Imran, and they further assumed that this Imran was the very Imran who was the father of Mary, the mother of the Messiah. When the Prophet ﷺ was asked about this, he explained that the Aaron in question was not that Aaron; rather, people in those days used to give their children the names of the prophets and the righteous.

Some uninformed Christians raise the same objection against the Qur’an, yet this exceedingly ignorant critic does not realize that even ordinary folk know a vast stretch of time lies between Moses and Jesus, a span that makes it impossible for Moses and Aaron to have been the uncles of the Messiah. Such a matter is obvious to the humblest follower of Muhammad ﷺ, let alone to Muhammad ﷺ himself.

This very question was put forward by the people of Najran, as is reliably reported from al-Mughirah ibn Shuʿbah, who said:

“The Messenger of Allah ﷺ sent me to the people of Najran. They said, ‘Do you not recite: O sister of Aaron ⦗Maryam 28⦘? Yet you know the long interval that separated Moses and Jesus.’ I did not know how to answer them, so I returned to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and informed him. He said, ‘Why did you not tell them that people used to name their children after their prophets and the righteous who came before them?’”

Thus, when the people of Najran—disbelievers at the time—posed this objection that today serves as ammunition for those who seek to fault the Qur’an, and when they raised it before the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, he did not answer them