And he is the one who, on Allah’s authority—blessed and exalted be He—proclaimed the unbelief of all who refuse to believe in him, whether from the People of the Book or from others, and that they will enter Hell—what an evil destination. He is the one who commanded that they be fought, and he summoned them both personally and through his deputies. Accordingly, their remark in their scripture, “He came not to us but to the Arabs of the Age of Ignorance,” whether they mean that Allah sent him only to the Arabs and not to us, or that he merely claimed to have been sent to the Arabs to the exclusion of us, is groundless; for every group knows that Muhammad invited Jews and Christians alike to believe in him. He stated that Allah had sent him to them and had ordered him to fight those among them who would not believe in him. Therefore, if anyone, in spite of all this, alleges that he said, “I was sent only to the Arabs,” such a person is clearly lying, whether people accept his word or reject it. The point here is that he himself called all the inhabitants of the earth to believe in him; he addressed the People of the Book just as he addressed the unlettered pagans.

As for the Jews: they were his neighbors in the Hijaz—living in Medina, its surrounding districts, and Khaybar. The Emigrants and the Helpers all believed in him without sword or combat; rather, once the proofs of his prophethood and the evidences of his truthfulness became manifest, they embraced faith. Those who believed suffered harm for Allah’s sake, as is well known in the sīrah. During his lifetime, moreover, many Jews and Christians came to believe in him—some in Mecca, some in Medina, and many others besides.