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The Quranic Mushrikūn and the resurrection (Part I)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2012

Patricia Crone
Patricia Crone*
Affiliation:
Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton University
*
Pcrone@ias.edu
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Abstract

This article examines the attitudes of the Quranic mushrikūn to the resurrection and the afterlife, focusing on those who doubted or denied the reality of both. The first part of the article argues that the doubters and deniers had grown up in a monotheist environment familiar with both concepts and that it was from within the monotheist tradition that they rejected them. The second part (published in a forthcoming issue of BSOAS) relates their thought to intellectual currents in Arabia and the Near East in general, arguing that the role of their pagan heritage in their denial is less direct than normally assumed. It is also noted that mutakallims such as Abū ʿĪsā al-Warrāq and al-Māturīdī anticipated the main conclusions reached in this paper.

Keywords

QuranPagansAfterlifeResurrectionArabiaLate Antiquity
Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 75 , Issue 3 , October 2012 , pp. 445 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 2012

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References

1 The exegetes usually construe qarīb as meaning kā’in here: thus Sulaymān, Muqātil b., Tafsīr, ed. ʿShiḥāta, A. M. (Beirut, 2002)Google Scholar, iv, 436; al-Ṭabarī, Jāmiʿ al-bayān an tafsīr al-Qur'ān (Beirut, 1988), part xxix, 73; al-Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt al-Qur'ān, ed. B. Topaloğlu et al. (Istanbul, 2005–10), xvi, 95 (claiming that everything kā’in is qarīb). According to Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, qarīb here means easy or not impossible (al-Tafsīr al-kabīr, Tehran 1413, xxx, 125).

2 For the Rabbinic view that Gehenna is of limited duration, see Raphael, S. P., Jewish Views of the Afterlife, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD, 2009), 144 fGoogle Scholar.

3 Cf. J. Witztum, “The Syriac milieu of the Qur'ān: the recasting of Biblical narratives”, PhD dissertation, Princeton University 2011, 248 ff.

4 Thus Crone, P., “The religion of the Qur’ānic pagans: God and the lesser deities”, Arabica 57, 2010, 151–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in agreement with Hawting, G. R., The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam (Cambridge, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. ch. 2, but taking the veneration of gods/angels more literally than he is inclined to do.

5 Athenagoras, De resurrectione, 3, 3; cf. Barnard, L. W., “Athenagoras: De Resurrectione. The background and theology of a second century treatise on the resurrection”, Studia Theologica 30, 1976, 1–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 10; Chadwick, H., “Origen, celsus, and the resurrection of the body”', Harvard Theological Review 41, 1948, 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the problem of wild animals and chain consumption, see also Bynum, C. W., The Resurrection of the Body (New York, 1995)Google Scholar, 32 f., 42 f., 55 f., 61, 63, 75, 80.

6 Athenagoras, “On the resurrection”, 3, 1; cf. Justin Martyr, First Apology, 19; Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum, I, 8. For the Jews, see Babylonian Talmud (hereafter BT), Sanhedrin 91a: “if He can fashion [man] from water [i.e. sperm], surely he can do so from clay”.

7 Oratio 6, cited in Barnard, “Athenagoras”, 21.

8 Theodoret, On Providence, tr. T. Halton (New York, 1988), 9:35, 37.

9 Anthologie de Zādspram, ed. and tr. Gignoux, Ph. and Tafazzoli, A. (Paris, 1993)Google Scholar, 34, 3 ff.; cf. Molé, M., Culte, mythe et cosmologie dans l'Iran ancien (Paris, 1963)Google Scholar, 113 ff. (with text and translation of numerous passages); Shaked, S., Dualism in Transformation (London, 1994)Google Scholar, 33, with further references. For the context, see Crone, P., The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Regional Zoroastrianism (Cambridge, forthcoming 2012), ch. 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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11 Cf. Crone, “God and the lesser deities”.

12 Cf. Crone, “God and the lesser deities”, 153 f., with attestations.

13 Cf. H. Speyer, Die biblischen Erzählungen im Qoran (Gräfenhainichen, n.d. [preface dated 1931]), 268 f.

14 Comerro, V., “Esdras est-il le fils de Dieu?”, Arabica 52, 2005, 170; cfCrossRefGoogle Scholar. also Hawting, Idolatry, 51.

