Surah Al-Anfal: Thematic English Translation (Mustafa Çevik)

O Prophet! They ask you how the spoils won in war are to be shared out. Say: “It is Allah who has given you victory in the war, and the right to rule on the division of the spoils is His too. Allah has given the authority to share out the spoils to His messenger, the Prophet.

O believers! Guard against opposing the rulings Allah has laid down, be mindful and conscious toward Him, and do not fall out with one another over the sharing of the spoils. Obey Allah and His messenger; if you are truly believers, your faith requires this.”

When Allah’s rulings are recited to the believers who believe in His call, their hearts at once tremble, their faith grows stronger still, and they trust in their Lord alone and obey Him. They perform their prayers scrupulously, consciously, and constantly, and use the blessings Allah has bestowed on them in His way. For such people there are high ranks with their Lord and never-ending blessings in Paradise.

O Prophet! When you brought the believers out of their homes to fight against the aggressors for the sake of the order of life that is Allah’s call, some of them disliked it. Moreover, even though Allah’s promise of help to the believers had reached them, they were still going to argue with you about the fighting, almost as though you were driving them to death before their very eyes.

At that time Allah had promised you that one of the two enemy parties would fall into your hands, and you wanted the one that was weak and feeble and rich in spoils to fall into your hands. Yet Allah willed that you should fight the one of those two groups of your enemies, who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth, that appeared strong, and cut them off at the root. Thus, though those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth might not wish it, Allah wanted through your hands to strengthen His order founded on truth, to bring down falsehood, and to raise you high.

Remember when, in the battle, you prayed and pleaded with your Lord to help you, and He made known to you that He would help you with angels, a thousand at a time, sent one after another.

Allah gave this help so that it might be good news for you, that your hearts might be set at rest and your spirits raised. Do not forget that victory comes only with Allah’s help. Allah’s power suffices for everything; He alone is the One who always prevails, whose every work is perfect.

When fear of the enemy gripped you, sleep would not come to your eyes. So that you might trust in yourselves, to give you inner peace and strengthen your morale, and to cleanse you of spiritual impurities and free you from satanic whisperings, Allah brought a light sleep down upon you, and then sent down rain from the sky in torrents. After this your Lord revealed to the angels that they should put courage into the believers’ hearts and strengthen them. And the angels inspired the believers’ hearts thus: “Allah is with you; victory will surely be yours. Allah will cast fear into the hearts of those who deny the truth; come, strike the necks of those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth, and break their hands and arms.”

This is part of what those who associate partners with Allah deserved for waging war on the order and morality that is Allah’s call. Whoever wages war on Allah’s call and on His messenger who calls to it, Allah punishes him with the most severe punishment. And after this penalty, the punishment of the Fire in Hell awaits those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth.

O believers! In battle never turn your backs and flee before those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth. Whoever, during the battle, turns his back on the enemy and flees for any purpose other than turning as a tactic in order to fight the enemy again, or to join another unit of believers, incurs Allah’s wrath, and his destination in the Hereafter will be Hell.

O believers! Know well that it was not you who killed the enemy; it was Allah who killed them. When you threw, it was Allah who made you throw. He did this to let the believers pass a test and bring them to victory. Surely Allah hears your prayers, knows everything, and has power over everything.

That is how Allah helps the believers and brings to nothing the schemes of those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth.

O believers who prayed for victory as you set out for battle! Now Allah’s help and victory have reached you. Do not now say that you won the victory by your own strength. To say that you attained victory with Allah’s help is both more right and better for you. If you do not say so, but grow arrogant and turn to talk that associates partners with Allah, then We too will go back on Our promise of help, and in that case, however great your numbers, you will see no benefit from them.

Do not forget that Allah is with the believers who trust and submit to Him wholeheartedly.

O believers! Always guard and maintain your mindfulness of Allah and His messenger and your wholehearted devotion to them; do not turn away from the messages your Prophet conveys to you in Allah’s name, and never be like the hypocrites who say, “We have heard and we obey,” and then do the opposite.

The worst and basest of living creatures on the earth in Allah’s sight are those who, though they hear the call made through Allah’s verses, do not use their reason and act as though deaf and mute toward it.

