al-Mumtaḥana 60:1

Yā ayyuha'lladhīna āmanū lā tattakhidhū ʿaduwwī wa ʿaduwwakum awliyāʾa tulqūna ilayhim bi'l-mawaddati wa qad kafarū bimā jāʾakum mina'l-ḥaqq, yukhrijūna'r-rasūla wa iyyākum an tuʾminū billāhi rabbikum, in kuntum kharajtum jihādan fī sabīlī wa'btighāʾa marḍātī, tusirrūna ilayhim bi'l-mawaddati wa anā aʿlamu bimā akhfaytum wa mā aʿlantum, wa man yafʿalhu minkum fa-qad ḍalla sawāʾa's-sabīl

"O you who believe! Do not take My enemy and your enemy as allies — you are reaching out to them with affection; yet they have denied the truth that came to you, and they drive out the Messenger and you because you have believed in God your Lord. If you have gone out to strive in My way and to seek My good pleasure… You convey affection to them in secret; yet I know better what you have concealed and what you have made known. Whoever among you does this has strayed from the very middle of the way."

The verse is difficult to translate; in the middle of the sentence there is a conditional clause whose apodosis has been suppressed. We shall take this up below.

This verse is one of those in the Qurʾān most often misused by way of simplification. The simplification runs like this: "The verse forbids forming friendships with unbelievers." Because this sentence confuses two separate words with one another, it makes the verse say something it does not say.

There are two different roots in the verse, and the two belong to two different things:

• و-ل-ي (awliyāʾ) — attachment, backing, being on someone's side. This is the object of the forbidden act.
• و-د-د (mawadda) — affection, the inclination of the heart. This is not the object of the forbidden act.

Let us look at the grammar of the sentence. The prohibition lies in a single verb: لَا تَتَّخِذُوا۟ … أَوْلِيَآءَ — "do not take as allies". This verb has two objects: ʿaduwwī wa ʿaduwwakum (the first object) and awliyāʾa (the second object). This is the act forbidden: to place the enemy in the position of a walī.

Then what is tulqūna ilayhim bi'l-mawaddati? This is a circumstantial clause attached to the sentence of prohibition — that is, it describes not the object of the forbidden act but how that act takes place. It comes out thus: "…do not take as allies — you being all the while people who reach out to them with affection". The sentence shows through which channel the walāya flows: by way of affection.

The strongest proof that this distinction is real lies not somewhere far off but six verses later in the same sūra:

عَسَى ٱللَّهُ أَن يَجْعَلَ بَيْنَكُمْ وَبَيْنَ ٱلَّذِينَ عَادَيْتُم مِّنْهُم مَّوَدَّةً "Perhaps God will put between you and those of them with whom you are at enmity an affection." (60/7)

The same word. In one verse it occurs as the instrument of the offence; six verses later as something God will bring about. Had mawadda itself been forbidden, the seventh verse would contradict the first. It does not. Then what is forbidden is not mawadda.

Why, in that case, is mawadda mentioned in the first verse? Because it is the instrument actually used in the event. The verse is not making a definition; it is entering a diagnosis: these people have not gone over to the enemy's ranks; they are conveying something to them out of a feeling of closeness, and what they convey serves the other side's purposes. Affection is here not the offence itself but the cause and the carrier of the offence.

When this distinction is not preserved the verse is corrupted in both directions. In one direction a reading emerges that counts every human closeness an offence — which the seventh and eighth verses plainly reject. In the other direction what the verse really does forbid — putting the security of your own community into the other side's hands — becomes invisible.

The root و-ل-ي. The concrete sense of the root is nearness and leaving no gap in between: two things being adjacent in such a way that no third can come between them.

The derivatives show this plainly:

• وَلِيَ الشَّىءُ الشَّىءَ — one thing came immediately after another, adjoined it.
• الوَلِىّ — among rains, the second rain that comes immediately after the first. No gap in between.
• وَالٍ (wālī) — the one who takes charge of a matter, who undertakes it.
• مَوْلَى (mawlā) — and this word runs both ways: it is used both for the master and for the freed slave. The reason is plain: the word states not a position but a bond; both ends of the bond take the same name.
• أَوْلَى (awlā) — nearer, having the prior claim.
• تَوَلَّى (tawallī) — and here the word divides in two: tawallāhu (he turned towards him, he took him in charge) and tawallā ʿanhu (he turned away from him). Turning towards and turning one's back, in the same pattern. The reason is again the sense of the root: in both there is a taking of a direction; to go near the one you turn to is to fall far from the other.

