“And when you call to prayer, they make it an object of mockery and amusement. That is because they are a people who do not understand.”

Likewise, the polytheists and disbelievers who opposed the Muslims were known for disparaging the Muslims’ religion, making it an object of mockery and amusement, and treating it with contempt and disdain—especially the prayer, which is the most manifest of the Muslims’ religious rites and the noblest of their acts of worship. When the Muslims call to it, they make it an object of mockery and amusement. This is because of their lack of reason and their profound ignorance. Had they possessed any understanding, they would have submitted to it and realized that it is greater than every virtue with which souls may be adorned.

Once you believers know the condition of the disbelievers and the intensity of their hostility toward you and your religion, anyone who still does not show enmity toward them demonstrates that Islam is of little worth to him, that he does not care about anyone who disparages it or maligns it as unbelief and error, and that he possesses no honor or humanity whatsoever.

How, then, can you claim to follow an upright religion, asserting that it is the true religion and that all else is false, while being content to ally yourself with ignorant and foolish people who make it an object of mockery and amusement and ridicule both it and its adherents? This contains such an evident exhortation to show enmity toward them that anyone with the least understanding can recognize it.