Al-Mumtahanah She that is to be examined

The context

Al-Mumtahanah is Madinan and belongs to the eighth year after the emigration, in the weeks before the march on Makkah. Hatib ibn Abi Balta'ah, a man who had fought at Badr, wrote to Quraysh telling them of the preparations and sent the letter with a woman travelling south. The Prophet ﷺ sent Ali, az-Zubayr and al-Miqdad after her to a place called Rawdat Khakh; they overtook her and she produced the letter from her hair. Hatib said he had no clan in Makkah to shield his family and had wanted a favour owed to him there, not a change of religion. Umar asked to strike his neck, and the Prophet ﷺ said that he had been at Badr. The account is in al-Bukhari (3007) and Muslim.

That case shapes the whole surah. The man at the centre of it was not a disbeliever but a believer with relatives inside enemy territory, so what follows is about kinship under pressure rather than belief in the abstract. It is also why verses 7 to 9 arrive so quickly to qualify the opening prohibition, and why the last third deals with families split by the treaty: women arriving from Makkah, marriages ended, and dowries repaid.

The name

The name comes from verse 10, where believing women who arrive from Makkah are to be examined before anything is decided about them. It is an odd choice, since the passage is short and sits near the end of the surah, and the name taken from it is passive: she who is examined. The naming settles attention on the woman whose claim was tested rather than on the men doing the testing, and it marks that section as the part of the surah that dealt with people rather than policy.

How it moves

• 1-3The letterBelievers are told not to take Allah's enemy and their own as allies, offering them affection, when those people had driven out the Messenger and them. The section closes with the statement that neither relatives nor children will be of use on the Day of Resurrection, which answers Hatib's stated motive directly.
• 4-6Ibrahim as the patternA good example is set in Ibrahim and those with him, who told their people plainly that they were free of them and of what they worshipped. One sentence is then taken out of the example, Ibrahim's promise to his father to seek forgiveness for him, followed by a prayer not to be made a trial for the deniers.
• 7-9The line, and its limitsAllah may yet place affection between the two sides. He does not forbid kindness and fairness toward those who did not fight over religion and did not drive anyone from his home; what He forbids is allegiance to those who did. Some early authorities held verse 8 to have been abrogated and others held it in force, and the disagreement is old.
• 10-11The women who cameBelieving women arriving from Makkah are to be examined, and if they are found believing they are not sent back, since the two sides are no longer lawful to each other. The marriages are ended, what the husbands paid is returned to them, and the same is owed in the other direction.
• 12-13The pledge, and the closing prohibitionThe terms on which the Prophet ﷺ is to accept the pledge of women, six clauses running from associating nothing with Allah to not disobeying in what is right. The surah then closes by repeating its prohibition on allying with a people who have earned Allah's anger and who have given up on the Hereafter.

The themes

A named case rather than an abstract rule

The prohibition arrives attached to a man whose motive was the safety of his relatives. That is why the surah says so much about kin, and why it does not read as a statement about strangers.

The exception written into the example

Verse 4 offers Ibrahim as a pattern and then withdraws one of his sentences from the pattern. The Qur'an rarely qualifies an example that precisely, and the qualification is placed inside the same verse.

Enmity described as temporary

Verse 7 raises the possibility of affection between the two sides before the surah explains how to behave in the meantime. Many of the people addressed as enemies here accepted Islam not long after the city was taken.

Two words for the default

Verse 8 uses one verb for kindness and another for dealing justly, and applies both to those who did not fight and did not expel. It states what is not forbidden rather than what is commanded, which is a narrower claim than it is often made to carry.

The heart of it

The surah is short and its subject is a line that runs through families. Recited slowly, it keeps returning to relatives: an enemy who is also kin, the statement that neither relatives nor children will help on the Day of Resurrection, Ibrahim telling his own people he is done with them, and the one sentence of Ibrahim's that is lifted out of the example because he said it to his father.

Verses 7 to 9 are where the surah adjusts its own weight. First the possibility that affection may yet be placed between the two sides. Then a statement of what is not forbidden, which is kindness and fairness toward those who did not fight over religion. A reader who takes the opening verse by itself will misread the surah, and it is the middle that prevents that.

Verses worth knowing

• 60:1The prohibition with its cause given in the same breath: these are people who expelled the Messenger and those with him. The reason is historical and specific rather than a description of non-Muslims in general.
• 60:4Ibrahim held up as an example, with one thing excluded from the example by name. It is worth reading twice for the exception alone.
• 60:8The verse most quoted on dealing with non-Muslims who are not at war, with its two verbs. Some early authorities considered it abrogated and others did not, and this companion does not settle the question.
• 60:12The terms of the pledge taken from women, listed one by one. The same terms appear in the reports of the pledges the Prophet ﷺ accepted, which makes this a rare case of a verse and a practice visible side by side.

On reciting it

No authentic report establishes a specific merit for reciting al-Mumtahanah. Its standing rests on what it settles and on how well the occasion is preserved: the case of Hatib ibn Abi Balta'ah is recorded in al-Bukhari and Muslim, so a reader can see the exact situation the ruling answered. The surah is also the source of the terms on which the pledge of women was taken, which is why its last verses are quoted whenever that pledge is discussed.

No virtue reportno virtue report; the occasion is recorded in al-Bukhari (3007) and Muslim

Read beside it

On the shelf

• 60:7Al-Mumtahanah · 60:7

Surahs it travels with

• 9At-TawbahAt-Tawbah states the disavowal of treaty-breakers at length and in severe terms. Read next to al-Mumtahanah, the two show the Qur'an separating those who fought and expelled from those who did neither.التوبة
• 48Al-FathAl-Fath records the treaty of Hudaybiyyah, whose clause about people crossing over to Madinah is what verses 10 and 11 here revise for the women who came.الفتح