the mass-transmitted reports about his life—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—showing how he summoned the People of the Book, instructed them to believe in him, and fought them when they rejected him, are so plentiful that they are obvious to anyone with even the slightest familiarity with his biography. Indeed, the whole world is filled with this knowledge; it has reached those near and far alike.

Since both his followers and his opponents alike know that he consistently declared, “I am the Messenger of Allah to the People of the Book and to everyone else,” and since the realisation of that claim is something both elite and common folk know by undeniable necessity, anyone who then imagines that he used to say, “I was sent only to the Arabs,” and that he maintained this view until he died, merely advertises the unsoundness of his own reasoning and intellect—or else his stubborn defiance and wilful denial.

Given that such people have no grasp of the meanings of the verses they cite to restrict his mission, their duty was to adopt one of two positions: either those verses carry meanings that accord with what the Prophet actually proclaimed, or else they belong to verses that were later abrogated. After all, everyone—scholar and layperson alike—knows that, following his migration, Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) prayed facing Jerusalem for roughly a year and a half before being commanded to turn in prayer toward the Kaʿba, the Sacred House; and the Christians themselves agree that the rulings of the previous laws