109. Sūrat al-Kāfirūn

Six short verses. The most repetitive sūra in the Qurʾān, and probably one of the most misunderstood.

The sūra does one thing: it refuses an offer. But the form of the refusal says more than the refusal itself. There is no threat in the sūra, no insult, no proof, no invitation. The falsity of the other side's belief is not even argued. A boundary is simply drawn, and that boundary is drawn over and over across four verses, with different grammatical instruments.

This is the central question of the sūra as far as language is concerned: why is saying the same thing four times not repetition? Two of the verses are word for word identical; and the difference between two others barely survives into English at all. The longest part of this section is given over to that question, because the heart of the sūra is there.

The name comes from the address in the first verse: al-Kāfirūn.

In the tradition the sūra is called by several other names as well, and these names show how it was understood:

• al-Barāʾa / al-Barāʾat — "keeping away, cutting one's connection". This name became widespread because in a report we shall take up below the sūra is characterised as "dissociation from shirk". (Note: Sūrat al-Tawba is also called Barāʾa; the two must not be confused.)
• al-Munābadha — "parting from one another mutually, ending a relationship openly".
• al-Muqashqisha — its root means to cure of a disease; the name was given on the thought that the sūra purifies its reciter of shirk. It is transmitted that this name is used for Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ as well.
• al-Dīn and al-ʿIbāda — from the key words of the last verse and of the repeated verses.

All of these names are listed together in late sources; I do not speak with certainty about how early any one of them came into use.

There is something close to unanimity that the sūra is Meccan. The event transmitted as the occasion of revelation belongs to the Meccan period, and the content of the sūra — a community not yet possessed of power declaring the boundary of its identity — fits the Meccan context.

As was touched on in the section on al-Ikhlāṣ, five sūras in the Qurʾān open with this imperative: al-Jinn (72), al-Kāfirūn (109), al-Ikhlāṣ (112), al-Falaq (113), al-Nās (114). These are not texts of pronouncement but of avowal; that the speaker did not take his words from himself is marked by the first word.

In al-Kāfirūn this imperative has a further function. The sūra is an answer to an offer of negotiation; and in a negotiation the question of the answering party's authority is decisive. "Qul" says this: I am not giving this answer on my own behalf, and therefore I have no authority to bargain over it either. A messenger cannot alter the words of the one who sent him.

Al-Kawthar (108) ends by saying "the one who reviles you is the one cut off"; al-Kāfirūn begins immediately afterwards with "O disbelievers!". The two sūras seem to carry on speaking about the same set of addressees.

On the other hand the relation between al-Kāfirūn and al-Ikhlāṣ (112) is deeper, and will be taken up below under a separate heading: one is a text of negation (nafy), the other of affirmation (ithbāt).

The event transmitted as the reason for the sūra's descent is this — and it must be said at the outset that it is a report:

A group of the leading men of Quraysh bring the Prophet an offer of compromise. The substance of the offer is that service be shared by turns: "For a year let us serve your god, and for a year you serve our gods." In some transmissions the term is "a year", in others it differs; in some the offer takes the form "leave some of what we worship alone, and we shall leave yours alone". The sūra came down upon this.

In the reports several leading men of Quraysh are named among those who brought the offer. I do not list these names here, because different transmissions give different lists and it is not firmly determinable which name was really inside this event. The common core of the reports is not the names but the content of the offer — and that is what matters for exegesis.

The logic of the offer is worth dwelling on. Seen from within that world this was a reasonable, even a generous, proposal. For the religious structure of Mecca was inclusive: a great many idols were housed in the Kaʿba, different tribes had different gods, and adding a new god to the pantheon was an ordinary operation. As far as the Meccans were concerned, room could be made for Muḥammad's god too; the only thing asked was reciprocity.

That is, the offer was not saying "give it up". It was saying "only accept ours as well". What was refused was not a coercion but an offer of inclusion. To understand the hardness of the sūra one must see this: the sūra is answering not an injustice but an offer of compromise.

