al-Ḥajj 22:17

Inna'lladhīna āmanū wa'lladhīna hādū wa'ṣ-ṣābiʾīna wa'n-naṣārā wa'l-majūsa wa'lladhīna ashrakū · Inna'llāha yafṣilu baynahum yawma'l-qiyāma · Inna'llāha ʿalā kulli shayʾin shahīd

"Those who believe, the Jews, the Sabians, the Christians, the Magians, and those who associate others with God — God will separate between them on the Day of Resurrection. God is surely witness over everything."

The verse names six communities. This is the widest list named together in the Qurʾān.

And what the list does is understood from what it does not do. I record this carefully:

• The verse issues no ruling about any of the groups. It does not say who is right and who is wrong.
• The verse says when the judgement will be given and by whom: yawma'l-qiyāma, and the agent is God.
• The verb is yafṣilu — root ف-ص-ل: to separate, to open a space between two things. Faṣl, tafṣīl, fāṣila are of the same root. It does the same work as the root ف-ر-ق treated in al-Furqān on the occasion of furqān.

Per the method (Method) I enter a record here, and it is binding: no wholesale ruling about any religious community may be built on this verse. The verse itself does not do that; it leaves the judgement to the Resurrection and to God. This commentary stands at the same limit.

And this agrees with the general line of the sūra: what is described throughout the sūra is attributes — the one who disputes, the one who stands at the edge, the one who turns his face away. Whoever bears the attribute is included in the description; and those attributes are the monopoly of no community.

The closing attribute matches the subject of the verse exactly. The one who will make the separation is the one who is witness over everything. The ground of the judgement is therefore not partiality but the completeness of the witnessing.

I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the choice of the attribute: the verse does not say ʿalīm (knowing) or ḥakīm (giving judgement); it says shahīd. Witnessing, unlike knowledge, conveys being present at the event.