فَإِذَا انسَلَخَ الْأَشْهُرُ الْحُرُمُ فَاقْتُلُوا الْمُشْرِكِينَ حَيْثُ وَجَدتُّمُوهُمْ وَخُذُوهُمْ وَاحْصُرُوهُمْ وَاقْعُدُوا لَهُمْ كُلَّ مَرْصَدٍ ۚ فَإِن تَابُوا وَأَقَامُوا الصَّلَاةَ وَآتَوُا الزَّكَاةَ فَخَلُّوا سَبِيلَهُمْ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ (5)
(9:5) Then, when the months made unlawful *6 for fighting expire, kill the mushriks wherever you find them, and seize them, and besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush. But if they repent, and establish Salat and pay the Zakat dues, then let them go their way: *7 for Allah is Forgiving and Compassionate.
*6) Here "the months made unlawful" are not those four months during which war is forbidden for the sake of Haj and `Umrah but the four months that were made unlawful for the Muslims to make any attack on the mushriks, who were granted respite by v. 2.
*7) That is, "Mere repentance from disbelief and shirk will not end the matter. but they shall have to perform the prescribed prayer and pay Zakat dues. Without these it will not be considered that they had given up disbelief and embraced Islam. " Hadrat Abu Bakr based his decision on this verse in the case of the apostates, after the death of the Holy Prophet, who argued that they were not the rejecters of Islam, because they offered Salat, even though they had refused to pay the Zakat dues. This argument roused doubts in the minds of the Companions in general that they had no right to fight with such people as these. But Hadrat Abu Bakr removed their doubts, saying, "Verse 5 enjoins us to let those people go their way who fulfil all the three conditions- repentance from shirk, the establishment of Salat and the payment of Zakat. We cannot forbear them, because they do not fulfil one of these three conditions."