And the ground of the refusal lies here too. Accepting the offer would not have added to the number of gods; it would have changed the nature of service. Service performed by turns is not service — because exclusivity belongs to the definition of service. An attachment that can be shared ceases to be an attachment.

Qul yā ayyuha'l-kāfirūn "Say: O disbelievers!"

In Arabic, yā ayyuhā is the pattern of address directed at an addressee who is at a distance or whose attention needs to be caught. It is one of the most familiar forms of address in the Qurʾān: yā ayyuha'n-nās (O people), yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū (O you who believe).

That this pattern is chosen here shows that the answer is given openly and to the face. The sūra is not an inward assessment, a memorandum or a third-person narration; it is a word spoken directly to an addressee. The offer had been made openly, and the answer is given openly too.

Root: ك-ف-ر. The concrete sense of the root is to cover, to conceal, to put something over a thing. This concrete sense is alive in Arabic:

• The night is called kāfir — because it covers everything over.
• The farmer is called kāfir — because he covers the seed with soil. The Qurʾān records this usage itself: "…like a growth that pleases the tillers (al-kuffār)…" (al-Ḥadīd 57/20). This verse is important for seeing the root sense of the word: the same word occurs there in the sense of "sowers", carrying no negative charge at all.
• From the same root, kaffāra — the amends that cover over a fault.
• Kufrān al-niʿma — covering over a favour given, that is, ingratitude.

The technical sense in the Qurʾān comes out of this concrete root: covering the truth over, closing it off knowingly. The word describes not an ignorance but an attitude. And indeed, in most of the situations the Qurʾān characterises as kufr the addressee possesses the knowledge; the problem lies not in the absence of knowledge but in its being covered.

In the verse the word comes with the article: al-kāfirūn. This is the source of an important debate in the history of exegesis, and the reason for the debate is this:

In the third and fifth verses the sūra tells the addressees "you are not ones who serve what I serve". This expression conveys continuity (as we shall see below). Yet many of the Meccan mushrikūn later became Muslims. From this a question arises: how is the sūra's statement to be understood?

Several answers are given in the classical commentaries:

I say nothing definite about which of these explanations is to be preferred. But the last two accord better with the sūra as a whole, and they preserve this principle: the Qurʾān's address is directed at an attribute; it does not set a seal on a person. When a person changes his attribute he passes out of the scope of the address. The addressee of the sūra is not "those men" but "those who persist in that attitude".

This distinction is decisive for how the sūra is read today as well. The verse is not passing a wholesale ruling on a community; it is describing a position. Whoever is in that position, the address is to him; whoever is not, it is not.

Note one thing: the first verse is a vocative call, and a vocative call is not by itself a sentence. Someone has been called, but nothing has yet been said. The verse is left waiting on what comes after it.

This establishes the rhythm of the sūra: a call, then five verses of answer. And this gap between the call and the answer increases the weight of the answer.

Lā aʿbudu mā taʿbudūn "I do not serve what you serve."

Root: ع-ب-د. The concrete field of the root needs dwelling on, because the English word "worship" has narrowed over time and now suggests hardly anything beyond ritual.

The root sense is bending the neck, being under obedience. ʿAbd: slave, servant. And there is this usage in the language: طريق مُعبَّد (ṭarīq muʿabbad) — a road much trodden, levelled and softened by being walked over and over. That is, beneath the root lies the picture of being softened by treading, letting go of one's resistance.

The conclusion that follows is this: service is, before it is a series of acts performed, a position — placing oneself beneath a will. The rituals are the expression of that position, not the thing itself.

This distinction is necessary for understanding the sūra. Quraysh's offer was an exchange at the level of ritual: "you bow before ours, we shall bow before yours." The sūra's refusal is at the level of position: it is impossible to place oneself beneath two separate wills at once.

The verse says mā taʿbudūn: "the thing you serve". In Arabic, مَنْ (man, who) is normally used for rational beings; مَا (mā, what) is for non-rational beings and objects.