15 Cf. Hoyland, R., “The content and context of early Arabic inscriptions”, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 21, 1997, 79 fGoogle Scholar.

16 Some exegetes think that God may be referring to the Muslims among the infidels (cf. 48:25), but the passage says “while they are praying for forgiveness”, not “while there are people among them who are praying for forgiveness”.

17 Ṭabarī, ad loc. (part xviii, 41), attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās; al-Zamakhsharī, al-Kashshāf (Beirut, n.d.), iii, 196.

18 Muqātil, Tafsīr, iii, 161; similarly Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, x, 47. Both Ṭabarī and Zamakhsharī have this interpretation too.

19 Cf. Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf, iii, 196 f., identifying the ancestors as Ismail, ʿAdnān and Qaḥṭān and citing a ḥadīth on Muḍar, Rabīʿa and others as Muslims.

20 Cf. Nemesius and Theodoret below, part II.

21 Cf. Paret, R., Der Koran: Kommentar und Konkordanz (Stuttgart, 1977)Google Scholar, 6:25; Hishām, Ibn, al-Sīra al-nabawiyya, ed. al-Saqqā, M. and others, 2nd printing (Cairo, 1955)Google Scholar, i, 300 (aḥādīth Rustum wa-Isfandiyār); Ṭabarī, part ix, 231; Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Tafsīr, xv, 156.

22 Lughat al-khurāfāt wa'l-turrahāt, as Abū ʿUbayda explains it (Ṭabarī, part vii, 171, 6:25); cf. Ṭabarī himself 23:83 (part xviii, 47), though he does think it refers to things written in books.

23 Khuluq al-awwalīn in 26:137 surely means the same, as many exegetes say, though others suggest “habit of the ancients” (cf. Ṭabarī ad loc.). Ignatius, Compare, “Letter to the Magnesians”, in Holmes, M. W. (ed. and trans.), The Apostolic Fathers (Grand Rapids, 1999)Google Scholar, 8, 1, where he warns the Magnesians against Judaizing, telling them not to be deceived by “the myths of the ancients” (mytheumasin toi palaoiois).

24 I Clement 23, 3; II Clement 11, 2 (in Holmes, Apostolic Fathers), both citing an unidentified prophetic writing condemning such people.

25 Cf. Hawting, Idolatry, 52.

26 For mukhraj in the sense of resurrected, compare 7:25; 23:35; 27:67.

27 Discussed in Newby, G., “The drowned son: Midrash and Midrash making in the Qur’ān and Tafsīr”, in Brinner, W. M. and Ricks, S. D. (eds), Studies in Islamic and Judaic Traditions (Atlanta, 1986)Google Scholar, 29; followed by Marshall, D., God, Muhammad and the Unbelievers (Richmond, Surrey, 1999), 98 fGoogle Scholar. Both see the episode as expressive of Muhammad's concern for those who would not heed his message, but the latter are amply represented by Noah's people.

28 Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf, iv, 279.

29 This explanation of 2:28 is found already in Muqātil (Tafsīr, i, 95 f.), who does not invoke it ad 44:35, however.

30 Speyer, Biblischen Erzählungen, 298 f.; Crone, P., “Angels versus humans as messengers of God”, in Townsend, P. and Vidas, M. (eds), Revelation, Literature, and Community in Late Antiquity (Tübingen, 2011)Google Scholar, 329, with further references.

31 Zamakhsharī, Kashshāf, iv, 283; Rāzī, Tafsīr, xxvii, 254. Similarly, earlier exegetes such as Muqātil, Tafsīr, iii, 826; Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, xiii, 315 f.

32 Plutarch, “On the face which appears in the face of the moon” (Moralia, ed. and trans. Cherniss, H. and Hembold, W. C., xii, Cambridge, MA and London, 1957)Google Scholar, 943A, 944E ff.

