(23–24) “O you who believe, do not take your fathers and brothers as allies if they prefer disbelief to faith. Whoever among you takes them as allies—it is they who are the wrongdoers. * Say: If your fathers, your sons, your brothers, your spouses, your clan, the wealth you have acquired, the commerce whose decline you fear, and the dwellings with which you are pleased are dearer to you than Allah, His Messenger, and striving in His way, then wait until Allah brings about His command. Allah does not guide the defiantly disobedient people.”
Allah Most High says: “O you who believe,” act in accordance with faith by taking as allies those who uphold it and opposing those who do not.
“And do not take your fathers and brothers”—who are the people closest to you, and all others even more so—as allies “if they prefer,” meaning that they deliberately choose, with contentment and love, “disbelief over faith.”
“Whoever among you takes them as allies—it is they who are the wrongdoers,” for they have dared to disobey Allah and have taken Allah’s enemies as allies. The essence of allegiance is love and support. Taking them as allies necessarily entails preferring obedience to them over obedience to Allah, and love for them over love for Allah and His Messenger.
For this reason, He states what necessarily follows: love for Allah and His Messenger must take precedence over love for everything else, with all things made subordinate to that love. Thus He says: “Say: If your fathers”—and mothers are likewise included—“your sons and your brothers,” with whom you share ties of kinship and close association (1), “your spouses and your clan,” meaning all your relatives generally, “and wealth you have acquired,” meaning that you earned it and wearied yourselves to obtain it. He singles out such wealth because it is more highly prized by its owners, and its possessor is more attached to it than someone to whom wealth comes without toil or exertion.
“Commerce whose decline you fear,” meaning its depreciation and loss. This includes every kind of commerce and livelihood involving trade goods, such as money, vessels, weapons, wares, grain, cultivated land, livestock, and so forth.
“Dwellings with which you are pleased” because of their beauty, adornment, and conformity to your preferences—if all these things “are dearer to you than Allah, His Messenger, and striving in His way,” then you are defiantly disobedient wrongdoers.
“Then wait,” meaning: await the punishment that will befall you, “until Allah brings about His command,” which none can repel.
“Allah does not guide the defiantly disobedient people,” meaning those who depart from obedience to Allah and prefer any of the things mentioned above to love for Allah.
This noble verse is the greatest proof that loving Allah and His Messenger is obligatory, that this love must take precedence over love for everything else, and that a severe warning and emphatic abhorrence are directed at anyone to whom any of the things mentioned is dearer than Allah, His Messenger, and striving in His way.
The sign of this is that if a person is presented with two courses, one of which Allah and His Messenger love but toward which he personally feels no inclination, while the other is loved and desired by his own soul but would cause him to forfeit or diminish something beloved to Allah and His Messenger, then if he gives what his soul desires precedence over what Allah loves, this shows that he is a wrongdoer who has abandoned what is obligatory upon him.