Using mā for idols conforms to this rule: they are objects. But in the third and fifth verses the sūra uses mā for God as well: mā aʿbud — "what I serve". This is a situation that calls for explanation, and the exegetes offer several:

The second explanation is especially interesting, because it moves the sūra somewhere else: the issue becomes not only "who is being worshipped" but "how is worship being done". A service that is mediated, shared, arrangeable in turns is not the same act as an exclusive service. The two explanations do not exclude one another.

This verse is a verbal sentence, and the verb is in the imperfect (muḍāriʿ — the form covering habitual, present and future): lā aʿbudu.

Let us record two points separately, because both will change in the fourth verse:

1. The verbal sentence. In Arabic a verbal sentence conveys ḥudūth — coming-to-be, occurrence, renewal. It speaks of whether an act happens or not.

2. The imperfect. Lā + imperfect covers the present and the future. It does not reach back into the past.

So what this verse says is: "From this moment on I do not serve what you serve, and I shall not serve it." The offer concerned the future ("for a year you serve ours"), and the answer cuts off the future.

The movement of the sūra from here on is to close the gaps this sentence leaves. Because to say that an act will not be done is not the same as saying that the act will never have been done. That difference is established in the fourth verse.

Wa lā antum ʿābidūna mā aʿbud "Nor are you ones who serve what I serve."

In this verse the grammatical structure differs from the one before, and the difference passes into English only with difficulty.

• Verse 2: lā aʿbudu — a verb. "I do not serve."
• Verse 3: lā antum ʿābidūna — a nominal sentence (subject + predicate), the predicate being an active participle. Word for word: "you are not ones who serve."

In English it is possible to render both as "you do not serve", and most translations do. But this makes the whole structure of the sūra invisible.

What the nominal sentence conveys: fixity and continuance. In Arabic a nominal sentence expresses not the occurrence of an event but the stability of a state. A verbal sentence says "he is doing"; a nominal sentence says "he is one who does". The second touches the person's attribute.

The active participle reinforces this. ʿĀbid means "a person who serves" — it qualifies not the act but the agent. Negated: "you are not of the serving kind", "you have no such attribute".

For this reason a more accurate English rendering of the verse is: "You are not people who will serve what I serve." It negates not an event but a disposition.

The verse also invalidates the second half of the offer. Quraysh had said "we too will serve your god". The sūra does not accept this — and the ground of the refusal is interesting: it says that they will not serve God.

At first sight this is strange, because the Meccan mushrikūn did not deny God. The Qurʾān records this in several places: when they were asked who created the heavens and the earth, they said "God" (al-ʿAnkabūt 29/61-63). They also defended their worship of intermediaries with the reason "so that they may bring us near to God" (al-Zumar 39/3).

What the verse says is this: a worship with partners is not worship of God. A God accepted as a member of the pantheon is not the God described by Sūrat al-Ikhlāṣ. That is, even if the mushrikūn were to "serve God" for a year, the thing they served — within the logic of the offer — would be something else. The sūra states that even if the offer were carried out there would be no service there at all.

Wa lā ana ʿābidun mā ʿabadtum "Nor am I one who serves what you have served."

This verse looks as though it says the same thing as the second. In English both come out as "I do not worship what you worship". Yet in Arabic there is a change in two separate places, and both are laden with meaning.

Change 1 — On my side: verbal sentence → nominal sentence.

• Verse 2: lā aʿbudu — a verbal sentence. It negates the act.
• Verse 4: lā ana ʿābidun — a nominal sentence with an active participle. It negates the attribute.

Change 2 — On your side: imperfect → perfect.

• Verse 2: mā taʿbudūn — imperfect. "What you serve at present."
• Verse 4: mā ʿabadtum — perfect (past). "What you served / have served."

When the two changes are put together, the verses divide the work as follows:

So the sūra is closing two separate doors:

The first door — time. Verse 2 cuts off the future; the ʿabadtum of verse 4 brings the past within range too. The sentence "I do not serve now" is open to the objection "but you used to". Verse 4 closes that objection: none of them, including what you served in the past.

