Surah Al-Kafirun, Those Who Reject

Surah 109 · 6 verses · revealed at Mecca

Al-Kafirun was revealed in response to a specific offer. The leaders of Mecca proposed a compromise: the Prophet would worship their gods for a period, and they would worship his for a period, and everyone could stop fighting about it. It was, on its face, a reasonable settlement, and it was the sensible thing for a small and harassed community to accept.

The surah declines. It says, in six verses built almost entirely out of repetition, that he does not worship what they worship, and they do not worship what he worships, and states it twice more in slightly different tenses so that no reading of it leaves a gap for a temporary arrangement. Commentators have explained the repetition as covering the present and the future in turn, closing the door on both.

The final verse is the one everybody knows: for you your religion, and for me mine.

That verse is often quoted as a statement of tolerance, and it is worth being careful about what kind. It is not an assertion that the two are equivalent — the five verses before it insist they are not. It is a refusal to merge them, and a refusal to compel. Both halves are in the same line. The surah settles the matter of coexistence by separating the two, not by blending them.

Al-Kafirun is customarily recited alongside Al-Ikhlas in the pair of units before the dawn prayer and after the circling of the Ka'bah, a practice recorded in Sahih Muslim. Between them the two surahs state what is rejected and what is affirmed.

Surah Al-Kafirun on this site

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Surah Al-Kafirun, Those Who Reject

Surah Al-Kafirun on this site

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