Al-Kafirun ('The Disbelievers'), 6 Meccan verses, rejects a proposed compromise of alternating worship: 'you have your religion and I have mine' (109:6). Often recited for its declaration of pure monotheism, it is one of the surahs the Prophet is reported to have recited before sleep. Classical commentators connect this surah to a specific reported Meccan proposal, that the Quraysh offered to worship the Muslim God on alternating years if the Prophet would in turn worship their idols for a season, a compromise the surah categorically rejects. Its repeated structure, four near-identical statements of separation compressed into six verses, is read by scholars of Quranic rhetoric as deliberately emphatic rather than repetitive for its own sake, underscoring finality through insistence rather than argument, and its closing line, 'you have your religion and I have mine' (109:6), has become one of the most widely cited Quranic statements on religious coexistence, interpreted by different readers as either firm boundary-setting or a basis for peaceful difference.
Al-Kafirun is reported in hadith to have been among the surahs the Prophet recommended reciting before sleep, alongside Al-Ikhlas, a pairing later devotional literature reads as combining a declaration of unwavering monotheism with a clear renunciation of religious compromise as the final thought before rest. Classical commentators note that the surah's fourfold repetition varies its grammar between different Arabic verb forms for worship in ways not always preserved in translation, a distinction some exegetes read as distinguishing habitual, ongoing worship from a single completed act, reinforcing the surah's central claim of a permanent rather than momentary parting of ways.