33 Apocalypse of John, 2:11; 21:18; cf. 20:6, 14. My thanks to Caroline Bynum for directing me to this source.

34 Pirqe de Rabbi Eliezer, tr. Friedlander, G. (London and New York, 1916), 252 (ch. 34)Google Scholar.

35 McNamara, M., The New Testament and the Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch (Rome, 1966), 117–25Google Scholar, with full details; Bogaert, P. M., “La ‘seconde mort’ à l'époque des Tannaim”, in Théodorides, A., Naster, P. and Ries, J. (eds), Vie et survie dans les civilisations orientales (Leuven, 1983), 199–207Google Scholar.

36 “Le mystère du jugement des pécheurs”, tr. S. Grébaut in “Littérature éthiopienne pseudo-Clémentine”, Revue de l'Orient Chrétien 2 (NS 12), 1907, 391; also cited in T. O'Shaughnessy, Muhammad's Thoughts on Death: A Thematic Study of the Qur'anic Data (Leiden, 1969), 25. (My thanks to an anonymous reviewer for calling my attention to O'Shaughnessy's work.)

37 “La seconde venue du Christ et la resurrection des morts”, tr. S. Grébaut, “Littérature éthiopienne pseudo-Clémentine”, Revue de l'Orient Chrétien 15 (NS 5), 1910, 320 f., 433; partly cited in O'Shaughnessy, Muhammad's Thoughts on Death, 25. This Pseudo-Clementine work is the text that contains the complete Apocalypse of Peter, composed before 150 and incompletely preserved in Greek; but the passages on the second death come after the Apocalypse. The Pseudo-Clementine work is not known from elsewhere; its date of composition is uncertain, and so is the date of its translation into Ethiopic; it is not even known whether the translation was made directly from Greek or via intermediaries (thus Peshty, M., “Thy Mercy, O Lord, is in the Heavens, and thy Righteousness reaches into the Clouds”, in Bremmer, J. N. and Czachesz, I. (eds), The Apocalypse of Peter (Leuven, 2003)Google Scholar, 42; differently O'Shaughnessy, Muhammad's Thoughts on Death, 24n, where both Pseudo-Clementines are held to be eighth-century Ethiopian translations of an Arabic work based on the third-century Greek original of the Apocalypse of Peter). One manuscript may date from the 15th or 16th century, the other from the 18th (D. D. Buchholz (ed. and tr.), Your Eyes Will Be Opened: a Study of the Greek (Ethiopic) Apocalypse of Peter (Atlanta), 188, 129, 134). For the fate of the sinners in this work, see Peshty, “Thy Mercy”, and I. L. E. Ramelli, “Origen, Bardaiṣan, and the origin of universal salvation”, Harvard Theological Review 102, 2009, 14, 143 f.

38 Brock, S. P., “Jewish traditions in Syriac sources”, Journal of Jewish Studies 30, 1979, 220 fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.; Aphrahat, Demonstrations, ed. and tr. (Latin) J. Parisot in Patrologia Syriaca, ed. R. Graffin, I/1 (Paris, 1894); tr. (English) K. Valavanolickal, Kerala, 2005, nos. VII, 25; VIII, 19; cf. XXII, 15.

39 Rudolph, K., Gnosis: the Nature and History of Gnosticism (Edinburgh, 1983), 359; below, note 41Google Scholar.

40 Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 21.3.1, cited in T. O'Shaughnessy, Muhammad's Thoughts on Death, 16.

41 Oecumenius [= Oikomenios], Commentary on the Apocalypse, tr. J. N. Suggit (Washington, 2006), 11: 14, 174; Grébaut (trans.), “La seconde venue du Christ”, 320.

42 Gardner, I. and Lieu, S. N. C. (trs.), Manichaean Texts from the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2004), 202 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.; cf. W. Sundermann in Encyclopaedia Iranica, s.v. “Eschatology”, 572.

43 The meaning of the first and second death was clear to Rudolph, W., Die Abhängigkeit des Qorans von Judentum und Christentum (Stuttgart, 1922)Google Scholar, 14; Ahrens, K., “Christlisches im Qoran”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 84, 1930Google Scholar, 53 and 171; Ahrens, K., “Christlisches im Qoran. Eine Nachlese”, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 84, 1930Google Scholar, 171; and O'Shaughnessy, Muhammad's Thoughts on Death, 14 f.; but none of them pays attention to the fact that the speakers are mushrikūn.

