Surah Al-Hujurat, The Private Rooms

Surah 49 · 18 verses · revealed at Medina

Al-Hujurat is eighteen verses long and is the closest thing the Qur'an has to a code of manners.

It begins with people calling out to the Prophet from outside his family's rooms and raising their voices in his presence, and tells them not to. Then it moves outward, and what follows applies to everybody.

Its instructions are short and unusually practical. If someone brings you news, check it before acting on it, in case you harm people out of ignorance and regret it. If two groups of believers fall out, make peace between them. Do not let one group mock another, since the mocked may be better than the mockers. Do not insult one another or call one another by offensive nicknames. Avoid suspicion, since some suspicion is a sin. Do not spy on each other. Do not speak about one another behind their backs, which the surah compares to eating the flesh of a dead brother.

Then comes its best-known verse: that people were made into nations and tribes so that they might know one another, and that the noblest among them in God's sight is the one most conscious of Him. It was recited by the Prophet at the conquest of Mecca, and it has been quoted in every argument about race in Muslim history since.

It closes by distinguishing between saying you have believed and actually believing, and telling some desert Arabs who had claimed the first that they should say instead that they have submitted, since faith had not yet entered their hearts.

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