimum the rules allow, has technically obeyed the ayah's first half while missing its second half entirely. The ayah is not describing a grudging accommodation. It is describing something Allah is said to love, in the same register the Quran uses for the patient, the repentant, and those who purify themselves.

A principle this is worth holding in view whenever kindness toward someone outside one's own community starts to feel like an obligation grudgingly met rather than a quality worth actually wanting to have.

The full entry has 5 more reflections, questions to sit with, and "Live it today" - with the words, the roots and the tafsir alongside. Free, no account, works offline.