44 Muqātil, Tafsīr, iii, 707; Ṭabarī, juz’ 14, 47 f.; Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, xiii, 201; Rāzī, Tafsīr, xxvii, 39, the latter with a variant version of death before life and also the simpler solution preferred by some: hādhā kalām al-kuffār fa-lā yakūnu fīhi ḥujja.

45 For these and other passages, see O'Shaughnessy, Muhammad's Thoughts on Death, 17 ff.

46 al-Bayḍāwī, Anwār al-tanzīl (Beirut, n.d. [originally Cairo 1330]), v, 70, ad 45:24, on the grounds that reincarnation is what most idolaters believe in.

47 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, xiii, 336, with both explanations.

48 Muqātil, Tafsīr, iii, 707; Ṭabarī, juz’ xviii, 21; xxv, 151 f.; Rāzī, Tafsīr, xxii, 98; xxviii, 268, ad 23:37, 45:24; Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, x, 28, ad 23:47, holds the former to be the meaning if it was said by dualists and Dahrīs, and the latter to be the meaning if it was said by others. See also Tamer, G., Zeit und Gott (Berlin, 2008), 195 ffGoogle Scholar.

49 O'Shaughnessy, Muhammad's Thoughts on Death, 26 ff.

50 Flesher, P. V. M., “The theology of the afterlife in the Palestinian Targums to the Pentateuch”, in Neusner, J. (ed.), Approaches to Ancient Judaism 16, 1999Google Scholar, 26 f; cf. also Wisdom of Solomon 16:13–15, where the odd word order is corrected; cited in Y. Monnickendam, “‘I Bring Death and Give Life, I Wound and Heal’: two versions of the polemic on the resurrection of the dead”, Hebrew original in Tarbiz 76, 2007, 329–51, English translation forthcoming, note 14 (my thanks to Menahem Kister for drawing my attention to this study and to Dr Monnickendam for allowing me to see the English version before publication).

51 Sifre Deuteronomy, tr. Hammer, R. (New Haven and London, 1986)Google Scholar, 340 (piska 329); also translated in Segal, A. F., Two Powers in Heaven (Boston and Leiden, 2002) (first pub. 1977), 84Google Scholar.

52 Monnickendam “I bring death and give life”, with reference to Babylonian Talmud, Pesahim 68a; Sanhedrin 91b. Cf. also Ecclessiastes Rabba 1.4, §2, and parallels, cited in her note 32, where it is accepted that those whom God killed are not those he will bring to life, but only in the sense that those who died lame or blind will return healthy. Monnickendam relates this to the pagan argument, also refuted in one of the two versions of Raba's statement, that the dead and the resurrected person could not be identical.

53 They are discussed, along with related passages, in O'Shaughnessy, Muhammad's Thoughts on Death, 27 ff., again without attention to the fact that many of the statements were made by Muḥammad's opponents.

54 This had been suggested several times before, cf. H. Ben-Shammai, “Ṣuḥuf in the Qur’ān – a loan translation for ‘Apocalypses’”, in H. Ben-Shammai, S. Shaked and S. Stroumsa (eds), Exchange and Transmission across Cultural Boundaries: Philosophy, Mysticism and Science in the Mediterranean (Proceedings of a Workshop in Memory of Prof. Shlomo Pines, the Institute for Advanced Studies, Jerusalem; 28 February–2 March 2005), Jerusalem, forthcoming.

55 For what they used, see Sifre Deuteronomy, 340 (piska 329), adducing “four sure allusions” to the resurrection, translated in Segal, Two Powers, 84 (from the edition of Finkelstein, 379); in Monnickendam, “I bring death and give life” (from the edition of Kahana, 329); cf. also Flesher, P. V. M., “The resurrection of the dead and the sources of the Palestinian Targums to the Pentateuch”, in Avery-Peck, A. J. and Neusner, J. (eds), Judaism in Late Antiquity (Leiden, 2000), 311–31Google Scholar; McNamara The New Testament and the Palestinian Targum, 4.

