2/111-112 — "Bring your proof"
"They said, 'None will enter the garden but those who are Jews or Christians.' That is their wishful fancy. Say: Bring your proof, if you are truthful."
The word used is the same as the word at verse 78: amānī — wishful fancy, a conviction drawn from wishing. There it was used of those who do not know the Book; here of a claim about salvation.
The link is plain: a religion that does not rest on knowledge rests on wishing. And the natural form of wishing is to reserve salvation for one's own group.
The answer itself is more important than the content of the answer. The Qurʾān does not content itself with refusing the claim; it asks for proof.
بُرْهَان — root b-r-h: certainty, clarity. A burhān is a conclusive proof about which no doubt is possible; the term is used in the same sense in logic.
This demand is one repeated in the Qurʾān, and it is striking: what is asked of a religious claim is not a louder repetition but evidence. The text calls its own addressees to the same measure — indeed the same expression occurs at al-Anbiyāʾ 21/24 and al-Naml 27/64 as well.
بَلَىٰ مَنْ أَسْلَمَ وَجْهَهُۥ لِلَّهِ وَهُوَ مُحْسِنٌ فَلَهُۥٓ أَجْرُهُۥ عِندَ رَبِّهِۦ "No! Whoever submits his whole self to God while doing good, his reward is with his Lord."
This sentence repeats the structure of verse 62 exactly: a group's claim is advanced, refused, and a personal criterion put in its place. And the criterion is again in two parts: submission (inward) and iḥsān (outward).
أَسْلَمَ وَجْهَهُۥ — "he submitted his face". In Arabic wajh (face) can stand for the whole — the face is a person's most visible and most recognisable part. That submission is with the whole and not with a part is said by this word.
مُحْسِن — root ḥ-s-n: beauty. Iḥsān means both "to do good" and "to do a work beautifully". The criterion, that is, does not stop at doing good; it includes doing the work as it should be done.
The sūra thus repeats fifty verses later the measure it set up in the sixties. All the historical narrative in between is there to show why that measure is needed: everywhere belonging has been counted a security, after a while the security itself has turned into the religion.