They therefore said, “What did God mean by this parable? By it He leads many astray and by it He guides many, yet He leads none astray by it except the defiantly disobedient.” The reference is to the Jews, for it was they who went astray because of the parable and rejected it—no one else did so.

A word may appear in a form that outwardly conveys universality while its real intent is particular. Thus Moses (peace be upon him) said, “and I am the first of the believers” (7:143), and the Prophet (may God bless him and grant him peace) said, “and I am the first of the Muslims” (6:163); neither intended every believer or every Muslim throughout all ages, but rather the believers of Moses’ own time and the Muslims of our Prophet’s era.

The same applies to His words to the Children of Israel: “I have preferred you above all peoples” (2:47). He did not prefer them over Muḥammad (may God bless him and grant him peace) nor their nations over his community; He meant only the peoples of their own era.

There is, moreover, an interpretation we have long heard from them—one they have approved for themselves, recorded in their books, and upon which their learned and ignorant, their elders and young alike, have unanimously agreed—regarding God’s words: “Have you seen him who has taken his own desire as his god? God has led him astray knowingly, has set a seal on his hearing and his heart, and has placed over his sight a covering; who, then, can guide him after God? Will you not, then, take heed?” (45:23); His words, “We have placed fetters around their necks up to their chins so that their heads are forced upright. We have set before them a barrier and behind them a barrier, and We have covered them so they cannot see” (36:8–9); His words, “God has set a seal upon their hearts and their hearing, and over their eyes is a covering, and for them is a tremendous punishment” (2:7); and the like. They hold that these verses constitute an irrevocable judgment against them.

Yet when we scrutinize this explanation and compare it with the Revelation, we find that such an exegete has imposed these meanings upon God’s Book solely to prop up his own doctrine. One of them even went so far as to change one of its very letters, reciting: “My punishment—I inflict it upon whom I will” (aṣību, with the letter sīn) instead of the canonical uṣību (with ṣād).