(43–45) “When Our clear revelations are recited to them, they say, ‘This is only a man who wishes to turn you away from what your forefathers used to worship.’ They also say, ‘This is nothing but a fabricated lie.’ And when the truth came to them, the disbelievers said, ‘This is nothing but manifest magic.’ Yet We had not given them any scriptures to study, nor had We sent them any warner before you. Those before them also denied, although these people have not attained even a tenth of what We gave those earlier peoples. They denied My messengers, so how terrible was My condemnation!”
Allah Most High informs us of the condition of the polytheists when Allah’s clear revelations, evident proofs, and decisive arguments are recited to them. These point to every good and forbid every evil. They are the greatest blessing to have come to them and the greatest favor to have reached them, requiring that they respond with faith, affirmation, compliance, and submission. Instead, they respond in precisely the opposite manner: they deny the one who brought them and say, “This is only a man who wishes to turn you away from what your forefathers used to worship.” That is, they claim this is his aim when he commands them to worship Allah alone: he wants them to abandon the customs of their forefathers, whom they revere and follow. Thus, they rejected the truth with the words of those astray. They adduced (1) neither proof nor even a specious argument.
What kind of specious argument is it when the messengers command some misguided people to follow the truth, only for them to claim that their brethren who share their way have always remained on that same path? If you examine every truth that has ever been rejected, you will find that this foolishness—rejecting the truth with the words of those astray—is what such rejection ultimately comes down to. The truth is rejected only with the words of misguided polytheists, materialists, philosophers, Sabians, heretics in Allah’s religion, and renegades from it. They are the exemplars of everyone who rejects the truth until the Day of Resurrection.
After citing their forefathers’ practices as proof and using them to dismiss what the messengers brought, they then attacked the truth itself: “They also say, ‘This is nothing but a fabricated lie’”—that is, a lie invented by the man who brought it. “And when the truth came to them, the disbelievers said, ‘This is nothing but manifest magic’”—that is, magic whose nature is evident and clear to everyone. They said this to deny the truth and deceive the foolish.
Having explained how they rejected the truth, and that their statements did not even rise to the level of specious arguments, much less proofs, He stated that even if anyone wished to make a case for them, they had no basis and nothing at all upon which to rely. He therefore said, “Yet We had not given them any scriptures to study,” which might have served as an authority for them, “nor had We sent them any warner before you,” from whose words and conduct they might have drawn something with which to refute what you brought them. Thus, they possess neither knowledge nor any vestige of knowledge.
He then warned them by recounting what He had done to the denying nations [before them]. He said, “Those before them also denied, although these people have not attained”—that is, the people now being addressed have not attained—“even a tenth of what We gave those earlier peoples. They denied”—that is, the nations before them denied—“My messengers, so how terrible was My condemnation!” That is, how severe were My condemnation of them and My punishment!
He has informed us of the exemplary punishments He inflicted upon them: some He drowned, while others He destroyed with the barren wind, the Blast, the earthquake, their being swallowed by the earth, or a shower of stones sent from the sky. Beware, then, O you deniers, of persisting in denial, lest He seize you as He seized those before you and the same fate befall you.