قُلْ إِنِّىٓ أُمِرْتُ أَنْ أَعْبُدَ ٱللَّهَ مُخْلِصًا لَّهُ ٱلدِّينَ · … فَٱعْبُدُوا۟ مَا شِئْتُم مِّن دُونِهِۦ
"Say: 'I have been commanded to serve God, making religion unmixedly His'… Then serve what you will besides Him!"
In five verses the command qul (say) comes four times. And what is said forms a series: I have been commanded (11), I have been commanded to be the first to submit (12), I fear (13), I serve Him (14).
This sentence is in the imperative but is not a command. In Arabic this use is called threat and abandonment (tahdīd, takhliya): leaving the other side alone with its own choice.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the sentence that follows: qul inna'l-khāsirīna'lladhīna khasirū anfusahum wa ahlīhim yawma'l-qiyāma. That is, the letting-go comes together with a statement of the outcome.
In Fuṣṣilat at 41/5 the other side had said the same thing: fa'ʿmal innanā ʿāmilūn — "you work, we are working." The same sentence of parting: there from the other side, here from this one. And it will come once more in the thirty-ninth verse of the sūra: yā qawmi'ʿmalū ʿalā makānatikum innī ʿāmil.
لَهُم مِّن فَوْقِهِمْ ظُلَلٌ مِّنَ ٱلنَّارِ وَمِن تَحْتِهِمْ ظُلَلٌ — "above them canopies of fire, and below them canopies."
That the word ẓulal (canopies) is used of fire does the same work as ẓillin min yaḥmūm (a shade of black smoke), treated in al-Wāqiʿa at 56/43: a word of mercy is hollowed out. I rely on that treatment.