In periods of interruption—when the traces of prophethood grow faint because no one is upholding its realities—such claimants proliferate within pagan states, such as the regime of the Banū ʿUbayd, the Tatar dominion, and others like them. Among these people are some whom God will pardon: when a person exerts every effort to believe in the Messenger yet lacks the ability to attain a higher degree of faith, God does not burden any soul beyond what it can bear. Even though, once the proof has been established, his statement would count as disbelief—like the man who said to his family, “When I die, pulverize me and scatter me in the sea; for, by God, if God is able to get hold of me, He will punish me with a torment He has never inflicted on anyone in the worlds”—and this ḥadīth is recorded in both Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim through several chains. That man was ignorant of God’s power to resurrect him and, because he misunderstood the promise of resurrection, hoped that He would not bring him back. Yet since he believed in God—affirming His commands and prohibitions, His promise and threat—and feared His punishment, and because his ignorance on this specific point was such that the conclusive proof rendering someone like him a disbeliever had not been established, God forgave him. Many similar cases exist among the Muslims.

The Prophet—may God bless him and grant him peace—used to recount the stories of earlier peoples so that they might serve as lessons for this community. Our purpose here is to make clear that whatever these people affirm of the established virtues of the Prophets is indeed true; but their ignorance and unbelief lie in what they deny, brand as false, and in the falsehoods they have spoken in these three matters and others besides. By means of the first two invalid approaches they have negated the fact that God, by His power and will, is the Creator of His creatures; they have denied what He created of angels, jinn, and other beings of which they have no knowledge; they have denied the distinction with which the Prophets were honored above others, reducing the Prophets to mere “knowers” who possess the same type of knowledge shared by Muslims, Jews, Christians, Magians, and Sabians alike.