O you who believe do not take My enemy and your enemy namely the disbelievers of Mecca for friends. You offer you communicate to them the Prophet’s plan s to attack them which he had confided to you and had kept secret at Hunayn communicating this to them out of affection between you and them. Hātib b. Abī Balta‘a sent them a letter to that effect on account of his having children and close relatives idolaters among them. The Prophet s intercepted it from the person to whom he Hātib had given it to deliver after God apprised him of this. Hātib’s excuse for this conduct of his was accepted by the Prophet; when verily they have disbelieved in the truth that has come to you that is in the religion of Islam and the Qur’ān expelling the Messenger and you from Mecca by oppressing you because you believe in God your Lord. If you have gone forth to struggle in My way and to seek My pleasure … the response to the conditional is indicated by what preceded that is to say understand it as being ‘then do not take them as friends’. You secretly harbour affection for them when I know well what you hide and what you proclaim. And whoever among you does that that is to secretly communicate the Prophet’s news to them has verily strayed from the right way he has missed the path of guidance originally al-sawā’ means ‘the middle way’.
