“…Should anyone argue with you about him after the knowledge that has come to you, then say: Come, let us call our sons and your sons, our women and your women, ourselves and yourselves. Then let us supplicate and invoke Allah’s curse upon the liars. This, indeed, is the true narrative; there is no deity except Allah, and Allah is the All-Mighty, the All-Wise. But if they turn away, then surely Allah knows the corrupters. Say, People of the Scripture, come to a word that is just between us and you: that we worship none but Allah, that we associate nothing with Him, and that none of us takes others as lords beside Allah. If they turn away, then say, ‘Bear witness that we are Muslims.’” ⦗Āl ʿImrān: 61–64⦘

The Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—carried out this command. He invited them to the mubāhalah (mutual imprecation), and when they realized that, should they proceed, Allah’s curse would descend upon them, they agreed to pay the jizyah in abject submission.

Afterward the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—wrote to Heraclius, the emperor of Byzantium, quoting the Almighty’s words: “Say, People of the Scripture, come…” ⦗Āl ʿImrān: 64⦘ to the end of the verse.

At times he would recite this very passage in the second rakʿah of the two-rakʿah Fajr prayer, while in the first he would recite His words: “Say, ‘We believe in Allah and in what has been sent down to us, and in what was sent down to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob and the Tribes; in what Moses and Jesus were given, and what the prophets were given from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and to Him we submit.’” ⦗al-Baqarah: 136⦘