2/190-195 — The limit of fighting
"Fight in God's way those who fight you, but do not transgress. God does not love the transgressors."
These verses are among the first regulations permitting fighting in the Qurʾān, and in reading them one must attend to two things at once: what they make permissible and what they limit them with.
ٱلَّذِينَ يُقَٰتِلُونَكُمْ — "those who fight you". The verb is in the reciprocal pattern and the addressee is specified: those who fight. The sentence does not cover those who do not fight.
وَلَا تَعْتَدُوٓا۟ — "do not transgress". The root ʿ-d-w: to pass the limit, to march upon. From the same root come ʿadūw (enemy) and ʿudwān (aggression).
That the limit should be set immediately beside the act permitted is the characteristic of this section. And the limit is not left abstract; it takes concrete form in the following verses: "If they cease, then you cease" (2/192-193), "Aggression is only against wrongdoers" (2/193).
We saw the root فتنة in Sūrat al-Burūj: to test gold's purity by melting it in fire. From this arise both the sense "trial" and the sense "torment, oppression".
In this context the word's counterpart is people's being held under pressure because of their beliefs, being tortured, being driven from their homes — indeed in the same section this is made concrete with "from where they drove you out".
The sentence sets up a comparison: systematic oppression is a heavier harm than individual killings — because death finishes one person, whereas oppression holds a community under continual torment. This is not a sentence that makes light of killing; it is a sentence that weighs the ground of fighting against the loss of life itself.
"Spend in God's way, and do not cast yourselves into destruction with your own hands. Do good; God loves those who do good."
- Spend — do not hold back, do not spare what you have
- Do not cast yourselves into destruction — do not act without measure
It is transmitted that in the classical commentaries this verse has been understood both as "do not be miserly and leave yourselves unprepared" and as "do not take needless risk". The two readings do not exclude one another; both preserve the same measure — the avoidance of excess. The expression wasaṭ at verse 143 of the sūra is at work here too.
And the section ends, in the middle of the discussion of fighting, with an unexpected word: وَأَحْسِنُوٓا۟ — "do good, do it well". Iḥsān, as we saw at verse 112, is both to do good and to do a work as it should be done. That it is placed at the end of the hardest regulation is no coincidence.