• Likewise, they objected: “We do not see that you enjoy any advantage over us” (Hud 27)—meaning, “You and we are but human beings.”

The messengers, all of them, answered this very charge, saying: “We are only human beings like you, yet Allah bestows His favor upon whom He wills among His servants” (Ibrahim 11). Thus Allah honored the messengers, selecting them for revelation and prophethood. To deny them on that basis is sheer ignorance and a flagrant slight to Allah’s bounty. For His mercy and wisdom required that the messengers be human, so that people could approach them, learn from them, and thereby receive this blessing with ease. These deniers have therefore rejected the root of that favor and the straight, beneficial path brought to them.

• They also said: “We see none following you except those who are the lowliest among us” (Hud 27). Yet every rational person knows that truth is recognized by its own light, not by the identity of its followers. Their remark sprang from arrogance and self-conceit, and arrogance is the greatest barrier preventing a person from recognizing and accepting the truth.

• Moreover, their use of the term “the lowliest among us” (Hud 27): if by it they meant poverty, poverty is no defect; and if they meant baseness of character, that is patently false—for the truly base are the very ones who uttered this slander.

So tell me: is faith in Allah and His messengers, obedience to them, submission to the truth, and freedom from every blameworthy trait—are these a disgrace, and are those who embody them the despicable ones? Or is the real disgrace the opposite: the person who abandons the greatest of all obligations, affirming Allah’s oneness and thanking Him alone, whose heart is filled (1) with pride against the truth and against people? That, by Allah, is the vilest of vices. Yet these deniers are brazen disputants; they found no fault with these righteous people “except that they believed in Allah, the Almighty, the Praiseworthy” (Al-Buruj 8).