“Indeed, Allah gazed upon the inhabitants of the earth and despised them—Arabs and non-Arabs alike—except for a few remnants from the People of the Scripture.”

He thus declared that He despised everyone save those remnants; al-maqt is hatred—indeed, the most intense form of hatred. Yet despite this, He has stated in the Quran that He would not punish them until He had dispatched a messenger, for He says,

"We would never punish until We had sent a messenger" (17:15),

and,

"Had We destroyed them with a punishment before this, they would have said, ‘Our Lord, if only You had sent us a messenger so that we might follow Your signs before we were humiliated and disgraced’" (20:134).

This indicates that the factor warranting their punishment was already in place, but that the condition for executing it is the arrival of the message; hence His words,

"so that people would have no argument against Allah after the messengers" (4:165).

In the two Ṣaḥīḥs it is narrated from the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—that he said,

"No one is more eager to accept an excuse than Allah; for that reason He sent the messengers and revealed the scriptures,"

and in another wording, "For that reason He commissioned the messengers as bearers of glad tidings and as warners."