“…‘When Our revelations, perfectly clear, are recited to them, those who have no hope of meeting Us say, “Bring a Qur’an other than this, or change it.” Say, “It is not for me to change it on my own initiative; I follow only what is revealed to me. Indeed, were I to disobey my Lord, I would fear the punishment of a momentous Day.” Say, “Had Allah so willed, I would not have recited it to you, nor would He have made you aware of it.”’ (Yūnus 15–16).

He thus made it plain that the Messenger had spent an entire lifetime among them before this, yet he had never recited anything of the sort, nor taught it, nor even hinted at it. The matter, therefore, is not from him but from Allah—Who, had He willed, would neither have allowed him to recite it to them nor enabled them to learn of it. His recitation of the Book to them and their coming to know it constitute a disclosure of the unseen that only a prophet can possess.

Moreover, the passage makes clear that this belongs to the kind of sending (irsāl) that Allah loves and approves, not to the universal (kawnī) decree that He ordains without loving or approving—such as the sending of devils. For this reason the Meccans used to propose to him that he become their king, that they enrich him until he would be the wealthiest among them, and that he could marry whichever of their women he wished. He would reply:

“If you were to place the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left on condition that I abandon this mission, I could never abandon it.”

These three offers—the throne, wealth, and women—