56 Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh (Ante-Nicene Christian Library, iii, ed. A. Roberts, J. Donaldson and A. C. Coxe) (Edinburgh, 1885), 28, 5–7, attributing the verse to Isaiah.

57 Origen, Homilies on Jeremiah, 1:16 (tr. J. C. Smith, Washington, 1998), 20 f. On Christian and Jewish use of the verse in an anti-dualist vein see also the attestations in Monnickendam, “I bring death and give life”, notes 20–21.

58 The Clementine Homilies (Ante-Nicene Christian Library, xvii, ed. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson) (Edinburgh, 1870), xx, 3.

59 Both cited in O'Shaughnessy, Muhammad's Thoughts on Death, 29, cf. also Ephrem's modification of the statement at p. 32.

60 Aphrahat, Demonstrations, viii, 19–25. My thanks to Joseph Witztum for alerting me to Aphrahat's use of the passage.

61 Aphrahat, Demonstrations, viii, 10; xxii, 1–3. The other passage is Deut. 33:6 (“Let Reuben live, and not die…”), on which see McNamara, The New Testament and the Palestinian Targum, 120 f.

62 Becker, A. H., “Beyond the spatial and temporal Limes: questioning the ‘parting of the ways’ outside the Roman Empire”, in Becker, A. H. and Reed, A. Y. (eds), The Ways that Never Parted (Tübingen, 2003), 376 fGoogle Scholar.

63 For the Christian origin of the Messenger's polemics against the Jews, see Ahrens, “Nachlese”, 156 ff.; for their Syriac provenance, see Witztum, “Syriac milieu”, 271 ff.; cf. also Reynolds, G., The Qur’ān and Its Biblical Subtext (London, 2010), 251Google Scholar.

64 Cf. Aphrahat in O'Shaughnessy, T., Creation and the Teaching of the Qur’ān (Rome, 1985), 73Google Scholar, and part II of this article.

65 They also speak of the first and second creation in the quite different context of the order in which God created the different parts of the world. For Christ's resurrection as the new creation, see 2 Corithians 5:17; Galatians 6:15; Athanasius of Alexandria, “De sabbatis et circumcisione”, PG XXVIII, 138; Gregory of Nazianzus, “In novam Dominicam”, PG XXXVI, 612. The difference is noted in Ahrens, “Christlisches im Qoran”, 48, where it is nonetheless deemed possible that the Quranic expression is rooted in Paul's. No Syriac precedent is adduced by O'Shaughnessy (Creation, ch. 5), who does not note that the “new creation” stands for different things in Christian and Quranic usage.

66 1 Enoch (tr. G. W. E. Nickelsburg and J. C. VanderKam, Minneapolis, 2004), 72:1; noted by O'Shaughnessy, Creation, 85. For other echoes of this work in the Quran, see P. Crone, “The Book of Watchers in the Qur’ān”, in H. Ben-Shammai, S. Shaked and S. Stroumsa (eds), Exchange and Transmission across Cultural Boundaries: Philosophy, Mysticism and Science in the Mediterranean (Proceedings of a Workshop in memory of Prof. Shlomo Pines, the Institute for Advanced Studies, Jerusalem; 28 February–2 March 2005), Jerusalem, forthcoming.

67 O'Shaughnessy, Muhammad's Thoughts on Death, chs 3–4.

68 Theophilus of Antioch (d. c. 185), Ad Autolycum, iii, 16, here with reference to the age of the world. Cf. also Ramelli, I. L. E., Bardaisan of Edessa (Piscataway, 2009), 63nGoogle Scholar.

69 Clementine Homilies, XV, 5; cf. The Clementine Recognition, tr. T. Smith (Ante-Nicene Christian Library, ed. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson, iii) (Edinburgh, 1867), viii, 62; Kelley, N., “Problems of knowledge and authority in the Pseudo-Clementine romance of recognitions”, Journal of Early Christian Studies 13, 2005, 320, 338 fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Edwards, J., “Religious faith and doubt in late medieval Spain”, Past and Present 120, 1988, 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Loeffler, R., Islam in Practice: Religious Belief in a Persian Village (Albany, 1988)Google Scholar, 192, 198, 222, with others expressing themselves similarly at 68, 82, 206f. 209; cf. also 276 f.

