Al-Kafirun

Picture the position of Quraysh, the tribe that ran Makkah. For years one of their own had been telling the town that its gods were nothing. Mocking him had not worked. Pressure had not worked. So, the commentators report, they tried something reasonable people try: a deal.

The offer, as it is usually told, was to take turns. You worship our gods for a year. We will worship your God for a year. From where they stood it was generous. Makkah already had many gods, and adding one more to the rota cost them little.

For him it was the one thing he could not trade. His whole message was that there is one God and no other. A year of idols would not have been a compromise on a detail. It would have been the end of the argument.

The surah begins with a single word of instruction, "Say", and then the people it is addressed to: "O disbelievers".

Quraysh offered to share. The message was that worship cannot be shared.

After "Say, O disbelievers" come four lines. I do not worship what you worship. Nor do you worship what I worship. Nor will I worship what you worship. Nor will you worship what I worship.

Read aloud, it sounds like someone saying no and then saying it again in case it was not heard. For a reply to people who kept coming back with new terms, that may be exactly the effect.

But the two pairs are not word for word the same in Arabic, and the commentators did not treat the second pair as padding. They offer three different accounts of what it adds. On any of them the result is the same: the offer to take turns is refused from both directions. He will not move toward their worship, and the surah does not pretend they are moving toward his.

The refusal is said twice, and the second time is not just an echo.

After four refusals comes a line with no "not" in it. For you is your religion, and for me is my religion. The Arabic word is din. The commentators read it as religion, or as requital: what each side is paid back for what it did.

Then there is what the line does not do. It does not threaten Quraysh. It does not ask them for anything. It also does not say the two ways are equally true: the four lines before it have just said the opposite. It ends the negotiation and leaves each side holding its own.

From here the commentators go in different directions. Some read the line as the plain statement of a divide. Some hear a warning in it: you will answer for yours, and I for mine. Some commentators held that later rulings on war replaced it, a view Ma'ariful Qur'an says most scholars did not accept. And a modern commentator reads the surah as a lesson in tolerance. Readers today often set it beside another ayah, "There is no compulsion in religion" (2:256).

The Prophet ﷺ kept the surah close. A report in Sahih Muslim, from Abu Hurayrah, has him reciting it, together with al-Ikhlas, in the two units of prayer before the dawn prayer.

The surah ends the bargaining without a threat: your way is yours, and mine is mine.