Overview (Verses 8 - 10)

No Obligation Honoured

“How [else could it be] when, should they prevail over you, they will respect neither agreement made with you, nor obligation of honour towards you? They try to please you with what they say, while at heart they remain adamantly hostile. Most of them are transgressors. They barter away God’s revelations for a paltry price and debar others from His path. Evil indeed is what they do. They respect neither agreement nor obligation of honour with regard to any believer. Those indeed are the aggressors.” (Verses 8-10) 

How is it conceivable that the idolaters should have a covenant with God and His Messenger when they do not make any agreement with you unless they are unable to overcome you? Should they prevail over you, they would subject you to their wrath, observing no agreement, honouring no commitment and heeding no moral or ethical value. They would respect no pledge and allow no limit in the punishment they would inflict on you if only they could prevail against you in war. They would not even respect the values of their own society, risking any criticism they might incur for not abiding by these limits. No matter what agreements they may have with you, their blind hatred of you causes them to trespass all limits and violate all commitments, if only they can prevail over you. What prevents them from doing that now is not the sort of agreements they have with you. They are only prevented by the fact that they cannot achieve victory over you in battle. Now that you are too strong for them, they try to please you with what they say and by showing that they are true to their commitments. But in truth, their hearts are full of grudges against you. With such heart-burning animosity, they will always wish you ill. They have no desire to be in a relation of friendship with you and they harbour no good intention towards you.

“Most of them are transgressors. They barter away God’s revelations for a paltry price and debar others from His path. Evil indeed is what they do.” (Verses 8-9) There is a basic reason for their treacherous attitude: that they are transgressors who have deviated widely from God’s guidance. They have bartered away God’s revelations for a paltry price in the shape of fleeting pleasures and temporary comforts. They fear that adopting Islam will deny them some or all of these interests or that it may involve some financial cost. Hence they do not merely refuse to accept Islam, but they also try to debar others from its path. This is, then, the result of the deal they made when they exchanged God’s message for a paltry price. Hence, they turn away from God’s path and debar others from following it. What they do is evil indeed, as God Himself states: “Evil indeed is what they do.” (Verse 9)

Faith is then the cause of all their hatred for the believers. Hence their ill-will and atrocities are directed against every believer: “They respect neither agreement nor obligation of honour with regard to any believer. Those indeed are the aggressors.” (Verse 10) It is in their nature that they are aggressors. Their aggression begins with their hatred of the divine faith and their rejection of its message. It is their aggression that leads them to stand in opposition to faith and adopt a hostile attitude to the believers, respecting no treaty or obligation of honour. Hence, should they prevail and feel that they can get away with what they want, they will resort to any atrocity without limit.

The grudge they harbour is not directed against you personally, nor are their evil actions levelled at you as individuals or a particular group. Their grudge is against every believer, and their evil deeds shall always be levelled against every Muslim. It is an animosity directed at the very Duality of faith, or indeed against faith itself. This has always been the case with the enemies of faith, in all periods of history. Thus said the sorcerers to Pharaoh when he threatened them with torture, vengeance and a woeful doom: “You want to take vengeance on us only because we have believed in the signs of our Lord when they were shown to us.” (7: 126) The same was said by the Prophet, on God’s instructions, to the people of earlier revelations who opposed him: “Say: ‘People of earlier revelations! Do you find fault with us for any reason other than we believe in God alone?’” (5: 59) In reference to the People of the Pit who in former times burned the believers with their women and children, God says: “They took vengeance on them for no reason other than that they believed in God, the Almighty, the Praised One.” (85: 8)

As for the Arabian stage, the events that took place during the lifetime of the Prophet are sufficient to give us a clear answer. In our commentary on this sūrah alone we have enough information to describe the attitude of the idolaters towards this religion and its followers ever since its early days in Makkah up to the time of the revelation of these verses. It is true that the later and much longer-lasting conflict was between Islam on the one hand and the Jews and Christians on the other, rather than between Islam and idolatry. Nevertheless, the idolaters have always adopted the same attitude towards Muslims as described in these verses: “How [else could it be] when, should they prevail over you, they will respect neither agreement made with you, nor obligation of honour towards you? They try to please you with what they say, while at heart they remain adamantly hostile. Most of them are transgressors. They barter away God’s revelations for a paltry price and debar others from His path. Evil indeed is what they do. They respect neither agreement nor obligation of honour with regard to any believer. Those indeed are the aggressors.” (Verses 8-10) As for the people of earlier revelations, i.e. the Jews and Christians, and their attitude towards the Muslims, this will be discussed at length in Chapter 2 of this volume. We need to reflect now on the history of the idolaters with the Muslims.
 
If we consider that Islam, which is the faith based on the principle of submission to God alone, concluded, rather than started, with the message of the Prophet Muĥammad, we are bound to recognize that the attitude of idolaters towards every one of God’s Messengers and to divine messages reflects the attitude of idolatry towards faith. This should place matters in the right perspective. We see this attitude for what it is in reality, as truthfully described in these Qur’ānic verses. It is an attitude that we recognize in all periods of history.

What did the idolaters do to those noble prophets and messengers: Noah, Hūd, Şāliĥ, Abraham, Shu`ayb, Moses, Jesus, (peace be upon them all), each in his own time? And what did they do to the Prophet Muĥammad and his followers? They certainly respected no agreement or obligation of honour, until they had been overcome. Again, what did the idolaters do to the Muslims in the second great campaign mounted against Islam, when the banner of idolatry was this time hoisted by the Tartars? Even today, fourteen centuries after the revelation of these verses, what is being done to the Muslims by the idolaters and the atheists everywhere? They simply do what the Qur’ān states: “They respect neither agreement nor obligation of honour with regard to any believer” (Verse 10)

The most horrible single incident was that involving the train which carried no less than 50,000 Muslim employees from different parts of India on their way to Pakistan. It was agreed at the time when the partition agreement was made that any government official who wanted to migrate to Pakistan would be allowed to do so. The train carried all those thousands of employees. It had to travel through a tunnel at the Khaybar Pass close to the borders, but when the train came out of the tunnel, it carried no living soul. Its cargo was nothing other than the dead bodies of all its passengers, having been torn to pieces. What happened was that those same Hindu militia stopped the train inside the tunnel and killed all its passengers. The train was allowed to proceed only when this most ghastly massacre was over. God certainly tells the truth as He says: “Should they prevail over you, they will respect neither agreement made with you, nor obligation of honour towards you?” (Verse 8) Such massacres continue to be committed in a variety of ways.

The same sort of evil tactics are employed by all Communist and pagan countries, even today in the twentieth century. True indeed is God’s statement: “Should they prevail over you, they will respect neither agreement made with you, nor obligation of honour towards you.” (Verse 8) “They respect neither agreement nor obligation of honour with regard to any believer. Those indeed are the aggressors.” (Verse 10)