Can a Muslim befriend a non-Muslim? 6 points on the ally verses

Verse 5:51 reads: “O you who have believed, do not take the Jews and the Christians as allies. They are [in fact] allies of one another. And whoever is an ally to them among you – then indeed, he is [one] of them.” Verse 3:28 says: “Let not believers take disbelievers as allies [i.e., supporters or protectors] rather than believers,” with an exception for “taking precaution against them in prudence”.^[1]

Verse 3:118 warns believers not to take as “intimates” those outside the community who “wish you would have hardship”, and 9:23 forbids taking one’s fathers or brothers as allies “if they have preferred disbelief over belief”.^[2] A reader who meets these verses alone will think the Quran forbids ordinary friendship across a line of faith. The strength of the words is real, and this article does not soften it.

What the verses forbid is the next question, because the Arabic word is not the English word “friend”. Verdict: the verses are strict, and what they prohibit depends on one word.

The word is walī, plural awliyāʾ. The translation used here renders it “ally”, and glosses it “supporters or protectors” at 3:28. The same word is used of God: “Allah is the Ally of those who believe” (2:257), and “Your ally is none but Allah and His Messenger and those who have believed” (5:55).^[3] It is also used of believers toward one another: the emigrants and helpers “are allies of one another” (8:72).^[4]

The Arabic lexicon entry for the root, as shown on the Hawramani Arabic Lexicon site, gives walī a range: “friend”, “beloved”, “patron”, “benefactor”, “client”, and, for the related mawlā, “protector”, “ally” and “adherent”.^[5] So “friend” is within the word’s range, and a reader who says the verse forbids friends has not made an error of vocabulary. The context has to choose among the meanings. A walī in the sense of a patron, guardian or ally is the language of treaties, and it is the sense that fits God as walī of the believers. The verses that follow decide the matter for 5:51 and 3:28.

Verse 60:1 shows the setting. It says: “do not take My enemies and your enemies as allies, extending to them affection while they have disbelieved in what came to you of the truth, having driven out the Prophet and yourselves [only] because you believe in Allah.”^[6] According to the report in al-Bukhari, it was revealed over a letter in which a Companion told the Meccans, who were at war with Medina, of the Prophet’s plan. The Prophet ﷺ heard the Companion’s reason, that he had family in Mecca and wanted protection for them, and said that he had told the truth.^[7] That incident shows the setting of 60:1. It does not by itself show that 5:51 and 3:28 use the word only of alliances, and many readers, including strict teachers, take those two verses more widely. The reading offered here is that the verses are best taken as being about alliance and protection, since the surrounding verses and the Prophet’s conduct point that way. Verdict: the word allows “friend”, and the setting of 60:1 and the wider evidence point to alliance. The reading is argued, and it is not the only one.

Two verses after the warning in 60:1 the Quran says: “Allah does not forbid you from those who do not fight you because of religion and do not expel you from your homes – from being righteous toward them and acting justly toward them. Indeed, Allah loves those who act justly.” The next verse limits the prohibition to “those who fight you because of religion and expel you from your homes and aid in your expulsion”.^[8]

The Quran permits eating the food of the People of the Book and marrying their chaste women (5:5). A marriage is the closest bond between two people, and the husband of a Jewish or Christian wife is not told to hate her. It commands argument “in a way that is best” with the People of the Scripture and tells believers to say, “our God and your God is one” (29:46).^[9] It forbids insulting what others invoke, “lest they insult Allah in enmity without knowledge” (6:108), and it says that nations and tribes were made “that you may know one another”, with the noblest being “the most righteous” (49:13).^[10]

A Muslim who reads the whole book is told to be righteous and just toward neighbours who do not fight him, and to hold back his alliance from those who make war on his community. Both instructions are in the text. Verdict: the Quran separates alliance in a war from decency in daily life.

The Quran tells a believer to do good to parents, relatives, orphans, the needy, “the near neighbor, the neighbor farther away, the companion at your side” (4:36). It does not say “the Muslim neighbour”. When parents press a child toward unbelief, it says that he must not obey them in that, but he is to “accompany them in [this] world with appropriate kindness” (31:15).^[11]

A daughter of Abū Bakr went to the Prophet ﷺ when her mother, who was a polytheist, came to visit her in Medina. She asked whether she should keep good relations with her. He said, “Yes, keep good relation with her.”^[12]

Verse 9:23 does bar taking a father or brother as an ally “if they have preferred disbelief over belief”, and it is the verse a strict teacher quotes. The report about the visit shows how the early community read it: the prohibition on alliance in a conflict did not end the duty of kindness to a mother. Verdict: kindness to non-Muslim family is commanded.

When the Prophet ﷺ died, his armour was pawned to a Jew for thirty measures of barley.^[13] He bought a sheep for a hundred and thirty companions from a polytheist who was driving his flock past, and he paid for it.^[14] A young Jewish boy served him, and when the boy fell sick he visited him and sat by his head.^[15]

When a funeral passed and he was told it was a Jew’s, he stood, and said, “Is it not a living being?”^[16] He kept dealing and living among non-Muslim neighbours in Medina, as these reports suggest, and the Quran addresses him as one sent “as a mercy to the worlds” (21:107).

The conduct does not settle every legal case. It does show that the earliest community, which knew the verses best, did not understand them as a ban on trade, kindness, visits and funerals. Verdict: the practice of the Prophet ﷺ contradicts the strictest reading.

A strand of teaching, known by the phrase al-walāʾ wa-l-barāʾ (loyalty and disavowal), draws a hard line between believers and others and extends the language of the warning verses to personal feelings. It is held by some schools and teachers in the Muslim world today. This is stated from general knowledge, and it was not checked on a page for this article. The strand is real, and many Muslims have met it in their mosque or school.

It is not the only reading, and the evidence of the entries above weighs against its strictest form. A reading that forbids kindness to a neighbour has to explain 60:8, 5:5, 4:36, 31:15 and the Prophet’s own conduct, and it has to say what “ally” means in 2:257.

A believer can hold the sentence of 5:51 as a warning against taking sides with those who fight the community, and still sit with a neighbour, buy bread from a shop, visit a sick friend and stand for a funeral. The early reports record all of these. Verdict: a ban on ordinary friendship is a human extension of the verses. Several verses and the Prophet’s conduct stand against it.