His saying, exalted and majestic is He: ﴿He said, 'Did you affirm and take upon yourselves My covenant?' They said, 'We have affirmed.' He said, 'Then bear witness, and I am with you among the witnesses.'﴾ [Al-Imran: 81] ﴿So whoever turns away after that, then those are the disobedient.﴾ ﴿So do they seek other than the religion of Allah while to Him has submitted whoever is in the heavens and the earth, willingly or by compulsion, and to Him they will be returned?﴾.

This verse describes the stopping of the prophets at their affirmation of this covenant and their commitment to it, and taking Allah's pledge in it. This can imply the place of the oath, and it is possible that this comprehensive expression describes what was done with every prophet in his time. 'And you took' in this verse refers to what they obtained from the giving of the scripture and wisdom. From the point of view of the covenant taken from them, they also took it. Al-Tabari said: 'You took' in this verse means 'you accepted', and the 'isr' is the covenant; there is no interpretation for it in this context except for that. And His saying, exalted and majestic is He: 'Then bear witness' can have two meanings: one of them is: bear witness against your believing nations and against yourselves by committing to this covenant. This is the saying of Al-Tabari and a group, and the second meaning is: clarify the matter among your nations and bear witness to it. And the testimony of Allah, exalted and majestic is He, regarding this interpretation, which is in His saying: ﴿And I am with you among the witnesses.﴾ [Al-Imran: 81] is the granting of miracles and the affirmation of their prophethood. This is the saying of Al-Zajjaj and others, so reflect. The first saying is the deposit of the testimony and its preservation, and the second saying is the command to perform it. And Allah, exalted and majestic is He, has ruled disobedience upon whoever turns away from the nations after this covenant, as stated by Ali ibn Abi Talib, may Allah be pleased with him, and others. It is possible that he means after the testimony among the nations with this covenant that His saying: 'Then bear witness' is a command to perform it.

Abu Amr read: 'They seek' with an open 'ya', and 'You will return' with a rounded 'ta'. And Asim read 'They seek' and 'You will return' with a dotted 'ya' in both. The others read with a 'ta' in both. The aspects of these readings are not hidden with the slightest reflection.

And 'You seek' means: you request. And 'submitted' in this verse means: surrendered according to the majority of the interpreters, and 'who' in this verse includes the angels and the two weighty groups.

(p-275) And they differed in the meaning of His saying "willingly and unwillingly". Mujahid said: This verse is like His saying, "And if you were to ask them who created the heavens and the earth, they would surely say, Allah" [Luqman: 25]. The meaning is that the acknowledgment of every disbeliever of the Creator is Islam unwillingly. This is a generality in the wording of the verse, because there remains no one who does not submit according to this interpretation. And "Islam" in it means "to submit". Abu Aliah Rafi' said similar to this saying, and his statement, may Allah have mercy on him, is: Every human being has acknowledged to himself that Allah is alive and I worship Him. So whoever associates partners in His worship, this is the one who has submitted unwillingly, and whoever is sincere, this is the one who has submitted willingly. Ibn Abbas said: Rather, the unwilling submission among them was when the covenant was taken. It has been narrated from Mujahid that he said: The unwillingness in this verse is in the prostration of the shadow of the disbeliever. The believer prostrates willingly, and the shadow of the disbeliever prostrates while he is unwilling. Al-Shabi said: The verse is an expression of the submission of all humanity to Allah and their acknowledgment of His power, even if some of them attribute divinity to others. This is the one who prostrates unwillingly. This is the saying of Mujahid and Abu Aliah as mentioned before, even if the expressions differ. Al-Hasan ibn Abi Al-Hasan said: The meaning of the verse is that a group submitted willingly, and a group submitted out of fear of the sword. Al-Matar Al-Warraq said: The angels submitted willingly, and likewise the Ansar, Banu Salim, and Abd Al-Qais. The rest of the people submitted unwillingly out of fear of fighting and the sword. This saying indicates that the Islam in it is that which includes faith, and the apparent meaning of the verse is general, while its meaning is specific, as there are among the people of the earth those who did not submit willingly or unwillingly to this extent. Qatadah said: The unwilling submission is the submission of the disbeliever at the time of death and witnessing, where it does not benefit him. It follows from this that every disbeliever does that, and this is not found except in individuals. The meaning in this verse is understood by every observer that this unwillingness is specifically among the people of the earth, and the stopping with His saying "Is there any other" is for the contemporaries of Muhammad, blessings and peace be upon him, from the scholars and disbelievers. Abu Bakr read from Asim, "Usri" with a dammed alif, and this is a dialect.