Had such people reflected that there is a reason for their creation and wished to live accordingly, Allah would surely have let them hear the truth and made it easy for them to turn to it. But even if Allah had let those who stubbornly persist in not using their reason rightly hear, they would still have carried on in their arrogance, insolence, and ingratitude, and turned away.

O you who believe! Allah and His Messenger are calling you to live the order of life that will keep you fully alive and make you honored and strong. So respond to this call! Know well that Allah knows even the intentions in the depths of a person’s heart, comes between his heart and his intentions, and directs him accordingly. In the end you will all be gathered in Allah’s presence and questioned about your attitude toward His call.

If you do not stand in the way of shirk, disbelief, and oppression and prevent them, the harm of this will not afflict only those who stir up this discord (fitna); it will reach those who turn a blind eye to it as well. Do not forget that the punishment Allah will give to those who stir up discord and those who turn a blind eye to it is very severe.

O believers! Do not forget the persecution and oppression of those who associated partners with Allah in the days when you were a minority in the land; at every moment you feared that they would snatch you away, torment you, and destroy you. In those days Allah sheltered you, strengthened and supported you with His help, and bestowed provision on you for your livelihood.

So you too give thanks to Allah in complete submission. O you who say you have believed! When these truths stand in plain view, never knowingly be ungrateful to Allah, and guard against betraying His Messenger. Hold fast to the order and morality in His Book, which Allah has entrusted to you.

Know well that your wealth and your children are each a means of testing that measures your devotion to Allah’s call. Let them not keep you from living the life to which you are invited.

Do not forget that the greatest happiness and reward is to live within the limits Allah has set.

O believers! If you bear a sense of responsibility toward Allah in wholehearted submission, He will strengthen your ability to distinguish right from wrong and your understanding, and forgive your sins. For Allah is merciful and compassionate toward those who repent of their wrong and turn to what is right.

O Prophet! Those who associated partners with Allah were laying traps to block your call to a life centered on Allah, to silence you, to kill you, or to drive you out of your homeland, and Allah kept bringing their traps to nothing. Allah is the best of those who foil traps.

Whenever Our verses are recited to them and they are invited to live by the order of life that is the reason for their creation, they always say: “We have heard these before; if we wished, we too could say the like of them; these are nothing but the tales of the ancients.”

As if this were not enough, they even went so far as to say, “O Allah, if this Quran has come from You, rain stones down on us, or send us a painful punishment, and then we will believe.” But Allah was not going to punish them while you were among them, before all that needed to be said and done for them to see and grasp the truth had been exhausted, and while there were still some among them who would see the truth and turn to it.

Could it be thought that Allah would not punish those who associate partners with Him, for using the Kaaba for purposes other than teaching the divine order and morality, which is the purpose for which it was built, and for preventing the believers from visiting it and worshipping there?

The true owners of the Masjid al-Haram (the Kaaba) are only the believers who take Allah alone as Lord and God and believe in His call; but those who associate partners with Allah do not accept this truth. All that such people do at the Kaaba in the name of worship is whistle and clap their hands. For what they do, they will be punished with the punishment they deserve.

The enemies of the order of life that is Allah’s call spend their wealth and the means they possess on keeping people from the right path, and they will spend still more. What they spend will come back to them as deep remorse, profound sorrow, and punishment; it will be of no use to them at all. And in the Hereafter they will be dragged into the fire of Hell.

Allah will separate the believer from those who associate partners with Him and deny the truth, that is, the pure from the filthy; and when the day comes He will heap those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth one upon another and cram them all into Hell. It is they who will be the losers in the end.

Say: “O you who associate partners with Allah! If you follow the call made in Allah’s name, He will forgive your past sins; but if you do not give up your shirk and your disbelief, what befell those before you will befall you too.”

O believers! Fight those who attack you until oppression and persecution come to an end and only the Islamic order of life (religion) prevails on the earth. If they give up their oppression and persecution of Allah’s servants, you too give up fighting.

Allah sees and knows what everyone does; if they do not give up fighting but carry on with oppression and persecution, then you too must not give up fighting, and do not forget that Allah is the helper of the believers.

