Ash-Shu'ara · Makki · ayah 105 of 227
Ash-Shu'ara 26:105
كَذَّبَتْ قَوْمُ نُوحٍ ٱلْمُرْسَلِينَ
“The people of Noah denied the messengers[1054]”
Saheeh International
Essence
One man came to Nuh's people, yet they are said to have denied the messengers, because whoever rejects one rejects the message they all carried.
A reflection
One messenger came, and they denied them all
Only one messenger went to Nuh's people. Yet the ayah says they denied al-mursalīn, the messengers, in the plural. The same sentence will open the stories of ʿAd, Thamud and the people of Lut, each of whom received one messenger too.
The question was put long ago to an early scholar in Basra. How can they have denied the messengers, when only one was sent? He answered simply. The later one came with what the first came with. So whoever denies one has denied them all.
A sceptic might call that overreach. Surely rejecting one man is not the same as rejecting every prophet in history.
The commentators answer by pointing to what the messengers share. One explains that all of them agree on the oneness of Allah and on foundations that do not change from age to age. Another notes that every messenger's truthfulness rests on the same kind of proof. Reject that proof in one case, and you have rejected it in all.
Picture a man who will not set his watch by the town hall clock. He dislikes the council and assumes its clock is wrong. But the clock takes its time from the same national signal as his phone, his oven and the station board. If he rejects the clock on its merits, he has rejected the time itself. He will be late for everything.
That is the logic of the plural. The messengers are not rival clocks. They are one signal, sent again and again. Muslims say, as the Quran teaches, we make no distinction between any of His messengers (2:285).
What stays open is how a person can honour one messenger in words while rejecting what he taught. That question is for the reader as much as for Nuh's people.
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