72 Cf. Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān, ed. J. D. McAuliffe (Leiden, 2001–06), s.v. “Debate and disputation” (McAuliffe).

73 God has heard the statement of the one who pleads with you (tujādiluka) about her husband (58:1), followed by legislation about divorce by ẓihār.

74 Abraham pleads with God (yujādilunā) for Lot's people (11:74); every soul will plead for itself (tujādilu ʿan nafsihā) on the day of judgement (16:111); “you” (sg.), perhaps the Messenger, should not plead on behalf of those who betray their own souls; “you” (now pl.) have pleaded on behalf of such people in this world, but who will plead for them with God or be their wakīl (advocate?) on the day of judgement? (4:107, 109).

75 Thus 2:204; 3:44; 4:105; 38: 21f., 64; 43:48; 50:28; perhaps also 43:18.

76 Cf. M. Cook, “The origins of Kalām”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 43, 1980, 32–43, with further Syriac evidence in Tannous, J., “Between Christology and Kalām? The life and letters of George, Bishop of the Arab Tribes”, in Kiraz, G. A. (ed.), Malphono w-Rabo d-Malphone: Studies in Honor of Sebastian P. Brock (Piscataway, 2008)Google Scholar, 680 ff. For the entire phenomenon, see Lim, R., Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1995)Google Scholar.

77 Lim, Disputation, Power, and Social Order 49.

78 Cook, “Origins of Kalām”, 40.

79 Basil, letter 234 (PG 32, 868–72A) in Bonis, C. G., “The problem concerning faith and knowledge, or reason and revelation, as expounded in the letters of St. Basil the Great to Amphilochius of Iconium”, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 5, 2004, 38Google Scholar.

80 van Ess, J., “Early development of Kalām”, in Juynboll, G. H. A. (ed.), Studies on the First Century of Islamic Society (Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1982)Google Scholar, 112 and note 12, citing 2:111, 135, 142; 3:20, 30; 10:15, 20, 38, 50 f. My thanks to Michael Cook for reminding me of this paper.

81 Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī, Tafsīr, xiii, 25, ad 6:68; cf. the title of al-Ashʿarī's Risālat istiḥsān al-khawḍ fī ʿilm al-kalām.

82 Cf. Crone, “Angels versus humans”.

83 Māturīdī, Ta'wīlāt, ix, 56.

84 Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī, Kitāb al-zīna, section on aṣḥāb al-ahwā’ wa'l-madhāhib, in ʿA. S. al-Sāmarrā’ī, al-Ghuluww wa'l-firaq al-ghāliya fī 'l-ḥaḍāra al-islāmiyya, Baghdad 1972, 247, citing an anonymous scholar ad 25:43.

85 For their shayāṭīn, compare “The shayāṭīn are the friends of those who do not believe” (7:27, in the context of Adam and Eve's expulsion from paradise). Such shayāṭīn are apparently assumed to lie behind all wrongful acts, cf. 6:68, 121; 22:3 f.

86 Unlike S. Günther (in J. Dammen McAuliffe (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Qur’ān, Leiden 2001–06, s.v. “ummī”), I cannot see that ummī means anything other than “gentile” in the Qur'ān: Arabic umma corresponds to Latin gens/Greek ethnos, and “gentile” fits all the contexts in which ummī occurs. Naturally, the term would be largely synomymous with an Arab in Arabia, but what it meant was simply non-Jew. The meaning “illiterate” is doctrinally inspired, assisted by 2:78, where the ummiyyūn do not know al-kitāb: the continuation that they are just conjecturing (wa-in hum illā yaẓunnūn) shows that the sense in which they do not know it is that of ignoring it, not in that of being uneducated or unable to read it.

87 Cf. 4:150, 152, where those who “do not believe in (yukaffiru bi-) God and His messengers” are at fault for believing in some of them and not in others; 4:171, where People of Book are told to believe in God and His messengers and not to say “three”. Compare also 3:179; 57:19, 21.