The second door — quality. The sentence "I am not doing it" keeps alive the possibility "you could have, but you chose not to". A choice can change; it is open to negotiation. The nominal sentence removes that possibility: the matter is not a choice but an identity. Not "I do not do it" but "I am not one who does it".

When these two are put together the whole of the answer is: "At this moment I do not do it, and at no time am I one who does it." The first is a notification, the second a definition. And a definition cannot be negotiated.

Why this order? First the verb, then the noun. There is a logic to this: the verbal sentence is a direct answer to the offer — the offer asked for an act, and the answer refuses that act. The nominal sentence is a step above: it says that the refusal is not a temporary stance but something about what the person is. First "no" is said, then it is shown why the "no" is not negotiable.

It must be stated that the third and fifth verses are word for word identical. These are the pair of verses that are fully repeated in the sūra. The change lies between the second and fourth verses.

This puts the question of repetition in the following shape: the two sentences on my side are different, and the difference was shown above; the two sentences on your side are the same. The heading below takes up the explanations of this second state of affairs.

This is the question at which almost every commentary written on the sūra stops. The principal explanations:

Assessment. These explanations do not have to be alternatives to one another. The text itself gives the following with certainty: (1) there is a real grammatical difference between the second and fourth verses, and that difference carries meaning; (2) the third and fifth verses are the same. The first fact supports the "difference of time and quality" explanation, the second supports the "emphasis" explanation. That is, the sūra is probably doing both at once: it establishes a distinction on its own side and insists on the other side.

There is something meaningful in this. In setting out its own position it makes a fine distinction (what I do, what I am); in setting out the other side's position it says the same sentence twice. It is as if it were saying: on my side what has to be said is detailed, on your side what has to be said is single, and repeating it is enough.

And there is a fact of rhythm as well: when the sūra is recited, this repetition is heard like a door closing. The same sentence coming twice produces an emphasis that shuts the subject. The text is not only saying something; it is also announcing that what it has said is closed.

Wa lā antum ʿābidūna mā aʿbud "Nor are you ones who serve what I serve."

The text is identical with the third verse; its analysis was made above.

Here let us look only at the balance the sūra has built up to this point. Four verses, two sides, two sentences each:

Note: no verbal sentence at all is constructed for the other side. Their sentences are nominal sentences both times. As an attempted reading — this is my own inference, not a transmitted report — this arrangement may show the following: the speaker declares on his own side both his act and his identity; about the other side he makes only an assessment of state, and does not speak about their acts. Of himself he can say "I do not do it"; of another, only "you are not such".

Lakum dīnukum wa liya dīn "To you your religion, and to me mine."

Root: د-ي-ن. This root carries a wide and internally connected field of meaning in Arabic:

• Debt — dayn. To be bound to someone, to be under obligation.
• Obedience, submission — dāna lahū: he obeyed him, he became his follower.
• Judgment, verdict, requital — dāna: he judged, he called to account, he gave the recompense. The māliki yawmi'd-dīn (master of the day of reckoning) of al-Fātiḥa is in this sense.
• Way, custom, course — the order of life a community adopts.

The common core of these senses is a relation of boundness: the debtor is bound to the creditor, the obedient to the one obeyed, the one who renders account to the one who calls for it. Dīn is that boundness in institutional form.

It is worth dwelling here on the sense in which the word is used. In the verse dīn is not "a form of worship" in the narrow sense; it is the whole of one's boundness — to whom one is bound, to whom one renders account, to what order one is subject. The first five verses of the sūra spoke of service; the sixth verse carries the matter to the whole and closes it.

The normal order of the sentence would be dīnukum lakum: "your religion is yours". In the verse, however, lakum has been brought forward.

In Arabic an element pulled forward from its normal place acquires ikhtiṣāṣ (exclusive assignment). The sentence becomes: "your religion belongs to you alone, not to anyone else". The same structure is repeated in the second half: liya dīn — "the religion that belongs to me".

