al-Mumtaḥana 60:8

Lā yanhākumullāhu ʿani'lladhīna lam yuqātilūkum fi'd-dīni wa lam yukhrijūkum min diyārikum an tabarrūhum wa tuqsiṭū ilayhim, innallāha yuḥibbu'l-muqsiṭīn

"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. Indeed God loves those who deal justly."

It is the most important verse of the sūra, and its function is this: to narrow the scope of the first verse.

The first verse had laid down a prohibition. When a prohibition is laid down, a question inevitably arises in the one addressed: how far does this prohibition go? Does it cover everyone outside? Is a community to keep its distance even from people with whom it has no quarrel at all?

The eighth verse answers this question. And in giving the answer it chooses a word which by itself shows how wide the answer is: birr.

This verse was treated together with 60/9 in the section on al-Kāfirūn, and the division of labour between the two sūras was given there in a table: al-Kāfirūn draws the boundary of belief, al-Mumtaḥana 8-9 the boundary of relationship. I do not repeat that comparison here; the reader should look there. What I shall do here is different: to go down to the level of the verse's words and word order.

The sentence is built thus: لَّا يَنْهَىٰكُمُ ٱللَّهُ — "God does not forbid you".

This is a construction to be looked at carefully. The verse does not say "do good"; it says "doing good has not been forbidden to you". Not the imperative, but the negating of a prohibition.

Why is it built this way? Because what had arisen in those addressed was a hesitation, not an unwillingness. People already want to do good; what they are asking is whether it is permitted. The verse answers the question asked in the form in which it was asked.

And this construction has one further consequence: the sentence attaches directly to the first verse. The subject of the verb "does not forbid" is the same as the one who laid down the prohibition in the first verse. That is, the eighth verse marks out the area the first verse left outside: the same authority is drawing the boundary of its own prohibition.

نَهَى — the root ن-ه-ي: end, extremity, limit. From the same root come nihāya (an end), muntahā (the furthest point reached), and — strikingly — nuhā (reason; its plural occurs in the Qurʾān as ūli'n-nuhā, Ṭāhā 20/54). That reason should be given this name is the very logic seen for the root ʿ-q-l at al-Baqara 2/44: reason is what stops a person. An ʿiqāl binds the camel; nuhya halts one at the limit.

That is, a nahy is the setting of a limit. And this verse says how far that limit goes. The word itself says what the business is: the drawing of a boundary.

The most important sentence of the sūra is here, and it must be dwelt upon in detail.

In saying to whom doing good and dealing justly are free, the verse uses a definition. Look carefully at that definition:

ٱلَّذِينَ لَمْ يُقَٰتِلُوكُمْ فِى ٱلدِّينِ وَلَمْ يُخْرِجُوكُم مِّن دِيَٰرِكُمْ "Those who have not fought you over religion and have not driven you from your homes"

In the definition there are two deeds and no caveat about belief at all.

The verse does not say:

• "to those who believe" — it does not say.
• "to those who are of the People of the Book" — it does not say.
• "to those who treat you well" — it does not say.
• "to those who are of you" — it does not say.

The verse does not ask at all what the other party believes. It asks only what he has done. And the two things it asks are both concrete, ascertainable deeds not open to dispute: did he fight you, did he drive you from your home.

The consequence of this is: being outside Islam is not a ground for being placed outside kindness and justice. The ground is actual hostility. Difference of belief and hostility are established in this verse as two separate categories, and they do not stand in for one another.

To see how sharp this distinction is, consider how the verse could have been built. It could have said, "God does not forbid you to do good to those unbelievers who do you no harm" — and then a caveat about belief would have been present inside the measure. It does not say this. In the sentence there is not one word about the belief of those addressed; there is only what they have not done.

And the ninth verse repeats the same measure from the reverse direction. When the prohibition is laid down, the same two deeds are counted (and a third is added). That is, the measure is the same on the side of the freedom and on the side of the prohibition. The two verses are two faces of a single measure.

The caveat فِى ٱلدِّينِ. A caveat has been placed on the verb "to fight": fi'd-dīn — "over religion, on account of religion". There are two readings of this caveat: (a) the cause of the fighting must be religion; (b) fī here does not state cause but specifies the subject of the fighting. Both readings bring the measure to the same place: what is meant is a hostility carried on because of religion. The verse takes as its measure not every kind of conflict but the conflict carried on on account of religion.

And now the most striking choice of word in the verse.

The root ب-ر-ر. This root was analysed at al-Baqara 2/44: its primary sense is breadth; from the same root comes barr — dry land, that is, the broad expanse over against the sea. Birr, in the logic of the word itself, is the opposite of narrowness.

