For this reason, God Most High calls those who dwell in such conditions “dead,” “blind,” “deaf,” “mute,” “straying,” and “ignorant,” and He depicts them as people who neither reason nor hear. By contrast, He describes the believers as “people of insight” and “people of sound understanding,” affirming that they are rightly guided, endowed with light, and that they hear and comprehend.

Once this is understood, it becomes clear that before the Messenger—may God’s blessings and peace be upon him—was sent, people lived in a state of jāhiliyyah, so named because it stemmed from ignorance: the words and deeds they practiced were introduced by an ignorant person and carried out by the ignorant. Likewise, whatever contradicts the message brought by the messengers—including Judaism and Christianity—constitutes jāhiliyyah; that was the universal Age of Ignorance.

After the Prophet’s mission, however, jāhiliyyah may arise in one land while not in another, just as it prevails in non-Muslim territories. It can also exist in one person but not in another; a man, for instance, remains in jāhiliyyah until he embraces Islam, even if he happens to live in a Muslim land.