They were fully aware of the truth that Jesus had brought, yet they displayed arrogance toward it and turned away.

Once the Messenger ﷺ had been sent, both Jews and Christians alike came under divine wrath. The Christians, after all, had come to know the truth—they recognize the Prophet ﷺ as clearly as they recognize their own sons—yet they still acted haughtily toward it. Consequently, all of them incurred that wrath, for the established rule is that those who earn Allah’s wrath are people who know the truth but refuse to act upon it, as was the case with the Jews and the Christians after the Prophet’s mission.

Concerning those who had been given the Scripture, Allah says, “so that a long span of time passed over them and their hearts became hard.” The “long span” refers to the six hundred years that separated Jesus and the Prophet ﷺ—an extensive interval during which many of the People of the Book went astray, leaving on earth only a small remnant of the people of truth. For this reason Allah also said, “and many of them are defiantly disobedient.” He did not say “most of them” or “all of them,” but rather “many of them,” indicating that a sizable number had deviated from the truth.

Allah, therefore, warned and forbade us from resembling those who had been given the Scripture to whom “a long span of time passed, and their hearts became hard.”

If you look at the Muslim ummah today, you will find that it has fallen into the very same errors committed by the earlier People of the Book. In these ages that have elapsed since the Prophet’s mission, the hearts of many Muslims have hardened, many have lapsed into open sin, and leadership over the Muslims has been seized by individuals unfit to rule because of their immorality—even because of their apostasy from Islam. Indeed, those who refuse to govern by the Book of Allah or the Sunnah of His Messenger ﷺ, and who consider man-made laws superior to the judgment of Allah and His Messenger, are unquestionably disbelievers and apostates from