O believers! One fifth of the spoils you win in war belongs to Allah, the Prophet and his kinsfolk, the poor, the orphans, and stranded travelers.

If you believe in the good news of victory We made known to Our Prophet on that Day when truth and falsehood fought and were parted from each other, you will abide by this division too. Allah alone knows the absolute truth of everything.

On the day the battle was to take place, you at one end of the valley and the army of those who associated partners with Allah at the other came face to face, as if it had been agreed and arranged beforehand. Had you tried to arrange with them to meet here, you would never have agreed. But Allah ordained it so in order to bring about what was destined to be: so that those who have taken Islam as their order of life and those who are hostile to it might be clearly revealed by this test, that whoever perished might perish by clear proof, and that whoever lived might live as a witness to the truth plainly made manifest. Allah sees and knows everything and has power over everything.

O Prophet! Before this battle Allah showed you in your dream that your enemies were few. Had He shown them as many, you would have grown anxious, lost heart, and fallen into dispute. Allah protected you from falling into that state. And they too, before the battle, saw you as weak and looked down on you. Allah knows full well what the feelings of anxiety, fear, patience, and courage in hearts will make a person do.

O you who believe! When you meet an enemy force in battle, never show slackness or loss of heart; stand firm and fast, and take refuge in Allah’s help and trust in it, so that you may attain victory.

O believers! Obey Allah and His Messenger, and never quarrel and fall out among yourselves; otherwise you will lose your strength and see your state fall.

Allah is with those who struggle against hardship and difficulty for the sake of the order of life that is the reason for their creation. Do not be like the aggressors who left their homes with arrogance and ostentation to keep people from Allah’s call.

During the battle Satan too was whispering to those who associated partners with Allah, making what they were doing seem fair to them and saying, “No one can defeat you today; I am with you; do not be afraid, attack.” But when the two armies clashed, he turned his back, drew away from them, and said: “I am clear of what you do, and of you, for I see and know what you do not wish to see, know, and understand. Moreover, I fear Allah. His punishment is very severe.”

Meanwhile the hypocrites were saying: “Their religion is making these Muslims do a wrong thing by commanding them to fight.”

The truth is that those who trust in Allah and submit to Him always, in every situation, whatever the circumstances, will most certainly come out winners. Allah is the Possessor of supreme power and is absolutely right in His every ruling.

If only you could see the plight those people of Hell fall into as the angels take the souls of those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth, striking their backs again and again as they are being killed! In the Hereafter, too, the angels will say to them: “Come now, enter the fire of Hell, which you have prepared with your own hands and deserved.” Allah does no wrong to His servants.

Whatever the attitude of Pharaoh and his followers, and of those before and after them, toward Allah’s call, the attitude of these who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth is the same. In the Hereafter the end of them all will be the same too. For they rejected Allah’s call and waged war on it. And Allah seized them in an iron grip and punished them with the punishment they deserved.

Allah has power over everything, and His punishment is very severe. So long as a community does not abandon the order of life Allah has made known to it through a prophet and a Book, Allah does not withdraw and take back from them the blessing of Islam He has bestowed on that community. For such is His law. Allah knows best the state of His servants and treats them as they deserve.

Therefore, O Prophet! The end of those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth will be Hell, like the end of Pharaoh and those before him. They too opposed the divine call. So We drowned Pharaoh and his men, for all of them were wrongdoers.

Without doubt the worst, most evil, and basest of living creatures in Allah’s sight are those who do not use their reason rightly, persist in turning away from the order of life that is the reason for their creation, and do not believe.

Whenever you make a treaty with them, they break it at every opportunity. If you come to fight them, defeat them by routing them and teaching them a lesson they will never forget. Perhaps those who come after them will reflect on this and take heed.

O Prophet! If there is good reason for you to fear treachery from a people with whom you have made a treaty, then break the treaty you made with them in return. Do not forget that Allah does not love traitors who attempt treachery. Let them not think that they can escape Allah’s punishment and get away; know well that they can never leave you powerless.

