our predecessors and their righteous successors followed was this:

Allah Most High sent Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, to all peoples, who were divided into scattered factions and disparate groups. Among them were a follower of revealed scripture who called people to Allah according to his scripture; a philosopher led down divergent paths of falsehood concerning matters he claimed to establish through rational judgments; a Brahmin who allowed that Allah might have a messenger; an eternalist who asserted an absence of governance and stumbled blindly in misguidance; a dualist engulfed in confusion; a Magian who made claims about matters of which he had no knowledge; and one devoted to a crafted object, who claimed that he had a Lord whom he approached by worshipping that idol.

He sent him to make them all aware that they had been brought into existence, to call them to worship the One who brought them into existence alone, and to show them the ways of knowing Him through the signs within themselves that they had been fashioned. He was to command them to abandon all the falsehoods they had followed, after he—peace be upon him—had drawn their attention to their falsity and demonstrated his truthfulness in what he conveyed to them from their Lord through dazzling signs and overwhelming miracles, and to explain to them all