And recall when We took your firm covenant: Do not shed one another’s blood, and do not drive one another out of your homes. Then you acknowledged it, while you yourselves were witnesses.
In the preceding verse, the covenant of the Children of Israel was recalled through service to the one true God and doing good to human beings. Two further, clear commitments are now stated: do not shed one another’s blood, and do not drive one another out of your homes. Respect for human life and the places where people live is part of that same covenant. Faithfulness to it cannot be judged by worship and ritual while being disregarded in the treatment of other people’s lives and homes.
A firm covenant (mīthāq) is a binding agreement. The root W TH Q is associated with making firm and secure, and here it speaks of a commitment the addressees have accepted. As in the preceding verse, the statements “you do not shed” and “you do not drive out” take the form of declarations, yet express the terms of the covenant: do not shed one another’s blood, and do not drive one another out. These expressions are not a report of their innocence; they are a commitment against which their conduct must be measured.
Pouring out (safk), when used of blood, means shedding blood. The verse says “your blood,” using a plural form for blood and addressing the community collectively. The same manner of address continues in the next command: “yourselves.” In this context, it concerns members of the community in their relationship with one another. The next verse makes that relationship clear: “And you drive a group of your own people out of their homes” (Al-Baqarah 2:85). The other person has not been placed outside the collective “you”; that person’s blood is included in your blood, and that person is one of you.
The word for homes and places of residence (diyār) is the plural of the word for a home or dwelling (dār). It should not be reduced to a person’s birthplace. In this verse, the subject is the place where people have their lives and from which they are driven out. The Qur’an prohibits expulsion from homes separately, alongside bloodshed. Someone may be left alive yet deprived of their home and living environment: the place where they have worked, built a family, raised children, and formed relationships with others. The harm caused by such expulsion is more than the physical movement of a human being from one point to another.
Within the continuing context, the direct addressees of this verse are the Children of Israel. Yet the Qur’an also states this mutual responsibility when addressing believers: “The believers are brothers to one another” (Al-Hujurat 49:10). Of believing men and women, it also says that “they are supporters and allies of one another” (At-Tawbah 9:71). Within this bond, being Afghan, Iranian, Pakistani, Arab, or non-Arab does not place people under unequal covenants before The God. The boundary of nationality is not the boundary of responsibility arising from faith.
In Al-Anfal 8:74, those who believed, migrated, and strove in the way of The God are placed alongside those who gave refuge and support. The next verse says of those who joined them later: “Those who believed afterward, migrated, and strove alongside you—those are of you” (Al-Anfal 8:75). Their faith, migration, and participation are recognized, and the conclusion is expressed as “they are of you.” Others’ longer presence has not become a reason to keep newcomers permanently alien.
Al-Hashr 59:8–9 shows this relationship through the lives of migrants. It first mentions those driven out of their homes and possessions, then those who love the migrants and give them preference even when they themselves are in need. The commendable response to displacement is refuge, love, and support. In this picture, a migrant is not someone whose presence is merely tolerated while their belonging to the community remains suspended forever.
Nor is this responsibility confined to people of the same faith. In Al-Mumtahanah 60:8, kindness and justice toward those who have not fought the believers or driven them out of their homes are not prohibited. The next verse places fighting, expulsion, and assistance in expulsion on the side of hostility. Al-Hajj 22:40 likewise speaks of being driven “from their homes without right.” Brotherhood in faith therefore brings a particular responsibility, but does not remove the inviolability of other people’s homes and lives.
From here, the verse confronts our lives today. The home of a person who has lived in a city for several decades is not simply the name of the country recorded in their nationality documents. For a child born and raised there, whose language, relationships, and experience of life have taken shape in that society, the city is not a place of passing residence. Sending such a person to the land of their forebears is not necessarily returning them home; it may be expelling them from the only home they know.
The situation of many Afghans in Iran and Pakistan places this very question before us. Families built lives through their own labor, contributed to the work and economies of these societies, and raised their children in those surroundings. At the same time, many have faced restrictions on employment, education, and residence, as well as insecurity in their legal status. Reports of expulsion and forced return also include people who have spent decades or their entire lives outside Afghanistan—people who, after being sent to Afghanistan, face the absence of housing, work, and a family or social network.
These years cannot be counted only as a period of hospitality provided by governments while the migrants’ own lives are overlooked. They too have spent their lives, youth, and labor in that same society. The home they have built and the ties they have formed over a lifetime do not become meaningless under the label “foreign nationals.” Someone who, after several decades of residence or after being born and raised in a country, is sent somewhere with neither a home nor support has not merely crossed a border; their life has been uprooted.
Judged by the Qur’an, the answer “this person is not a citizen of our country” is not enough to end this responsibility. The governments of Iran and Pakistan cannot invoke differences in nationality to exempt themselves from judgment concerning the suffering and homelessness caused by forced expulsions. Driving a human being out of the place where their life has taken shape does not become a different act through administrative labeling. When believers who call one another brothers keep families of their own faith alien for generation after generation and eventually drive them out of their homes and living environment, their conduct stands before this very covenant.
The comparison between pathways to citizenship is also clear. In the United States and European countries such as Germany, eligible residents have a defined legal pathway through which they can apply for citizenship. A migrant can move from residence to lasting membership in the community of citizens. In Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, access to nationality is highly restricted and depends on government selection and decision; long residence in society does not provide a similarly broad pathway to citizenship.
In this setting, providing a path to belonging and citizenship comes closer to accepting a human being into society than keeping that person and their children in a permanent state of alienage. A government’s Islamic name does not erase this difference. If we accept a person’s labor and participation but open no practical path to lasting belonging for that person and their children, our claim to brotherhood must be measured against this conduct. The Qur’an recognizes differences among peoples and tribes, but makes mindful guarding (taqwa), rather than lineage or ethnicity, the criterion of honor before The God (Al-Hujurat 49:13). The shared life of believers must likewise not become an inherited privilege for those born on a particular side of a border.
Reading this verse and condemning the Children of Israel without measuring our own conduct revives the same double standard that sees another’s error clearly while inventing new names and justifications for its own. This habit in religious judgment, with a focus on salvation, is examined in the article Blind to Ourselves, Quick to Judge Others: A Critique of the Double Standard of the Adherents of Religious Opinion and Hadith in the Question of Salvation. Here too, the question is the same: do we apply to our own conduct the standard we take seriously for others?
The end of the verse recalls the responsibility they accepted: “Then you acknowledged it, while you yourselves were witnesses.” The addressees are described as those who acknowledged and bore witness. The issue is not an unfamiliar commitment of which they were unaware. The next verse will show the distance between this acknowledgment and their conduct; but first, the covenant itself is placed clearly and unambiguously before them.
For us too, acknowledging the Book does not take the place of being faithful to it. A believer born on the other side of a border stands before the same God and the same moral responsibility. A political border cannot strip that person’s life and home of their inviolability; nor does a government’s Muslim name make the unjust expulsion of human beings from their homes and lives compatible with the covenant of The God.