That is, the verse draws a boundary of ownership and responsibility twice, with the same grammatical instrument. This boundary runs both ways: yours does not pass to me, mine does not pass to you.

The dropping of the yāʾ for the sake of the verse-end. The word should properly have been dīnī (my religion); the first-person yāʾ at the end has been dropped and dīn remains. The reason is the verse-end rhyme (fāṣila): the other verses of the sūra end in -ūn / -um, and the last verse closes with dīn, preserving the pattern of sound. It is transmitted that in some variant readings this yāʾ is pronounced; the meaning does not change.

And there is a symmetry: lakum dīnukum wa liya dīn — two words each, two perfectly balanced halves. The sentence displays in its own structure the boundary it draws: split down the middle, its two halves mirroring one another.

This is the most quoted sentence of the sūra and the one most often torn out of its context. It can be misread from either extreme; let us look at both.

Misreading 1: "This verse endorses religious pluralism; every religion is true within itself."

This reading cannot be squared with the text, and the reason is simple: the preceding five verses of the same sūra establish exactly the opposite. Four times the sūra says that the service of the two sides cannot be joined. If both ways were equally valid, Quraysh's offer — service by turns — would not have been refused but accepted. The sūra is not a text of compromise but a text of refusing compromise; it is not for nothing that one of its names is "barāʾa" (cutting one's connection).

Nor does the word order of the sentence permit this reading. The expression "yours to you" is not an endorsement but a handing back: your religion finds no answer in me, I return it to you.

Misreading 2: "This verse commands that every relationship be cut off; there is no ground on which one may come together with these addressees."

This too oversteps the limit of the text. The verse establishes a distinction at the level of belief; it says nothing at all about social, legal, commercial or human relations. To speak in the area where a sentence is silent is to make it say what it has not said.

What the verse actually says is two things, and the two stand together:

1. There is no synthesis. The two religions cannot be mixed with one another, no mean can be found between them, they cannot be lived by turns. This is the conclusion of the first five verses of the sūra. 2. There is no compulsion. The sentence "to you your religion" is not a threat but a sentence of letting be. The other side is not being required to abandon its religion; their religion is being left to them.

That the two stand together is important. The sūra shows this: certainty in belief and applying pressure to another are not the same thing. A person can leave the other side in its own position without giving up an inch of his own.

The pattern of this verse is repeated in several places in the Qurʾān:

• "If they call you a liar, say: My work is mine and your work is yours. You are quit of what I do, and I am quit of what you do" (Yūnus 10/41).
• "Our deeds are ours and your deeds are yours" (al-Qaṣaṣ 28/55; similarly al-Shūrā 42/15).
• "Say: You will not be held answerable for the offence we have committed, nor shall we be questioned about what you do" (Sabaʾ 34/25).

What these verses have in common is the individuality of responsibility. No one carries another's account. Al-Kāfirūn 6 is the shortest expression of this principle.

On the question of compulsion the clearest verse is this: "There is no compulsion in religion" (al-Baqara 2/256).

Sūrat al-Kāfirūn draws a boundary but does not say what area that boundary covers. Two verses in Sūrat al-Mumtaḥana fill this gap, and the two texts must be read together:

"God does not forbid you to do good to those who have not fought you over religion and have not driven you from your homes, nor to deal justly with them. God loves those who deal justly." (al-Mumtaḥana 60/8)

"What God forbids is only that you take as allies those who have fought you over religion, who have driven you from your homes and who have supported your expulsion." (al-Mumtaḥana 60/9)

These two verses establish a very clear distinction. The measure is not a difference of belief but actual hostility. Merely believing differently is not a ground for being placed outside kindness and justice; the verse says so explicitly, and moreover, by saying "God loves those who deal justly", it ties justice to a measure of love.

