Also known as: Al-Bara'ah, Al-Muqashqishah (The Deliverer from Hypocrisy)
Verses
6
Revelation
Makki
Period
Early Meccan
Surah No.
109 / 114
Overview
A total and permanent separation between pure monotheism and idolatry. Revealed when Quraysh offered a compromise, that the Prophet ﷺ worship their gods for a year and they worship Allah for a year, it is an outright refusal, repeated for emphasis, ending in the principle that there is no meeting point: your religion for you, mine for me.
أسباب النزول
Occasion of Revelation (Asbab al-Nuzul)
Ibn Ishaq and al-Tabari report that a group of Qurayshi chiefs, among them al-Walid ibn al-Mughira, al-As ibn Wa'il and Umayya ibn Khalaf, came to the Prophet ﷺ proposing that each side worship the other's deity in alternating years, so that if one path proved true both would have a share of it. The surah was revealed as a categorical rejection, and the Prophet ﷺ recited it to them at the Sacred Mosque.
Key Themes
Absolute refusal of religious compromise or syncretismThe incompatibility of worshipping Allah alone with worshipping anything alongside HimCoexistence without doctrinal merger: your religion for you, mine for meCertainty of guidance that does not bend to social or political pressureClarity and directness in matters of monotheism
Notable Verses
109:6
لَكُمْ دِينُكُمْ وَلِيَ دِينِ
“Say: O disbelievers, I do not worship what you worship, nor do you worship what I worship.”
Al-Zamakhshari and al-Razi devote long passages to the apparent repetition in verses 2 to 5. The dominant reading is that verses 2 and 3 deny the present act of worship and verses 4 and 5 deny any future change, closing every door: not now and not later, neither in the object nor in the manner. The command opens with Qul, Say, so the words are a fixed formula the believer is taught to state plainly, not an insult to hurl.
Virtues of this Surah
The Prophet ﷺ called it a quarter of the Quran and recited it, with Al-Ikhlas, in the two cycles of prayer after tawaf and before dawn and sleep. Scholars call it the surah of bara'ah, disavowal of all false worship. Reciting it with meaning is a renewal of the boundary of one's faith, not hostility to persons but clarity that worship is not negotiable.