And at al-Baqara 2/177 the definition the Qurʾān gives this word was seen: birr is not a ceremony but a sum of behaviours — faith, giving of wealth, prayer, alms, keeping one's word, patience.

Now the real matter: where is this word used in the Qurʾān?

The highest obligation the Qurʾān attaches to the root birr is doing good to one's parents. The Qurʾān says on the tongue of Jesus (ʿĪsā) "He has made me barr towards my mother" (Maryam 19/32); of John (Yaḥyā) it says "he was barr to his parents" (Maryam 19/14). This usage has settled as a fixed expression: birr al-wālidayn.

That is, in describing the attitude to be taken towards people outside, the verse chooses the warmest, the most loaded, the most intimate word in the language. It does not say "do them no harm". It does not say "get along with them". It does not say "observe their legal rights". It says "do good to them" — and with the very word used for one's mother and father.

This choice by itself shows the scope of the verse. And what it shows is this: what the text opens here is not a minimal tolerance but an area of positive closeness.

And recall the root sense of the word: birr is breadth. And this is exactly the business of the eighth verse — to widen the area the first verse narrowed. Word and function overlap.

The root ق-س-ط. This root was analysed in detail in the section on Sūrat al-Jinn, and was treated there as the cleanest example of the Arabic matter of the aḍdād. Its summary is this:

• قَسَطَ (three-letter form) — he swerved from the right, he spoiled the share, he wronged. From this root comes qāsiṭ (al-Jinn 72/14-15).
• أَقْسَطَ (ifʿāl) — he dealt justly. From this root comes muqsiṭ.
• The difference between them is the privative hamza: the ifʿāl pattern removes the sense of the root. Qasaṭa = he spoiled the share → aqsaṭa = he removed the spoiling → he dealt justly.

The verb in the verse, تُقْسِطُوا۟, is of the ifʿāl pattern. That is, what is asked, in the logic of the word itself, is this: to remove the spoiling in the share between you. Justice here is not a favour but a work of repair; the putting back of what has been disturbed.

And, as was recorded in the section on al-Jinn, the expression "God loves those who deal justly" occurs in several places in the Qurʾān — al-Māʾida 5/42, al-Ḥujurāt 49/9 and this verse. The table given there is thereby completed.

إِلَيْهِمْ — a particle that must be dwelt upon.

The verb aqsaṭa is normally used with إِلَى, and so it is in this verse: tuqsiṭū ilayhim — "deal justly towards them".

The ilā here is a particle of direction: a thing's flowing towards a place. That is, justice is described not as a cold balance standing between the parties but as something going towards them. In the sentence justice has a direction, and that direction is the other side.

The order of the two verbs is meaningful too: birr first, qisṭ after.

This order may look backwards at first sight. Logically one would expect first justice (the minimum obligation) and then doing good (what is over and above). The verse does the reverse.

Two explanations can be given, and both are my own reading, not a transmitted report:

First: The order has to do with the function of the verse. The verse is not setting up a minimum order; it is removing a hesitation. And what is hesitated over is not justice — no one asks "may I wrong someone" — but closeness. The verse goes straight to the subject of the hesitation.

Second: Birr is voluntary, qisṭ is a debt. By counting the voluntary first, the verse implies that the obligatory has long since been granted. That is, the sentence says: if even doing good is free, justice is not a matter of discussion at all.

The close of the verse carries the sentence to an altogether different place.

A sentence of ruling could have closed thus: "God commands justice." Or: "God does not love wrongdoers." Both of these exist in the Qurʾān.

The sentence built here is different: يُحِبُّ — "He loves". And its object is not an act but a type of person: al-muqsiṭīn, those who deal justly.

The consequence of this is: to deal justly with people outside places a person in a position that God loves. That is, this behaviour is entered on the record not as a tolerance, an obligation, a political necessity, but as a virtue.

And note: the subject of the love is not who the other party is but how the one acting acts. The sentence does not say "God loves them"; it says "God loves those who deal justly". The measure is again tied to the deed.

There is this too: in the seventh verse of the sūra mawadda (affection) was something God would bring about; here ḥubb (loving) is something God does. Two verses one after another, two acts of love. This section of the sūra is woven through with words of love — and all of it comes immediately after the first verse.

Some scholars have maintained of this verse that it has been abrogated (that its ruling was later lifted by the verses on fighting). The contrary view holds that the verse is muḥkam, that is, that its ruling remains in force.

In this commentary I find the second view the stronger, and my ground is written in the table above: for a verse to be abrogated, a ruling must come that contradicts it. The eighth verse has already narrowed its own scope; for the area falling outside it lays down no ruling at all.

A similar claim of abrogation was taken up and rejected in the section on al-Kāfirūn; the ground here is structurally the same as the one there. This is a preference, and it is not binding.