Tafsir of Hud 11:117

His saying, Exalted is He, {while their people were wrongdoers}—it is said: this is a state (hal) of the subject, meaning "while He was wronging them." The use of the indefinite form serves to magnify the matter and to signal that destroying those who are righteous is a grave injustice. The intent is to declare Allah, the Exalted, above that in the most profound manner; otherwise, there is no injustice from Him, the Exalted, in whatever He does to His servants, regardless of what it may be, as is known from the principle held by the People of the Sunnah.

{And their people were righteous} This is a state of the object, and the governing agent therein is the same agent [as the previous clause], though not based on it being restricted by the previous state, as that would imply restricting the negation of destruction to the case where they are righteous—which contains corruption, as has been said. Rather, it is absolute and independent of that. This is what Ibn Atiyyah chose.

Al-Tabari reported that the intent behind "wrongdoing" (zulm) is shirk (associating partners with Allah), and the ba (b) denotes causality. This means: He does not destroy cities on account of the shirk of their people while they are "righteous" in their dealings, practicing justice among themselves; rather, for their destruction to occur, they must persist in their shirk, corruption, and transgression. This is due to the extremity of His mercy and His forbearance regarding His own rights, the Exalted. From this, the jurists have concluded that when rights conflict, the rights of the servants take precedence, generally speaking, provided there is no preventative factor.

Ibn Atiyyah said: "This is weak." It is as if the one who held this view leaned toward the saying: "A kingdom may endure with disbelief, but it will not endure with injustice and tyranny." Perhaps the reason for its weakness is what some scholars of verification mentioned: that the context of forbidding abominations—the ugliest of which is shirk—does not harmonize with it, for shirk is the primary form of corruption on earth. For this reason, every one of the messengers (peace be upon them) forbade their nations from it, and then from all other sins. Therefore, the correct approach, as he stated, is to interpret "wrongdoing" as absolute corruption that encompasses all ugliness and sins, and to interpret "righteousness" as being rectified and desisting from it, by some [people] addressing the prohibition [of evil] and others being receptive to exhortation, not persisting in what they are upon of shirk and other types of corruption.

End of quote.

However, al-Tabarani, Ibn Mardawayh, Abu al-Shaykh, and al-Daylami narrated from Jarir, who said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) being asked about the interpretation of this verse: {And your Lord would not destroy the cities while their people were wrongdoers and their people were righteous}, and he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "And their people deal justly with one another." Ibn Abi Hatim and al-Khara'iti in Masa'ib al-Akhlaq also narrated it from Jarir as a stopped tradition (mawquf). It is manifest in the meaning that al-Tabari relayed. Perhaps it is not authentically established from the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him); otherwise, the matter is problematic. Making the act of addressing the prohibition by some and the act of receptivity by others a form of "people dealing justly with one another" is [a matter] as you see; so understand.