Surah al-Kafirun was revealed, classical reports say, when a delegation of Meccan polytheists proposed a religious compromise to the Prophet: he would worship their gods for a year, and they would worship his for a year, alternating. The surah is the refusal — but a refusal of a particular kind. It does not threaten and does not condemn; it draws an unbridgeable line of practice while leaving the other side at peace. Asad calls it ‘the simplest, plainest declaration of religious distinctiveness in the Quran,’ and it has functioned across the centuries as the Quranic basis for both interreligious clarity and interreligious non-coercion.