The definition that emerges is this: a walī is the party between you and whom you leave no gap. The one to whom you refer your affairs, against whom you lean your back, who can speak in your name, who stands in the same rank as you.

The use of the word in the Qurʾān is likewise legal and political, not emotional. The walī of an orphan conducts his affairs. The walī of a man who has been killed demands his right. God is the walī of the believers — that is, the one who takes them in charge, who conducts their affairs ("God is the walī of those who believe; He brings them out of the darknesses into the light", al-Baqara 2/257).

The English rendering "friend" shifts the meaning of the verse here. In English "friend" is an almost entirely emotional word: someone you love, someone you feel close to. A walī, by contrast, states a position. To put the two in each other's place is to turn a sentence of law into a sentence of feeling. What the verse forbids is not warming to someone; it is going over to someone's side, making him a partner in your own affairs, feeling an obligation towards him.

Indeed the verse confirms this reading itself: when the prohibition is defined afresh in the ninth verse, the verb used is أَن تَوَلَّوْهُمْ — that is, again the same root, and this time on its own, without the word mawadda. The sūra lays down its prohibition twice; in laying it down the second time it says nothing at all about affection.

The root و-د-د. And this root has an interesting feature: it carries both the sense to love and the sense to want, to wish.

• وَدَّهُ — he loved him.
• وَدَّ لَوْ… — he wished, he wanted, that…

The two senses stand together, because love in this Arabic word is not a passive feeling but an inclination and a wanting. The one you love is the one about whom you want something.

الوَدُود is one of the names of God: both greatly loving and greatly loved. And the word occurs in the Qurʾān in the highest of positive contexts: "For those who believe and do righteous deeds al-Raḥmān will bring about an affection (wudd)" (Maryam 19/96).

مَوَدَّة, for its part, is the verbal noun of the root on the mafʿala pattern, and it states the outwardly expressed, relation-forming state of love. That is, not merely a feeling held within; something that reaches the other party. Indeed the verse says exactly this: tulqūna ilayhim — you cast it towards them.

And now comes one of the finest points of the verse. Look at the second verse:

وَوَدُّوا۟ لَوْ تَكْفُرُونَ "And they wished that you should return to unbelief." (60/2)

The same root. On one side the mawadda the believers send to the other party, on the other side the other party's wudd concerning the believers. Both are و-د-د. And their contents are exact opposites: one is "to want good for someone", the other "to want him to lose his faith".

The sūra does not set up a separate sentence to say this; it says it by using the same root in two verses in two directions. What the verse criticises thereby becomes clear: the problem is not affection itself but affection's being unreturned and one-directional; the closeness one side sends corresponds on the other side to something else — the wish that faith be lost.

أَلْقَى — the ifʿāl pattern of the root ل-ق-ي: to throw, to let fall, to convey. It has concrete uses in the Qurʾān: the casting down of the staff, Joseph's being let down into the well, the throwing down of the tablets.

The normal use of the verb takes its object directly: alqa'sh-shayʾa — he threw the thing. But here a بِ has come in between: tulqūna ilayhim bi'l-mawaddati. In the classical exegetical and grammatical discussion this particle has given rise to two different readings:

The second reading overlaps exactly with the event of revelation described above: there really is something cast, something sent — a letter — and what makes it be sent is affection. That the object of the verb is left unsaid also suits this reading: it is left unsaid because the addressees already know what was sent.

The point at which the two readings meet in practice is this: in both cases something goes out from inside to outside, and the cause of its going out is a feeling. I find the second reading the stronger; but this is a preference, and it is not binding.

