Al-Mumtahanah · Madani · ayah 9 of 13

Al-Mumtahanah 60:9

إِنَّمَا يَنْهَىٰكُمُ ٱللَّهُ عَنِ ٱلَّذِينَ قَـٰتَلُوكُمْ فِى ٱلدِّينِ وَأَخْرَجُوكُم مِّن دِيَـٰرِكُمْ وَظَـٰهَرُوا۟ عَلَىٰٓ إِخْرَاجِكُمْ أَن تَوَلَّوْهُمْ ۚ وَمَن يَتَوَلَّهُمْ فَأُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ هُمُ ٱلظَّـٰلِمُونَ

“Allāh only forbids you from those who fight you because of religion and expel you from your homes and aid in your expulsion - [forbids] that you make allies[1675] of them. And whoever makes allies of them, then it is those who are the wrongdoers.”

Saheeh International

Essence

The only alliance genuinely forbidden here is with people who fought you, expelled you, or actively helped expel you, nothing wider than that.

A reflection

One small word doing all the narrowing

The ayah opens with innamā, only, a particle whose entire grammatical function is to restrict what follows to exactly what is named and nothing beyond it. Paired with the previous ayah's plain statement that kindness and justice toward peaceful people is not forbidden at all, this single word closes off any wider reading of what remains off-limits.

What innamā restricts the prohibition to is named with equal precision: those who fought believers over their religion, those who drove them from their homes, and those who aided in that expulsion. Three specific categories of conduct, each one an act of active aggression already carried out, not a disposition, an identity, or a difference of belief held quietly and never acted upon.

A reader who takes this ayah to mean broad wariness toward anyone outside the faith has to read past innamā to get there, treating a word whose entire purpose is narrowing as though it were not there at all. The ayah is doing the opposite of what a surface reading, lifted from its own grammar, might suggest. It is drawing the smallest possible circle around what remains forbidden, immediately after the previous ayah drew the largest possible circle around what is not merely allowed but loved.

Few single words in the Quran carry as much weight, in context, as this one does here.

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.