Commenting on these verses, Ibn Kathir said: ‘Take the Qur’an, revealed to you, because it is the truth. It guides you to the truth and to God’s straight path that leads to Heaven and its everlasting happiness and bliss... The Qur’an is an honour granted to the Prophet and to his community. It has been revealed in their language. They are the ones who understand it best. Hence, they should be the keenest to learn what it requires of them and to fully implement it.’10
God has made mankind into nations and communities, giving them talents of different types: mental, literary, artistic and scientific. Thus, mankind can complement one another. They should not make their talents a basis to press their superiority on one another. To press one’s superiority over others on the basis of natural qualities that are given to man, and about which one can do nothing either to acquire or discard them, such as regards race or colour, is merely to confine oneself to the stage of childhood or adolescence. This is something that is unbecoming of any rational and mature person. Humanity should have got rid of such attitudes when it received the Qur’anic revelation that says: ‘Mankind! We have created you all out of a male and a female, and have made you into nations and tribes, so that you might come to know one another’ (49: 13). Having established this, the verse goes on to state the proper criterion which gives people their status. This is due to personal action that is undertaken by free will and clear resolve. God says: ‘Truly, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is most genuinely God-fearing’ (49: 13).
The criteria to determine superiority is not based on the qualities that distinguish a particular community or nation. These qualities are meant to stress the unity of the human race and to make it easier for people to get to know one another. Moreover, every good quality entails certain duties and responsibilities that are commensurate with its nature and value. The Prophet (peace be upon him) says: ‘The people who are put to the hardest test are the prophets, then the most God-fearing, then the test gets easier as their good qualities get less and less.’11
God chose the Arabs to be the bearers of His last message to mankind. He knew that they were most qualified for this by their nature and talents, not by their behaviour and practices. Such was the case at a moment in history which witnessed wars and conflicts and in an environment that suffered a number of ills in relation to the economy pertaining therein, social relations and other areas of life. Hence the Prophet’s statement: ‘You find people of different metal. The best of them prior to Islam are the best under Islam, if they get a good grasp of it. You will find among the best people in this faith some who hated it most before accepting it’ (Related by Muslim). This is also indicated by the Prophet’s supplication: ‘My Lord, give good support for Islam through the one who You love best: either Abū Jahl or ‘Umar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb’ (Related by Ahmad and al-Tirmidhī). This prayer for one of the two means that each of them could, by nature and talent, achieve a high standard. In reality, it was ‘Umar who became a Muslim and climbed higher and higher to achieve a unique status in Islamic and human history. Abū Jahl was by no means a lesser person by nature or talent, but all this was smothered by hatred and arrogance and was eventually buried under heaps of desert sand. His talent and good nature were lost when the man denied Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the Qur’an. In the context of mental, literary and other qualities possessed by the Arabs, Ibn Taymiyyah draws the same distinction and says:
The basis of the [Arabs’] distinction is their special qualities: mental, language, ethics and actions. People are distinguished either by useful knowledge or good action.
Knowledge has a start which is the mental ability to understand and retain, and a final point which is the logical ability to express and explain. The Arabs are better qualified in these than other nations, and their tongue is the best in expression and distinction of meaning.
Action is determined by ethics, which are personal instincts. The instincts of the Arabs are more responsive to goodness. They are more ready to show generosity, forbearance, courage, honourable commitment and other good values. Prior to Islam, however, they had a nature that was susceptible to goodness but were prevented from doing it. They had no revealed knowledge, nor a code of law given to them by a prophet. Nor were they pursuing some purely mental knowledge. All their knowledge was what their talent gave them of poetry and fine speeches, what they learnt of their history, ancestors and special days, and what they needed to learn about the weather, the stars and war.
Then God sent Muhammad (peace be upon him) with the best guidance that He has or will ever place on earth, and they (the Arabs) first responded with determined opposition. He worked hard to move them away from their ignorant practices and the darkness of unbelief that corrupted their nature. When they accepted that great guidance, all the rust that covered their hearts and minds was removed. They now had the light of Divine guidance and responded to it with their good nature. Thus, they combined the power they were created with and the perfection God revealed to them. That was like a land that is fertile but neglected, allowing weeds and useless trees to grow in it and letting pigs and wild animals make it their habitation. If this land is cleared of useless plants and wild animals, and then planted with grains and fruit trees, it will yield very useful crops.12
In his lucid style, Ibn Taymiyyah refers to the advantage of the Arabic tongue. He also refers to the clear compatibility between the natural strengths of the Arabs and the perfection of the Qur’an and the Divine law revealed to them. In other words, the compatibility is total between the message of Islam and its first recipients, or between their talents and the special qualities of the Islamic message.
The revelation of the Qur’an and the Islamic message to the Arabs and the choice of the final messenger from among them were due to their psychological and mental qualities, good attributes and fine values. Moreover, the fact that they were greatly influenced by fine speech and eloquent address enabled them to fully interact with the Divine message, expressed in God’s own words and the unique style of the Qur’an.
In further explanation of our distinction between given talent and natural susceptibility on the one hand and the Arabs’ social environment at the time of the Qur’an’s revelation and the start of the Prophet’s mission, we may say that much of that corrupt reality had good and noble motives. Its corruption was the result of choosing the wrong methods and practices, or exaggeration that leads to worse results than any possible risks. For example, some Arabs buried their young daughters alive for fear that they might bring them shame. It is well known that the worst vices of the Arabs included their drunkenness and gambling. They indulged in these because of their generosity and compassion for the poor. Arab poets extolled the praises of drinking because it made a person ready to part with his money and to spend it generously. They might, for example, gamble for a number of camels. Yet the winner did not take any of them. Instead, he left their meat for the poor and needy. These were the benefits that accrued to people from drinking and gambling, as stated by the Qur’anic verse: ‘They askyou about intoxicants and games of chance. Say, “In both there is great evil although they have some benefits for people, but their evil is far greater than their benefit’” (2: 219).
The Indian scholar Ḥamīd al-Dīn al-Farāhi, nicknamed ‘the teacher’, called the negative practices of the Arabs in their pre-Islamic days ‘wrongs’, and explained at length their noble motives and moral aims, saying that these wrongs were the result of good qualities. He said:
Despite all their wrong doings, the Arabs were of simple nature, aspiring to noble actions such as hospitality, kindness to kinsfolk, protection of honour, and gratitude. This applied in particular to their chiefs and the good people among them. Even their wrongs had a basis in their good qualities. Their drunkenness and gambling were due to their generosity. Their battles were mostly to do with what was due to those who were killed. Their anger aimed to establish justice. Their injustice was motivated by their abhorrence of being humiliated. Therefore, they were compassionate to the weak and widows. In their wars, they did not kill women and children; nor did they deal badly with the vanquished. They tolerated poverty because they would not submit to a king who could have united them. They only submitted