عَدُوّ — the root ع-د-و: to overstep the limit, to transgress, to pass beyond a boundary. From the same root come ʿudwān (aggression), iʿtidāʾ (transgression), ʿadā (he ran — that is, he went out from where he was). At the centre of the word stands the trampling of a limit; that is, enmity is here named not as a feeling but as a violation. This detail already prepares the measure of the eighth verse: the matter lies not in feelings but in deeds.

The word has come in the singular (ʿaduww), not the plural. This pattern of this root is used in Arabic like a verbal noun and is said in the same form for a single person and for a body of people; the Qurʾān uses it so in other places too.

The order is striking: "My enemy and your enemy." God's enmity comes first.

This has two consequences:

First: Enmity is not defined as a personal quarrel. The measure is not "who did you harm" but what position has been taken towards the truth. That is, the verse does not set up the logic of a blood feud.

Second — and more important: This very ordering implies that the enmity is changeable. A personal quarrel may be permanent; but an enmity arising from a position ends when the position changes. The seventh verse will say this plainly.

"They drive out the Messenger and you — because you have believed in God your Lord."

There are two points here.

First, the form of the verb. Yukhrijūna is imperfect — not past tense. Yet the driving out is over and done; the emigration lies behind them. The function of the imperfect here is to keep the scene alive: it tells the event not as a finished occurrence but as though it were going on before your eyes. We do this in English too: "so the man gets up, slams the door and walks out" — telling a past event in the present tense.

But it may have a second function as well: to state that the attitude of driving out continues. That is, the event is over, the attitude is not.

Second, the ground of the driving out. أَن تُؤْمِنُوا۟ بِٱللَّهِ رَبِّكُمْ — here the construction beginning with an states cause (in grammar, mafʿūl lahu): "because you believed in God".

This caveat looks simple but carries the whole logic of the sūra. In describing what the other side did, the verse counts a single cause: faith. Not a dispute over property, not a blood feud, not a quarrel over borders. People were driven from their homes because they believed.

And this is the other face of the measure in the eighth verse. The eighth verse will leave free the relation with the one who does not fight and does not drive out. Here it is said why the one who drove out did so: fi'd-dīn. The sūra ties the boundary both of the prohibition and of the freedom to the same measure.

The choice of the word رَبِّكُمْ is meaningful too. It could have said "because you believed in God"; it says "in God, your Lord". As was seen in the section on al-Fātiḥa, a rabb is the one who owns and nurtures, who brings up. That is, the sentence implies: because you attached yourselves to the one who nurtures you, they drove you out of the place where you were nurtured.

The length of the verse is a choice of style; the sentence twice breaks its own flow.

The first break — a condition whose apodosis is not spoken:

إِن كُنتُمْ خَرَجْتُمْ جِهَٰدًا فِى سَبِيلِى وَٱبْتِغَآءَ مَرْضَاتِى "If you have gone out to strive in My way and to seek My good pleasure…"

The condition has no apodosis. In Arabic this is a well-known technique of emphasis by way of suppression: the answer is not spoken, because what ought to be said is already evident and its not being said makes it heavier. We speak like this in English too: "If you gave your word…" — the sentence stops there, and the rest is left to the conscience of the one addressed.

On what the answer is, the exegetes agree in this direction: "…then do not take them as allies." That is, the condition is tied back to the prohibition at the beginning.

But the function of the suppression is not emphasis alone. The conditional clause is at the same time a reminder: you went out from somewhere. The other side's driving you out was described a moment ago (yukhrijūna… wa iyyākum); now your own going out is mentioned (kharajtum). The same root, two agents: they drove out, you went out. And your going out had a cause — jihādan fī sabīlī wa'btighāʾa marḍātī.

جِهَاد — the root ج-ه-د: to expend strength, to spend one's capacity, to be put under strain. Jahd — effort. Juhd — strength, capacity. Ijtihād — to expend all one's strength on a question. At the centre of the root stands not war but being put under strain; war is one form of that strain, not the whole of it.

ٱبْتِغَآء — the root ب-غ-ي: to seek, to want. It is interesting that the same root also gives the word baghy (transgression, insolence) — it occurred at al-Baqara 2/90 as baghyan, "out of envy". What is common in the root is an intense wanting; if the direction turns to the good it becomes a search, if to the bad it becomes excess. The iftiʿāl pattern (ibtighāʾ), for its part, states effort and continuity: to go on seeking.