O believers! Against your enemies, both Allah’s and yours, and others besides them whom Allah knows but you do not, gather as much strength and force as you can and make ready war horses. Without doubt, whatever you spend in the cause of living and keeping alive the order of life that is Allah’s call will come back to you in full as reward.

If your enemies seek peace, then you too be for peace, and trust in Allah alone! Surely He knows what is right in everything and hears everything.

If your enemies’ intention is to deceive you and lead you into a trap by appearing to favor peace, know well that Allah is enough for you. Allah will support the believers with His help.

Allah has united and bound together the hearts of the believers and formed a very strong bond of love between them. Had you spent all the wealth on earth, you could not have united and bound their hearts together like this; but Allah warmed their hearts toward one another and drew them close. Allah’s power suffices for everything; His every ruling is absolutely right.

O Prophet! Allah is enough for you, and for the believers who follow you, as friend and helper. Encourage and spur on the believers to overcome their fear of war and to hold out and stand firm against its hardships. Twenty of you who are patient and steadfast are enough to defeat two hundred of those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth; or again, a hundred of you will defeat a thousand of them, for those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth cannot grasp the meaning, importance, and value of fighting in Allah’s way, and have no such purpose.

Because of the situation you are in, Allah has lightened your burden. A hundred of you can overcome and defeat two hundred of them. Or a thousand of you who are brave and steadfast will defeat two thousand of them. Without doubt Allah is with the believers.

It does not befit any prophet to take captives unless he has secured a decisive and overwhelming superiority in battle; only those set on the gains of worldly life do this. Yet Allah wants you to seek the reward of the life of the Hereafter and to strive for it. Allah knows what is right in everything and is the Possessor of supreme knowledge, judgment, and wisdom.

Had you released for ransom the captives you took in battle even though Allah’s rulings on captives had already been made known to you, you would have been struck with a severe punishment. But since Allah’s rulings on captives had not yet been made known to you, Allah forgives you for the mistake you made over the ransom.

Make use of what is lawful and wholesome of the spoils you won in battle, in the way Allah has made known to you, and act with a sense of responsibility toward Allah. Allah is most merciful, compassionate, and forgiving toward the believers.

O Prophet! Say to the captives who have fallen into your hands: “If Allah sees in your hearts a turning toward the order and morality that is the reason for your creation, know well that He will grant you something far better and more valuable than what was taken from you as spoils and than the honor and standing you have lost, and He will forgive you; Allah is most merciful toward the believers.”

If the prisoners of war, pretending to accept Islam merely to get free of you, try to mislead you and attempt treachery, know that they betrayed Allah before too by going back on their word, and Allah helped you against them, made you prevail, and brought them low and wretched.

The truth is that Allah knows the inner reality of everything, has power over everything, and holds absolute authority.

The believers who believed in Allah’s call and, because of their efforts to live as their faith requires, were driven out of their homes and forced to emigrate, and those who welcomed them with open arms and gave them a home, are true friends and helpers of one another.

As for those who believed in Allah’s call but did not emigrate and stayed behind, the Muslims who have emigrated bear no responsibility for protecting and looking after them until they give up living among those who associate partners with Allah and emigrate to join the believers. But if they ask you for help in a matter of religion, to be saved from the oppression of those who associate partners with Allah and deny the truth, you must help them. However, this help must not be against a people with whom you have a treaty not to fight one another or interfere in each other’s internal affairs. Do not forget that Allah sees and knows what you do.

Those who turn away from Allah’s call are also friends and helpers of one another. If those who believe in Allah’s call do not help one another and show their friendship, tyranny, persecution, oppression, corruption, and turmoil will break out on the earth.

As for those who were forced to emigrate from their homes because they strove (jihad) to live their faith, and those who welcomed them with open arms, gave them a home, and shared their provision with them: they are the true believers, the true friends; forgiveness and the blessings of Paradise await them with their Lord.

Those who, after the believers who were forced to emigrate because of their faith, believed in Allah’s call, left the land of oppression, joined you, and strove (jihad) shoulder to shoulder with you against your enemies, they too are of you.

The believers are closer to one another than bonds of kinship, and within the limits Allah has set they have rights over one another.