إِنَّ أَكْرَمَكُمْ عِنْدَ اللَّهِ أَتْقَاكُمْ
Surely the most honored among you before Allah is the most God-conscious.
The comparatives akramakum and atqākum relate honor to God-consciousness, while ʿinda llāh locates the judgment with God rather than a community’s social ranking. The surrounding contrast supports a restrictive moral reading, but the verse does not contain the explicit particle innamā.
A sound explanation separates contextual exclusivity of meaning from the presence of a specific grammatical restriction marker. Conflating them produces a false grammatical label even when the broad moral point is understood.