Surah Al-Baqarah, Ayah 141

Allah directed His Prophet to pre-empt the arguments with the idolators:

قُلْ أَتُحَآجُّونَنَا فِى اللَّهِ

(Say (O Muhammad to the Jews and Christians), "Dispute you with us about Allah) meaning, "Do you dispute with us regarding the Oneness of Allah, obedience and submission to Him and in avoiding His prohibitions,

وَهُوَ رَبُّنَا وَرَبُّكُمْ

(while He is our Lord and your Lord) meaning, He has full control over us and you, and deserves the worship alone without partners.

وَلَنَآ أَعْمَـلُنَا وَلَكُمْ أَعْمَـلُكُمْ

(And we are to be rewarded for our deeds and you for your deeds.) meaning, we disown you and what you worship, just as you disown us. Allah said in another Ayah,

These three verses bring to an end the section of the Surah in which certain claims of the Jews and the Christians have been refuted -- for example, their assertion that Sayyidna Ibrahim (علیہ السلام) (Abraham), Sayyidna Ismail (علیہ السلام) (Ishmael), Sayyidna Ishaq (علیہ السلام) (Isaac), Sayyidna Ya` qub (علیہ السلام) (Jacob) and the prophets (علیہم السلام) in his lineage were either Jews or Christians, and the claim that they were the chosen people and would have the exclusive privilege of being sent straight to Paradise which would be denied to Muslims. The earlier verses have established that the religion of all these prophets was Islam, in the general sense of the term, but that the earlier Shari` ahs have now been abrogated, and the title of "Islam" been specially given to the religion of Sayyidna Muhammad ﷺ . Should the Jews and the Christians still continue, in their stubbornness, to deny, Allah asks the Holy Prophet ﷺ and the Muslims to declare in plain and simple words that Allah, being the Lord of All, cannot show any special favour to any particular group of His creatures, and that on the Day of Judgment He will assess the Jews and the Christians as well as the Muslims according to what each has believed in and how each has been behaving - a principle which was accepted by the People of the Book too. The Muslims have also been asked to announce that they on their part recognize no other god but Allah, and have purified their religion of all traces of association (Shirk شرک ) - as against the Jews and the Christians who consider Sayyidna ` Uzayr (علیہ السلام) (Ezra) and Sayyidna ` Isa (علیہ السلام) (Jesus) respectively to be "the Son of God", and whose religions have, moreover, been abrogated. In this respect at least, Muslims have a superiority over them. If the People of the Book should, on account of their affiliation with the earlier prophets, still keep insisting on their own rectitude, the Muslims may ask them a basic question - who knows the truth better, Allah or the People of the Book? Allah has definitely and finally announced the truth in the Last Revelation, and the People of the Book themselves know that the religion of the earlier prophets was Islam. Yet they are trying to conceal the truth, and being unjust, in the gravest sense of the term. Allah knows what they have been doing, and will judge them according to their own deeds, and not according to the deeds of their ancestors. Thus, at the end of this section, Verse 141, which is a repetition of Verse 134, warns them against the consequences of their vanity and pretentiousness, and advises them to take care of themselves rather than relying on ancestral glory.

If faith is to be of the kind which pleases God, it must be identical with that of the Companions of the Prophet. What was so special about that faith was that it amounted to acceptance of the truth on an abstract level; it was belief in truth for the sake of truth. This had become a rarity in a society which, revering the words of the ancient prophets, regarded as truth whatever had been sanctified by centuries-old tradition. Continued belief in such ‘truth’, embellished as it was by myth and legend, became a matter of national pride; to regard it in any other light would have been to deny a great legacy from the past. Unlike the ancient prophets, who were great figures, eulogised in their nations’ history, the Prophet Muhammad came afresh to the world with no accumulation of tradition behind him to lend weight to his words. When truth stands on its own, unsupported by history or tradition, as it was in the time of the Prophet, those who accept it do so for the pure and simple reason that it is the truth. This is the kind of belief that God recognizes and accepts. This is true faith; only faith of such strength and purity is acceptable to God.