Allah does not leave us alone on this earth.
After Adam’s descent, after the warnings about Shaitan’s tactics, after the long passage of advice to the children of Adam — Allah makes a promise. Ya Bani Adam, imma ya’tiyannakum rusulum minkum. O children of Adam, surely a messenger from amongst you will come to you.
That word surely is embedded in the Arabic itself. The verb does not simply say ya’tikum — he will come. It says ya’tiyannakum — with a heavy nun at the end, what grammarians call nun thaqilah. In Arabic, sound carries meaning. That heaviness is emphasis. That emphasis is a promise. Allah will not send you into this world and abandon you without guidance.
A Prophet From Among You
The first audience of this ayat was the Quraysh. And the message to them was pointed: this messenger is from amongst you. He is Arab. He is Qurayshi. If he succeeds, it is your success. If his message spreads, it is the Arabs who are elevated.
Consider their situation. The Arabian Peninsula sat sandwiched between two of the greatest empires in human history — the Sassanid Persian Empire to the east and the Roman Empire to the west. Alexander the Great had swept across the known world but did not even bother to venture south into Arabia. Rocks and camels, they said. The Arabs had no comparable civilisation, no unified identity, no place in the story of the great powers.
And here was a prophet — from among them — carrying a message that would unite them, give them identity, and ultimately make them the inheritors of both those empires within a generation.
Even some of the Quraysh leaders who resisted Islam quietly acknowledged this. Why should we fight him, they reasoned. If he wins, the victory belongs to us. If he loses, the Romans or the Persians will deal with him. Why are Arabs fighting Arabs?
Allah was asking the same question. Why are you against this?
