Repentance (At-Tawba)
۞ [This is a declaration of] disassociation, from Allah and His Messenger, to those with whom you had made a treaty among the polytheists. 1 [Announce unto them:] "Go, then, [freely] about the earth for four months - but know that you can never elude God, and that, verily, God shall bring disgrace upon all who refuse to acknowledge the truth!" 2 This is a public proclamation by Allah and His Messenger to all people on the day of the Great Pilgrimage: "Allah is free from all obligation to those who associate others with Allah in His Divinity; and so is His Messenger. If you repent, it shall be for your own good; but if you turn away, then know well that you will not be able to frustrate Allah. So give glad tidings of a painful chastisement to those who disbelieve. 3 But excepted shall be - from among those who ascribe divinity to aught beside God - [people] with whom you [O believers] have made a covenant and who thereafter have in no wise failed to fulfil their obligations towards you, and neither have aided anyone against you: observe, then, your covenant with them until the end of the term agreed with them. Verily, God loves those who are conscious of Him. 4 But when these months, prohibited (for fighting), are over, slay the idolaters wheresoever you find them, and take them captive or besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every likely place. But if they repent and fulfil their devotional obligations and pay the zakat, then let them go their way, for God is forgiving and kind. 5 And if anyone of the Mushrikun (polytheists, idolaters, pagans, disbelievers in the Oneness of Allah) seeks your protection then grant him protection, so that he may hear the Word of Allah (the Quran), and then escort him to where he can be secure, that is because they are men who know not. 6