أَمِ اتَّخَذُوا مِنْ دُونِهِ أَوْلِيَاءَ فَاللَّهُ هُوَ الْوَلِيُّ
Have they taken protectors apart from Him? But Allah is the true Protector.
The opening interrogative is understood rhetorically as rebuke or rejection, rather than a neutral request for information. The fāʾ before Allāhu huwa al-waliyy raises the question of how the second statement is linked to the preceding challenge.
The theological assertion that Allah is the true Protector is clear; the syntactic force of the connector is a separate analytical issue. Alternative ways of explaining the fāʾ should not be conflated with disagreement about the assertion itself.