It is explicitly stated in this Book, they maintain, that he came only to the pagan Arabs.

As for the divine words,

“Whoever seeks a religion other than Islam, it will never be accepted from him, and in the Hereafter he will be among the losers” (Āl ʿImrān 3:85),

they say that, in keeping with the demands of justice, this refers solely to his own people—those to whom he was sent in their own language—and not to others to whom the message contained in the Book never reached.

We know that God is just, and it contradicts His justice, they argue, to call a nation on the Day of Resurrection to account for failing to follow a man who never came to them, who left them no Book in their language, and from whom no herald ever approached them.

These are their exact words in the first section. In that passage they neither affirmed nor denied him; rather, they claimed that this very Book states that he never said he was sent to them, but only to the pagan Arabs, and that reason itself rules out his being sent to them.

We shall therefore begin by answering this and demonstrate that he—may God bless him—