A similar retort was voiced by the idolaters to anyone who claimed, “Allah has sent me and revealed a message to me,” as opposed to someone who merely came as an emissary dispatched by another messenger.

After that, He says:

“Alas for My servants! No messenger ever came to them without their mocking him” (Qur’an 36:30).

This statement concerns messengers who came to the people directly from Allah, not envoys sent on behalf of other messengers.

Moreover, Allah put forward this episode as a parable for those to whom He sent Muhammad—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—warning them that Allah might take vengeance upon them just as He did upon those earlier communities. A parable for Muhammad can be drawn only with a messenger comparable to him, not with those to whom Muhammad’s companions are superior, for Abu Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, and ʿAlī are, by the unanimous agreement of Muslim scholars, superior to the disciples of Jesus.

Furthermore, Allah sent no messenger after the Messiah; instead, He made that era a period of suspension, as He says:

“O People of the Scripture! Our Messenger has now come to you, making things clear to you, after a pause in the succession of messengers” (Qur’an 5:19).

He, exalted is He, also says:

“When We sent to them two messengers and they rejected both, We reinforced them with a third. They said, ‘Indeed, we have been sent to you.’ But the people replied, ‘You are only human beings like us’” (36:14).

Had those men been envoys of another messenger, the rejection would have been directed at the one who sent them, and their objection—“You are only human beings like us”—would have carried no weight, for no one denies that the agents of Allah’s messengers are human; what they rejected was that a messenger sent directly by Allah could be human. Besides, had they