60. Al-Mumtahana

Al-Mumtahana ('She That Is To Be Examined'), 13 Medinan verses, addresses relations with unbelieving relatives and the women who emigrated to the Muslim community, holding up Abraham as a model of disassociation from idolatry (60:4) while permitting kindness to those who did not fight the believers (60:8). Classical commentators connect the surah's opening rebuke against befriending active enemies of the faith to the companion Hatib ibn Abi Balta'a, who is reported to have sent a letter warning the Meccans of the Muslims' planned advance before the conquest of Mecca, an act the Prophet is said to have forgiven once Hatib explained he acted from personal anxiety for his family rather than disbelief, a widely cited episode in later Islamic ethical writing on intention (niyya) mitigating an otherwise serious lapse.

The surah's permission of kindness toward non-combatant relatives who did not fight the believers (60:8-9) is cited by modern commentators as an early scriptural statement distinguishing active hostility from mere difference of religion. The women described as tested and found sincere before being accepted into the Medinan community (60:10-12) are traditionally connected to a specific post-Hudaybiyya practice of examining female emigrants' intentions individually, since the treaty's own terms, which required returning male defectors, did not extend to women, a gap classical commentators read this surah as directly addressing rather than leaving to later juristic inference.

Al-Mumtahana sets out the specific content of a pledge taken from believing women: not to associate anything with God, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to kill their children, not to bring forth slander they have invented, and not to disobey the Prophet in what is right (60:12). Classical and later Islamic sources connect this pledge to a distinct, separately administered oath of allegiance taken from women converts, generally treated in the biographical tradition as parallel to, but administered differently from, the pledges of allegiance taken from men, since the verse itself, unlike parallel material addressed to men elsewhere, specifies content directly rather than leaving the terms to be inferred.

The prohibition against killing children is read by commentators as a direct reference to the pre-Islamic practice of female infanticide, connecting this pledge to similar condemnations elsewhere in the Quran, while the requirement not to invent slander is read by some exegetes as addressing a specific concern about children of uncertain or disputed paternity being falsely attributed within a household. The pledge's inclusion of ordinary moral prohibitions alongside the specifically religious one, association of partners with God, is read as treating basic personal ethics and correct belief as a single, integrated commitment rather than as separable categories.