Āl ʿImrān 3:19

Inna'd-dīna ʿinda'llāhi'l-islām; wa ma'khtalafa'lladhīna ūtu'l-kitāba illā min baʿdi mā jāʾahumu'l-ʿilmu baghyan baynahum; wa man yakfur bi-āyāti'llāhi fa-inna'llāha sarīʿu'l-ḥisāb

"The religion with God is islām. Those who were given the Book fell into division only after knowledge had come to them, out of begrudging rivalry among themselves. Whoever denies the signs of God — God is swift in reckoning."

This verse and verse 85 are the two most-quoted and most misused verses of the sūra. Per the method (Method) I shall follow a procedure here: first I shall give the root sense of the word, then recall how this word has been treated in the series, then record what the verse does not say.

The concrete sense of the root was analysed in detail at 49/14 in al-Ḥujurāt, and I take the description given there:

"س-ل-م. Its original sense is to be sound, to be flawless, to be complete. Salāma — soundness. Salām — peace, wholeness. Silm — peace. Taslīm — to hand a thing over complete. At the centre of the root stands an operation: to hand something over to the other side in sound condition. Islām is in Form IV: to hand oneself over."

I rely on that treatment.

And the two branches of the root must be recorded, because English covers them with two separate words:

The two branches are not separate: to hand a thing over complete and to be sound come out of the same root. The one who hands over is the one who has kept nothing back.

al-Ḥujurāt 49/14 is the central text of this distinction, and the table given there was this:

I rely on that treatment and do not repeat it here.

And a point recorded there carries over directly and settles how the verse is read: in al-Ḥujurāt the refusal was read not as an exclusion but as a correction of place — islām is not a negative category but a positive word of the Qurʾān.

The wording of the verse is this: inna'd-dīna ʿinda'llāhi'l-islām. And the word order of the sentence must be recorded:

• Subject: al-dīn — definite (with al-).
• The caveat: ʿinda'llāh — "with God".
• Predicate: al-islām — definite.

In Arabic a nominal sentence whose two terms are both definite sets up an identity — "A is B and consists of B." That is, the sentence is a sentence of definition.

And the note ʿinda'llāh must not be passed over: the sentence does not say "with people" or "in history". It names the one who sets the measure.

Now, per the method (Method), I record this explicitly — 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 of acceptance; it does not give a list of persons. No community, people or group is named in the sentence. What is named is the religion itself.

Two. The root sense of the word blocks any reduction of the verse to a historical-institutional name. Islām is by its root handing oneself over, and the Qurʾān uses this verb of Abraham (idh qāla lahū rabbuhū aslim qāla aslamtu li-rabbi'l-ʿālamīn, al-Baqara 2/131), of the sons of Jacob (Yaʿqūb), of the disciples (3/52: wa'shhad bi-annā muslimūn) and of the queen who came to Solomon (Sulaymān). These are facts verifiable from the text.

Three. The verse's own second sentence places on record how the first sentence is to be read. The second sentence is this: wa ma'khtalafa'lladhīna ūtu'l-kitāba illā min baʿdi mā jāʾahumu'l-ʿilmu baghyan baynahum. That is, the verse sets down the cause of the division as not ignorance but baghy.

Four. This commentary does not enter the debate about excommunication. Who is inside and who is outside this definition is a ruling the verse itself does not make, and it will not be made here. What the verse gives is a measure; applying the measure to persons is not the work of this commentary.

This construction has been treated many times in the series, and at 45/17 in al-Jāthiya a table of three places was drawn up:

The same structure in five places. And in all of them the same thing is said: disagreement arises not from the absence of the evidence but after it has come. I rely on al-Baqara 2/213, al-Shūrā 42/14 and al-Jāthiya 45/17 and do not repeat them here.

Here I add what belongs to Āl ʿImrān alone, and it is an observation about position: in the other four places this sentence is an independent statement. Here it is set immediately after a sentence of definition (inna'd-dīna ʿinda'llāhi'l-islām).

I record this as my own reading, and it is not binding: the word order heads off a misuse by naming the cause of division immediately after the definition. As soon as the definition is given, it is recorded that the cause of splitting around that definition is not knowledge but baghy. That is, the verse meets, within the same verse, the turning of its own sentence into an instrument of contention.