The second break — a repetition:

تُسِرُّونَ إِلَيْهِم بِٱلْمَوَدَّةِ "You convey affection to them in secret."

The sentence is almost the same as the first; the only difference is the change of verb: tulqūna → tusirrūna.

أَسَرَّ — the root س-ر-ر: to hide. From the same root come sirr, sarīra (what is kept within), and — strikingly — surūr (joy); according to the classical explanation the trace of joy appears on the face but its source is within. And this root too is counted among the aḍdād: asarra has been used both for "he hid" and, in some contexts, for "he made known".

The function of the repetition is this: the first sentence described the act, the second adds the character of the act. The same business, but done in secret.

And the secrecy completes the verse's diagnosis. To hide something is the clearest proof of knowing that it ought not to be done. Nobody hides a piece of business he thinks right. The verse does not thereby make the charge heavier; it simply sets out what the person knows himself.

"Yet I know better what you have concealed and what you have made known."

The most striking thing in the word order is here: the address passes to the first person singular. Throughout the verse God had in any case not been mentioned in the third person — ʿaduwwī, sabīlī, marḍātī (My enemy, My way, My good pleasure) — and now the pronoun أَنَا۠ (I) is said outright.

This is an instance of the technique called iltifāt in the Qurʾān (a shift in the direction of address), but its use here is special: the sentence speaks of secrecy, and over against the secrecy is placed God Himself, directly. It does not say "you concealed some things"; it says "I know what you concealed". No one is put in between.

أَخْفَيْتُمْ / أَعْلَنتُمْ — to conceal / to make known. That the two should be mentioned together is a widespread pattern in the Qurʾān, and its function is this: when the scope of knowledge is divided in two and both halves are counted, no area is left outside the scope.

A detail: akhfaytum comes first, aʿlantum after. The order suits the context; the matter in question had been done in secret.

"Whoever among you does this has strayed from the very middle of the way."

سَوَآء — the root س-و-ي: equality, evenness, levelness. Sawā is two things being equal to one another; istiwāʾ is a thing's straightening and becoming even; sawī is what is balanced and without fault.

The construct سَوَآءُ ٱلسَّبِيل means "the middle of the road, the line that runs down its very centre" — not the edge of the road but its central line.

The choice of this construct makes the sentence heavier. It does not say "he left the road"; it says "he missed the middle of the road". The difference is this: the person who misses the middle of the road is not yet outside the road; but he has departed from the centre, and the line he is on will take him outside.

This is a caveat that must be kept in mind while reading the severity of the sūra. The verse does not throw the people it describes outside the circle of faith. The address is in any case "O you who believe", and that address is not withdrawn at the end of the verse. What is said is a grave wrong done by a believer — not a declaration of leaving the religion.

Indeed the outcome of the event transmitted also suits this reading: the person was not punished.

فَقَدْ — the fāʾ enters upon the apodosis of the condition, and qad, together with a perfect verb, states certainty. That is, the consequence is laid down not as a possibility but as a ruling that has come about.

First: when a weakness is given its right name. What the verse takes as its target is not an ideological deviation; it is a very familiar human mechanism — carrying a piece of information belonging to the structure you are in outside it, in order to secure your own people. Today's counterparts of this can be multiplied: leaking information from an institution to a relative, using a sphere of responsibility for the continuance of personal relationships. What is striking about the verse is that it ties this behaviour not to bad intention but to a good feeling. It is easy to guard against bad intention; it is hard to guard against a good feeling flowing to the wrong place.

Second: the price of failing to tell two things apart. The distinction set up above — walāya and affection — collapses easily today too. A community may make the placing of emotional distance between itself and everyone outside into a measure of loyalty; or, the other way round, may count emotional closeness a boundless licence to change sides. The sūra cuts off both. The line of the distinction lies not in feeling but in whose affairs are being conducted by whom.

Third: secrecy is itself a diagnosis. The caveat the verse adds to the act by saying tusirrūna works today as well as a moral test: the simplest way of learning whether you are sure of the rightness of what you are doing is to look at whom you are hiding it from.