وَلَا تُجَٰدِلُوٓا۟ أَهْلَ ٱلْكِتَٰبِ إِلَّا بِٱلَّتِى هِىَ أَحْسَنُ إِلَّا ٱلَّذِينَ ظَلَمُوا۟ مِنْهُمْ وَقُولُوٓا۟ ءَامَنَّا بِٱلَّذِىٓ أُنزِلَ إِلَيْنَا وَأُنزِلَ إِلَيْكُمْ وَإِلَٰهُنَا وَإِلَٰهُكُمْ وَٰحِدٌ وَنَحْنُ لَهُۥ مُسْلِمُونَ
"Do not dispute with the People of the Book except in the way that is best — save those of them who do wrong. And say: 'We believe in what has been sent down to us and in what has been sent down to you; our God and your God is one, and to Him we have surrendered.'"
The command is built not as a prohibition but as a condition of manner: illā bi'llatī hiya aḥsan — "except in the way that is best." That is, disputing is not forbidden; its method is fixed.
And this construction had been treated at Fuṣṣilat 41/34: idfaʿ bi'llatī hiya aḥsan — "repel with what is best." What was recorded there can be carried over here: the act of repelling stands, the instrument changes.
| Place | Command | Domain |
|---|---|---|
| Fuṣṣilat 41/34 | Idfaʿ bi'llatī hiya aḥsan | Responding to evil |
| al-ʿAnkabūt 29/46 | Lā tujādilū … illā bi'llatī hiya aḥsan | Dispute |
The same construction in two different domains. This is an overlap that can be verified from the text.
And that the whole backbone of Ghāfir (al-Muʾmin) is jidāl was tabulated there — what was condemned there was groundless disputing (bi-ghayri sulṭānin atāhum). Here too it is not the dispute but the manner of the dispute that is at issue. The two sūras meet at the same point.
The verse itself supplies the words to be said in the dispute, and the construction of the sentence is worth recording:
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| Āmannā bi'lladhī unzila ilaynā wa unzila ilaykum | Common ground — the two revelations are named together |
| Wa ilāhunā wa ilāhukum wāḥid | A common addressee |
| Wa naḥnu lahu muslimūn | The declaring of one's own position |
All three of the sentences begin with what is shared and end with one's own position. I record this as my own reading: the utterance is built not by rejecting the other side but by enumerating what is common — and the divergence is stated only at the end, and not as a claim but as a definition.
A note per the method (Method): the exception illa'lladhīna ẓalamū minhum issues no blanket ruling about a community — what is excepted are those characterised as doing wrong. The particle minhum (of them) shows this as well: not the whole of the group, but a part of it. The same care was preserved at al-Ḥujurāt and al-Zukhruf; it is preserved here too.