Section
The Condition of People before Islam
Know that Allah, exalted be He, (1) sent Muhammad—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—to all mankind after a long break in the succession of messengers (2). By then He had come to loathe the inhabitants of the earth, Arabs and non-Arabs alike, save for a few remnants of the People of the Book (3), most of whom—or nearly all—had died before his commissioning.
At that time humanity fell into one of two groups:
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A follower of scripture who clung (4) to a book—one that had been altered, or altered and abrogated (5)—and to a religion (6) whose features had faded: part of it forgotten, part of it abandoned;
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Or an unlettered person, Arab or non-Arab, dedicated to worshipping whatever he fancied and imagined would benefit him: a star, an idol, a grave, a statue, or anything else of that sort.