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As for the fifth issue, the questioner says: “You have charged the two great nations just mentioned with preferring disbelief to faith for the motive you set out; yet Ibn Salam and his companions would be even more entitled to that motive, for they are exceedingly few while their opponents are beyond count.”

The answer has several facets:

First, we have already shown that the vast majority of those two nations did believe in him and attest to his truth. In former times they filled the earth: Greater Syria, Egypt and the regions adjoining and connected to them, the Peninsula, Mosul and its districts, most of the Maghreb (1), and many parts of the East were all Christian lands—yet all of them have now become Muslim. Thus the number from those two nations who held back from believing in him is minuscule compared with those who believed and confirmed him. As for the idol-worshippers, they all embraced Islam save those who dwell in the world’s remotest fringes, where the call has not yet reached. The Zoroastrian nation, equal to the other two in numbers, power, and strength (2), likewise entered his religion; those who remained, like you, live on under humiliation and the jizyah.

Second, we have clarified that the motive that drove them to unbelief was not confined to worldly gain and leadership—although these were among their motives. Some were driven by that, others by envy, others by arrogance, and others by