When the two sūras are set side by side, the picture that emerges is this:

That is, separation at the level of belief does not automatically cut off relationship at the human level. What al-Kāfirūn calls "cutting one's connection" (barāʾa) is cutting one's connection with partnership in service; it is not cutting one's connection with people. Confusing these two things is the most widespread misuse of the sūra.

The two sūras carry the fundamental formula of Islam split in two.

The formula of tawḥīd consists of two parts: lā ilāha (rejecting) and illā'llāh (setting forth). This structure is not accidental; to say that something belongs to God alone, one must first negate it of others and then restrict it to Him.

• Al-Kāfirūn is the first half: it says what is not, whom service is not rendered to, what partnership cannot be established. It is negative from beginning to end.
• Al-Ikhlāṣ is the second half: it says who is what. (Though al-Ikhlāṣ too uses negation as its method — this was treated in that section.)

This duality also explains why the two sūras go together in practice. It is transmitted in the sound hadith collections that in certain two-rakʿa supererogatory prayers these two sūras are recited one after the other; in the tradition this pair has been understood as "barāʾa and tawḥīd": first purification from shirk, then the avowal of tawḥīd.

The order is meaningful too: first emptying, then filling. And so it is in the wording as well — lā ilāha comes first.

The report of "dissociation from shirk". According to a report transmitted in the Sunan collections, the Prophet advised one of the Companions to recite Sūrat al-Kāfirūn before sleeping, and gave as the reason "it is dissociation from shirk". It is stated that the report is found in the Sunans of Abū Dāwūd and al-Tirmidhī. The hadith scholars have discussed the chain of transmission of this report; some count it sound, others weak. I do not issue a definite ruling on its soundness; but it is clear that the source of the name "Barāʾa" given to the sūra is this report and others like it.

The recommendation to recite it before sleeping. The report above is the basis of the practice of reciting the sūra before sleep. The logic behind this practice is reasonable: sleep is the moment at which a person lets go of his will; to make a declaration of position beforehand is in keeping with the content of the sūra. Beyond this, however, one must be cautious about transmissions attaching particular rewards to a set number of recitations; the soundness of such reports is often disputed.

Its recitation in the prayers. Reports that al-Kāfirūn and al-Ikhlāṣ are recited together in particular supererogatory prayers are found in the sound hadith collections. The prevalence of this practice shows that the two sūras were seen in the tradition as a pair.

Some scholars have maintained that Sūrat al-Kāfirūn — its last verse in particular — was later abrogated (its ruling lifted) by the verses on fighting.

The objection raised against this claim is strong and has two supports:

1. The sūra is a declarative sentence, not a sentence of ruling. Abrogation is a matter of rulings; declarations are not abrogated, because abrogating a declaration puts it in the position of a falsehood. "To you your religion" is not a command but a statement of a situation. 2. The sūra lays down no rule of dealing. It states a difference of belief. Verses about war or peace regulate another area; since the two areas do not overlap, no relation of abrogation can be established.

The majority of later scholars have adopted this objection and rejected the claim of abrogation. I too find this objection the stronger; but this is a preference, and it is not binding.

First: what is negotiable and what is not. The offer the sūra refuses is, socially speaking, a reasonable offer: mutual, equal, respectful, excluding no one. It is refused all the same. The reason is which area the offer touches. In every relationship there is a line between what is open to negotiation and what is not; and not knowing where that line falls leads to two kinds of error: taking negotiable things for principles (needless rigidity) and making principles into items of negotiation (dissolution). The sūra offers an example against the second, but by its manner it does not fall into the first either.

Second: the difference between "I do not do it" and "I am not one who does it". The sūra's grammatical point is a distinction that operates outside the sūra as well. Not doing something is a decision; decisions can be taken again, they slacken when one is tired, they are reviewed when conditions change. Not being a person who does something belongs to identity and does not require deciding afresh each time. Holding a behaviour in place by continual force of will is exhausting; making it part of who one is removes that burden. The sūra climbs to the second level — and it does so not by giving advice but by changing the structure of the sentence.

