Surah Al-Isra, Ayah 95

The refusal of the Idolators to believe because the Messenger was a Human -- and its refutation

وَمَا مَنَعَ النَّاسَ

(And nothing prevented men) means, most of them,

أَن يُؤْمِنُواْ

(from believing) and following the Messengers, except the fact that they found it strange that human beings would be sent as Messengers, as Allah says:

أَكَانَ لِلنَّاسِ عَجَبًا أَنْ أَوْحَيْنَآ إِلَى رَجُلٍ مِّنْهُمْ أَنْ أَنذِرِ النَّاسَ وَبَشِّرِ الَّذِينَ ءامَنُواْ أَنَّ لَهُمْ قَدَمَ صِدْقٍ عِندَ رَبِّهِمْ

(Is it a wonder for mankind that We have sent Our revelation to a man from among themselves (saying): "Warn mankind, and give good news to those who believe that they shall have with their Lord the rewards of their good deeds") 10:2 And Allah says:

In the last verse (95), it was said that they, despite being human, can-not demand that their messenger should be an angel. This demand was unreasonable. Yes, if angels had been living on the Earth and there was the need to send a messenger to them, then, indeed, an angel would have been sent as a messenger. It will be noted that the attribute of an-gels living on the Earth has been described here in the words: يَمْشُونَ مُطْمَئِنِّينَ (walking about in peace). This tells us that the need to send an angel deputed as a messenger to other angels would have come up only at a time when the angels of the Earth could not themselves go to the heavens rather remained living on the Earth alone. Otherwise, had they themselves possessed the power to go to the heavens, there would have remained just no need to send a messenger to the Earth.

When the Prophet Muhammad called to the Truth, his contemporaries said that they would believe in him only if he could perform miracles for them. But all such demands go against the divine plan of creation. God has created man as a conscious being and throughout the entire universe, this consciousness is a unique phenomenon—a gift by which man may recognise the truth by his own powers of reasoning, rather than wait to be convinced by miracles. The truth is that in the present world man is being tested at the level of argument. Here, everyone has to recognise truth in the language of reasoning and argument and adopt it as such. Those who cannot recognize truth in this way are the ones who will be failures.