A World Waiting for Light

In the late sixth century two great empires faced each other: the Christian Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire and the Sasanian Empire of Persia, whose state religion was Zoroastrianism. Decades of war had drained them both. Christianity was torn by bitter disputes over the nature of Christ, and Jewish communities lived scattered across the region, including in Yemen and in the Arabian oases of Yathrib and Khaybar.

The Qur'an teaches that no nation was ever left without a warner: ﴿وَإِن مِّنْ أُمَّةٍ إِلَّا خَلَا فِيهَا نَذِيرٌ﴾ (“and there was no nation but that a warner had passed within it”) (35:24), so Muslims see in the world's older faiths traces of guidance once sent. Yet much had been forgotten or reshaped. The Prophet ﷺ later described the state of humanity before his mission: Allah looked at the people of the earth and was displeased with them, Arab and non-Arab alike, except for a few remnants of the People of the Book who still held to the original teaching (Sahih Muslim 2865a).

Those remnants matter to the story. The Qur'an does not present Islam as something new, but as a renewal of the one message given to Noah, Abraham, Moses and Jesus (42:13) — a call that was about to be heard again.