The Arabs and other nations had many such practices, a full account of which would be lengthy. Reports about the Arabs in this regard are so widely transmitted as to establish certainty among Muslim scholars familiar with their history, and likewise among others. Muslims, however, know more about the Arabs’ pre-Islamic ignorance than about that of other nations. This is because the best generations were Arabs who had themselves witnessed and heard about their former practices during the pre-Islamic period. These practices were among the circumstances that occasioned the revelation of the Quran, so they recorded them in works of Quranic commentary, hadith, biography, military history, and jurisprudence. Accounts of the Arabs’ pre-Islamic days thus became widely and reliably transmitted among Muslims. Otherwise, the other polytheistic nations were of the same kind as the Arab polytheists in this respect: some were more extreme in unbelief and misguidance, and others less so.

The verses Allah revealed to Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, address all creation, both humans and jinn, for his message embraces both. Although some verses were occasioned by circumstances found among the Arabs, Muslims unanimously agree that no verse applies exclusively to the particular circumstance that occasioned its revelation. Their disagreement concerns only whether its application is restricted to the type of circumstance about which the question was asked.

As for restricting it to that particular instance, no Muslim has ever said that the verses concerning divorce, zihār (declaring one’s wife unlawful to oneself like one’s mother), mutual imprecation, the prescribed punishments for theft and for those who wage war, and other such matters apply exclusively to the particular person whose case occasioned the verse’s revelation. This is what some call “refining the basis of the ruling,” namely, when