Third: the language of refusal. While the sūra says one thing, there are three things it does not say: it does not insult the other side, it does not construct a threat, it voices no claim of superiority. It is a text showing that declaring a separation is not the same as declaring hostility. Today "setting a boundary" and "turning a relationship into enmity" are often confused — both in personal relations and at the level of society. The sūra offers an example that separates these two: clear, but not aggressive.

Fourth: resisting inclusion. Quraysh's offer was not a prohibition but an invitation: come, let us bring you into the system too. This is a far more effective method than coercion, because it does not look like a rejection of the other side. Today too, the most common way of neutralising a position is not to ban it but to turn it into one of the options. What the sūra refuses is exactly this: it does not consent to being an option.

Fifth: reading the last verse in a balanced way. The sentence "to you your religion, and to me mine" is used today for two different purposes: sometimes in the sense "everyone's truth is his own", sometimes in the sense "nothing can exist between us". As was shown above, the text gives neither. What it gives is finer and harder: being certain in one's belief and leaving another to himself are possible at the same time. That these two can stand together allows neither certainty to turn into pressure nor tolerance into indifference.

Sixth: the attribute, not the person. The sūra's address is "al-kāfirūn", and as was seen above, the scope of this address has been debated in the classical commentaries. The conclusion is this: the address is directed at an attitude; it is not a permanent label on a community. To forget this is to use the sūra in a way contrary to its own logic — to place people in fixed categories. Yet a considerable number of the sūra's own addressees passed out of the scope of that address a short time later.

Beyond their neighbourhood in the codex, these two sūras are answers given to the same kind of moment.

Both are the product of a moment of pressure. Behind al-Kawthar lies a humiliation: "his line is cut". Behind al-Kāfirūn lies an offer: "let us serve by turns". Both are attempts to change the addressee's position by an intervention from outside — one by belittling, the other by taking him in.

Neither enters into argument. Al-Kawthar does not bring proof that "in fact my line is not cut", nor does al-Kāfirūn offer a refutation to the effect that "your idols are invalid for such and such reasons". Neither of them steps onto the ground the addressee has laid.

Both declare a position. Al-Kawthar: look at what has been given to you. Al-Kāfirūn: the boundary is here. One recalls what was given, the other the boundary. And together they show a method for how an identity under pressure stays standing: not letting the other side set your measure for you.

Both are short. This too is part of the method. A long answer resembles a defence; a short answer implies that the position is not open to discussion. Al-Kawthar ends in ten words, al-Kāfirūn in six verses — and in both the last sentence is a sentence of closure: huwa'l-abtar / wa liya dīn.

• The offer of compromise transmitted as the occasion of revelation was related, but the names of those who brought the offer were not given. Since different transmissions give different lists, giving names would have been misleading. The transmissions also differ over the term of the offer (a year and so on).
• The sūra's other names (Barāʾa, Munābadha, Muqashqisha and the rest) were listed, but nothing certain was said about how early they came into use.
• It was stated that the report "it is dissociation from shirk" is found in Abū Dāwūd and al-Tirmidhī, but no ruling on its soundness was issued; it was recorded that the hadith scholars differ over the chain of transmission.
• The practices of reciting the sūra before sleep and of reciting it in supererogatory prayers were related; caution was exercised regarding transmissions attaching particular rewards to a set number of recitations.
• Whom the address al-kāfirūn in the first verse covers is disputed; the explanations were given in a table and no definite preference was adopted.
• The explanations of the question of repetition were presented in a table; the two facts the text gives with certainty (the grammatical difference between 2 and 4, the exact identity between 3 and 5) were stated separately, and the explanations were assessed against them.
• The observation in the section on the fifth verse that "no verbal sentence is constructed for the other side" is my own inference; it was stated that it is not a transmitted report.
• The claim of abrogation was related and the ground of those who reject it was found the stronger; it was written that this is a preference and that it is not binding.
• It was stated that the first-person yāʾ in the last verse is pronounced in some variant readings; no names were given as to which of the authorities of the variant readings it belongs to.