You Have Known Me a Lifetime

Allah then instructs him to say to them:

Why do they deny this Qur'an? The Prophet (peace be upon him) is being instructed to ask them: in the forty or so years that you have known me, have you ever known me to tell an untruth? Have I ever studied under anybody?

Makkah was a very close community, a tribal community, in which everybody knew everybody. There is an account of a visit to Mauritania, a country of some three million people. A Mauritanian friend there remarked that if a stranger arrived and gave his name, then within two days — with no computer system involved (though computers they doubtless have), simply through contacts — the people would have worked out who he was, within a day or two. Everybody is known to everybody. The tribal links are known, and who is married to whom, and the rest of it.

In a community of that kind — with no internet, nothing of the sort — it is known who studies with whom, who sits with whom, who is friends with whom, who has benefited from whom, who is influenced by whom. They knew that the Prophet (peace be upon him) was unlettered: he did not read, and so could not have been reading books. They knew that he was not consulting the so-called soothsayers, or anybody else possessed of much information; there were not that many people in Makkah Mukarramah in any case.

The Prophet (peace be upon him) comes forward at the age of forty, having never lied, and known for his trustworthiness — he is al-Amīn. People trust him; he stands apart from everyone else as a trustworthy individual. It is then that he puts the question: have you ever known me to lie? For this reason he says fa-qad labithtu fīkum ʿumuran min qablih — I have been among you for so long a time. How can you say these things of me? You know me, you know my family, you know everything about me.

Who, then, is more oppressive than the one who fabricates a lie against Allah and denies His verses?