“Biʾsamā yaʾmurukum bihi īmānukum in kuntum muʾminīn”
“How evil is what your faith commands you, if you are believers.” (al-Baqarah 2:93, excerpt)
“In kuntum muʾminīn” is a conditional phrase, not a straightforward endorsement of the audience’s claim to faith. Its force is reproach: their conduct clashes with what they profess.
Treating the conditional as certification of their belief would reverse the polemical meaning. The rhetorical point is: if the claim is genuine, how can these actions follow from it?
A conditional form can test an interlocutor’s claim, not merely introduce a neutral future event.