Al-Munafiqun preserves, and then answers, a specific hostile statement attributed to its central figure: 'if we return to Medina, the more honourable will surely expel the meaner' (63:8), words classical commentary attributes to Abdullah ibn Ubayy, spoken during a dispute on a military expedition and quickly reported back to Muhammad. The surah's response, that all honour belongs to God, His messenger and the believers, directly rebuts the boast in the same rhetorical register it was made, an approach commentators note as relatively unusual within the Quran, which more often addresses opponents' positions in general terms rather than quoting a specific remark this directly.
The episode is preserved in the biographical and hadith literature with additional detail, including a report that Ibn Ubayy's own son, himself a sincere believer, offered to carry out any punishment against his father personally rather than let another believer do so, an offer the Prophet declined, treating the matter as settled by the revelation's rebuke rather than requiring further action, a resolution classical historians read as characteristic of the surah's general strategy of exposing hypocrisy through disclosure rather than through immediate punitive measures.