2/130-132 — "Submit"
"Who turns away from the religion of Abraham but one who makes a fool of himself?… His Lord said to him, 'Submit', and he said, 'I have submitted to the Lord of all the worlds.'"
سَفِهَ نَفْسَهُۥ — "he made himself a fool". We saw the sense of the root safah, "lightness, having no weight in the scale", at verse 13. There, there were those who counted the believers light; here the same word is used of the person who takes lightness upon himself by his own choice.
أَسْلِمْ — أَسْلَمْتُ — here Islām occurs not as the name of a religion but as a verb: "submit" and "I have submitted". Root s-l-m: to be sound, to be flawless, to be in wholeness. From the same root come salām (peace) and salīm (flawless).
This shows how the word is to be understood. Islām is to submit — but the submission here is not a defeat; it is becoming whole and sound. The same root carries both bending the neck and wholeness.