Āl ʿImrān 3:83-85

A-fa-ghayra dīni'llāhi yabghūna wa lahū aslama man fi's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍi ṭawʿan wa karhan wa ilayhi yurjaʿūn · Qul āmannā bi'llāhi wa mā unzila ʿalaynā wa mā unzila ʿalā Ibrāhīma wa Ismāʿīla wa Isḥāqa wa Yaʿqūba wa'l-asbāṭi wa mā ūtiya Mūsā wa ʿĪsā wa'n-nabiyyūna min rabbihim, lā nufarriqu bayna aḥadin minhum wa naḥnu lahū muslimūn · Wa man yabtaghi ghayra'l-islāmi dīnan fa-lan yuqbala minh, wa huwa fi'l-ākhirati mina'l-khāsirīn

"Is it other than the religion of God that they seek? Yet whoever is in the heavens and the earth has handed himself over to Him, willingly or unwillingly, and to Him they will be returned. · Say: 'We believe in God, and in what was sent down to us, and in what was sent down to Abraham, Ishmael (Ismāʿīl), Isaac (Isḥāq), Jacob and the descendants, and in what was given to Moses, to Jesus and to the prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and we have handed ourselves over to Him.' · Whoever seeks a religion other than islām, it will never be accepted of him, and in the hereafter he will be among the losers."

The eighty-fifth verse, together with verse 19, is one of the two most-quoted and most misused verses of the sūra. I follow here the same procedure I followed at verse 19: first the root, then where it was treated in the series, then what the verse does not say.

The concrete sense of the root was analysed at 49/14 in al-Ḥujurāt and was quoted at verse 19 of this sūra. I do not repeat it; I summarise:

س-ل-م — to be sound, to be flawless, to be complete. Salāma, salām, silm, taslīm are from the same root. At the centre of the root there is an operation: to hand a thing over to the other side in sound condition. Islām is in Form IV: to hand oneself over.

And I rely on the distinction of īmān and islām at 49/14 and do not repeat it. The summary of the table there: īmān conveys what is in the heart, islām what is outward; and there the refusal was read not as an exclusion but as a correction of place.

And this is the most important note of this section. The eighty-fifth verse is the last of a sequence of three verses, and the two before it show how the word islām is used in this context:

The same root in three verses, on three different scales. This is a fact verifiable from the text.

And the eighty-fourth verse, immediately before the eighty-fifth, gives the list of those believed in — and the list contains eight separate names and a summing "the prophets". That is, immediately before the word "islām", the extent of that word is shown by a list of names.

Lā nufarriqu bayna aḥadin minhum — "we make no distinction between any of them". And this sentence stands at 3/84, one verse before 85.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the order of the two verses: the sentence that commands making no distinction and the sentence that says "no other will be accepted" stand side by side. And this order shows that the second sentence cannot be read so as to cancel the first.

Per the method (Method) I record this plainly — these are limits that come out of the wording of the verse, not a softening brought in from outside:

One. The verse sets a measure; it does not give a list of persons. No community, people or group is named in the sentence. The subject is man — "whoever". And the predicate is yabtaghi — "seeks": a verb.

Two. The choice of the verb must be recorded. Ibtighāʾ (ب-غ-ي, Form VIII) — to seek, to want, to go after. That is, the verse takes as its subject not a state but a seeking. The difference between not knowing a thing and knowing it while seeking another lies in the verb itself.

Three. The root sense of the word blocks any reduction of the verse to a historical-institutional name. The preceding verse (83) uses aslama of everything in the heavens and the earth. In the verse's own context the word points not to an institution but to a state.

Four. This commentary does not enter the debate about excommunication. Who is inside and who is outside this measure is a ruling the verse itself does not make, and it will not be made here. The verse gives a measure; applying the measure to persons is not the work of this commentary. This limit was set at verse 19 and is kept here exactly.

Five. The sūra itself enters a note on this matter, and that note is at verses 113 and 199. Both plainly count the faith and the deeds of a part of the People of the Book, and verse 199 says ulāʾika lahum ajruhum ʿinda rabbihim. In this commentary verse 85 is read together with this note the sūra itself sets down.

ط-و-ع — willingly. ك-ر-ه — unwillingly, under compulsion.

And the construction comes as a ḥāl: the handing over takes place in both ways.

The lexicographers differ over the extent of this pair, and the disagreement is not to be concealed:

All three are transmitted; I do not impose a preference.

And I record an observation about the word order: before offering a human being any choice, the verse describes the field in which there is no choice. Man fi's-samāwāti wa'l-arḍ — the extent is the widest possible. That is, the handing over itself is not a choice; what is a choice is whether it is done knowingly.

And the same idea was treated at 22/18 in al-Ḥajj with the word for prostration (a-lam tara anna'llāha yasjudu lahū man fi's-samāwāti wa man fi'l-arḍ). The two sūras state the same extent with two different verbs: one prostration, the other islām. This is a weave verifiable within the series.