The fighting verses in context: 6 facts from the sources

Verse 9:5 orders the believers to fight the polytheists wherever they are found once the sacred months have passed. Read alone, it sounds like a general order. The verses before it say who is meant. The chapter opens with a notice ending the treaties of those who had broken them, and 9:4 excludes by name those who kept their agreement, ordering that it be honoured to its term.^[1] Verse 9:13 gives the reason for the fighting: the people addressed had broken their oaths, plotted to expel the Messenger, and been the first to attack.^[1]

The command also carries its own exits. Verse 9:5 itself says to let them go if they repent, and 9:6 orders that a polytheist who asks for protection be granted it, be allowed to hear the message, and then be escorted to safety.^[2] An order to kill every unbeliever would leave no room for that. A critic can fairly point out that some early commentators called 9:5 the verse that abrogated earlier verses of forbearance, and that this view exists in the tafsir (Quranic commentary) literature. Other scholars rejected the claim or narrowed it sharply, and the Prophet’s instructions to his armies, discussed below, set limits that the jurists applied. See also War, killing and execution in Islam: 5 facts.

Verse 9:29 orders fighting against those among the People of the Book who do not hold the faith, until they pay the jizya (a tax paid by non-Muslim subjects of a Muslim state) “willingly while humbled.” The last phrase sounds like a demand for humiliation, and the commentators discuss it at length. The chapter was revealed in the period of the expedition to Tabuk, against a Byzantine force on the northern frontier, and the classical commentaries place the verse there.^[3]

The jurists read the verse as the law of a state at war with a neighbouring power. Those who paid the jizya were under the protection of the state and were not made to convert, in line with 2:256: “There is no compulsion in religion.” Many jurists exempted women, children and the poor from the tax, and the tax stood in place of the military service and zakah (obligatory charity) that fell on Muslims.^[4] Scholars differ on who qualifies and on what “humbled” requires. Some took it as submission to the law of the state, and others read it in a harsher sense. Many modern scholars add that the rule belonged to a world of empires and tribute, and that equal citizenship now fills its place.

Verse 8:12 is spoken in the account of the battle of Badr, where the Muslims faced a Meccan army roughly three times their number. It tells the angels sent in support to strike the necks of the enemy, and it speaks of casting terror into their hearts. Verse 47:4 gives a rule for the meeting of armies: strike the necks, then bind the prisoners firmly, “and afterwards either release or ransom” until the war lays down its burdens.^[5] Words about the neck describe combat. The rule that follows describes mercy toward the captured, and jurists later differed over whether other options for prisoners were also open.

Verse 9:123 tells the believers to fight the unbelievers who are close to them. The commentators took the verse as strategy on the frontier of the time, where the nearest threat came from the Byzantine side.^[6] On mutilation, the sources say the opposite of what critics claim. The Prophet forbade it, and his standing instruction to commanders was to refrain from betrayal, from mutilation and from killing children.^[7] As for 8:17, which says that God threw when the Prophet threw a handful of dust at Badr, the commentators read it as crediting the victory to divine aid.^[8] Taken that way, it records a battle and shifts no blame.

Verse 2:191 says to kill the enemy wherever they are found and to expel them from where they expelled the believers, and adds that fitna is worse than killing. The verse before it sets the frame: “Fight in the way of God those who fight you, but do not transgress.” The verses after it forbid fighting at the Sacred Mosque unless attacked there, and 2:192-193 say that if the enemy stops, the fighting stops.^[9]

Both 2:193 and 8:39 call for fighting “until there is no fitna and the religion is wholly for God.” Fitna means trial. Al-Tabari and the early authorities he cites, among them Ibn Abbas, Mujahid and Qatada, gloss it in these verses as shirk (associating partners with God), and a critic can fairly cite that gloss. On 2:191, “fitna is worse than killing”, al-Tabari explains the fitna as a believer being pressed in his religion until he returns to idolatry. The text sets its own limit all the same: “if they cease,” the verses say, there is no hostility except against wrongdoers.^[10] That fits the Quran’s wider statements on belief, such as 2:256 and 109:6, which leave each person to their own religion. The classical glosses state the aim as the end of shirk; read beside 2:256 and 109:6 and the stated condition “if they cease”, many modern scholars take it as the end of hostility and coercion.

Verse 5:32 follows the story of the two sons of Adam. It says that God decreed for the Children of Israel that whoever kills a person, other than for a killing or for fasad (mischief or corruption) in the land, is as if he killed all of mankind, and whoever saves one life is as if he saved all of mankind. The rabbinic tradition has a close parallel in the Mishnah, tractate Sanhedrin. The Quran does not hide this: it ascribes the ruling to the earlier scripture and then confirms it for the believers.^[11] Critics also say that 5:32 is quoted without 5:33. This article quotes both.

Verse 5:33 prescribes killing, crucifixion, cutting off of hand and foot on opposite sides, or exile for those who wage war on God and His Messenger and strive in the land to spread fasad. These are severe penalties and the verse states them plainly. The jurists took the verse to describe hirabah, armed banditry and terror on the roads and in towns. A report from Ibn Abbas matches penalty to crime: killing for those who killed, cutting for those who robbed, exile for those who only frightened.^[12] Verse 5:34 then lifts the penalty from those who repent before they are overpowered. The ruling concerns armed attackers on the public. It does not concern belief.

Critics say that these verses target peaceful Muslims as hypocrites (munafiqun) and mark them for death. Verse 4:89 does say to seize and kill certain people “wherever you find them” if they turn away. The next verse, 4:90, excepts those who join a people bound to the Muslims by treaty and those who come with hearts unwilling to fight either side, and adds that if they withdraw and offer peace, God has given the believers no way against them.^[13] The commentators describe a group who professed Islam and then went over to the enemy.

The record of Medina is the better guide. The Quran describes the hypocrites at length (47:25-31, for example), yet it orders no killing of them for hypocrisy. Their leader, Abdullah ibn Ubayy, lived in the city until his death, and the Prophet declined to have hypocrites executed, saying that people would say Muhammad kills his companions.^[14] The “mosque of harm” of 9:107 was a building, and the Prophet had it demolished; no one was killed over it.^[15] The Quran names no earthly penalty for leaving the faith, and the later legal debate is covered in the article Apostasy in Islam: 6 facts about the death penalty debate. For the group who made takfir (declaring other Muslims unbelievers) into a licence to kill, see The Kharijites and takfir: 5 facts.