Surah Al-Mumtahanah (She that is to be examined — الممتحنة) (Ayah 5)

In the beginning, Abraham conveyed the message of the oneness of God to his family in the manner of a well-wisher. After he had carried out his mission and had come to the end of his arguments, when his hearers persisted in their rejection of the Truth, he completely separated himself from them. But this was a very difficult stage, because his stated intention to distance himself from them amounted to an invitation to the rejecters of Truth to harass the Faithful in every possible way, ultimately degrading them by the use of force to make up for their own defeat in the field of arguments. That is why Abraham subsequently offered up this special prayer, ‘O, Lord! Do not make us the target of the atrocities of the oppressors.’ To absolve oneself of the responsibility for the guidance of relatives does not entail enmity in the usual sense. It is simply the final expression of firm conviction. From this point of view this action becomes imbued with a missionary value. So, sometimes it happens that a person who is not affected by the language of a ‘message’, is successfully won over by the language of ‘faith’.