Hatred and Violence in the Qur'an Awareness Month: "Let not the believers take the unbelievers for friends"

Today's entry for Hatred and Violence in the Qur'an Awareness Month has Allah telling the believers not to befriend those who are not Muslims, for the unbelievers are "insolent," kill the prophets and tell lies:

The true religion with God is Islam. Those who were given the Book were not at variance except after the knowledge came to them, being insolent one to another. And whoso disbelieves in God's signs. God is swift at the reckoning.

So if they dispute with thee, say: 'I have surrendered my will to God, and whosoever follows me. And say to those who have been given the Book and to the common folk: 'Have you surrendered?' If they have surrendered, they are right guided; but if they turn their backs, thine it is only to deliver the Message; and God sees His servants.

Those who disbelieve in the signs of God and slay the Prophets without right, and slay such men as bid to justice -- do thou give them the good tidings of a painful chastisement; their works have failed in this world and the next; they have no helpers. Hast thou not regarded those who were given a portion of the Book, being called to the Book of God, that it might decide between them, and then a party of them turned away, swerving aside? That, because they said, 'The Fire shall not touch us, except for a number of days'; and the lies they forged has deluded them in their religion. But how will it be, when We gather them for a day whereon is no doubt, and every soul shall be paid in full what it has earned, and they shall not be wronged?

Say: 'O God, Master of the Kingdom, Thou givest the Kingdom to whom Thou wilt, and seizest the Kingdom from whom Thou wilt, Thou exaltest whom Thou wilt, and Thou abasest whom Thou wilt; in Thy hand is the good; Thou art powerful over everything. Thou makest the night to enter into the day and Thou makest the day to enter into the night, Thou bringest forth the living from the dead and Thou bringest forth the dead from the living, and Thou providest whomsoever Thou wilt without reckoning.

Let not the believers take the unbelievers for friends, rather than the believers -- for whoso does that belongs not to God in anything -- unless you have a fear of them. God warns you that You beware of Him, and unto God is the homecoming. (Qur'an 3:19-28)

"The true religion with God is Islam” (إِنَّ الدِّينَ عِندَ اللّهِ الإِسْلاَم) and the People of the Book reject it only because they are “insolent one to another.” The Jews and Christians, says Qur'an commentator Maulana Bulandshahri, recognized Muhammad “to be the final Prophet but their obstinate nature prevented them from accepting.”

The passage also warns believers not to take unbelievers as friends (َأَوْلِيَا — a word that means more than casual friendship, but something like alliance), “unless you have a fear of them.” This is a foundation of the idea that believers may legitimately deceive unbelievers when under pressure. The word used here in the Arabic is tuqātan (تُقَاةً), the verbal noun from taqiyyatan — hence the increasingly familiar term taqiyya. The Qur'an commentator Ibn Kathir says that the phrase rendered here as “unless you have a fear of them” means that “believers who in some areas or times fear for their safety from the disbelievers” may “show friendship to the disbelievers outwardly, but never inwardly. For instance, Al-Bukhari recorded that Abu Ad-Darda’ said, ‘We smile in the face of some people although our hearts curse them.’ Al-Bukhari said that Al-Hasan said, ‘The Tuqyah [taqiyya] is allowed until the Day of Resurrection.” While many Muslim spokesmen today maintain that taqiyya is solely a Shi’ite doctrine, shunned by Sunnis, the great Islamic scholar Ignaz Goldziher points out that while it was formulated by Shi’ites, “it is accepted as legitimate by other Muslims as well, on the authority of Qur’an 3:28.” The Sunnis of Al-Qaeda practice it today.