to bear witness that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah; that he was sent to all mankind, both the unlettered and the literate; to perform the five daily prayers; to give the zakat; to fast the month of Ramadan; and to make pilgrimage to the Ancient House for anyone who is able to find a way to it; together with the obligation of truthfulness, the prohibition of indecency and injustice, and the command to believe in Allah, His angels, His Books, His messengers, and the resurrection after death.

These are matters that Muslims know as public, commonly shared knowledge; a person does not need to have memorised the Quran in order to know them. One can learn what Allah has enjoined through the words of His Messenger even if he does not understand Arabic; it is enough for him to recite the Opening of the Book (al-Fātiḥah) and a few other surahs with it for his prayer.

Many Persians, Byzantines, Turks, Indians, Abyssinians, Berbers, and others cannot conduct ordinary conversation in Arabic, yet they have embraced Islam and become among Allah’s God-fearing allies. Some of them have memorised the entire Quran, but when they speak to people they can do so only in their own language, not in Arabic; and if someone addresses them in Arabic, they do not understand what is being said.

Second point: the Messiah—peace be upon him—spoke Hebrew, and so did the tongues of the disciples who first followed him. He then sent them to various nations; they addressed those peoples and translated for them what the Messiah—peace be upon him—had said.

If it is said, “The tongues of the Messiah’s messengers were miraculously changed into the languages of those to whom they were sent,” the reply is that this is reported about the Messiah’s messengers as well as about the messengers of Muhammad—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—whom he dispatched to the nations; and there is no doubt that the envoys of Allah’s envoys