Hûd
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE[11:118]
And had thy Sustainer so willed, He could surely have made all mankind one single community: but [He willed it otherwise, and so] they continue to hold divergent views

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* v.118 : I.e., about everything, even about the truths revealed to them by God. – For a discussion of the term ummah wāhidah (“one single community”) and its wider implications, see sūrah 2, notes 197 and 198; the second part of 2:253 and the corresponding note 245; and the second part of 5:48 and the corresponding notes 66 and 67. Thus, the Qur’ān stresses once again that the unceasing differentiation in men’s views and ideas is not incidental but represents a God-willed, basic factor of human existence. If God had willed that all human beings should be of one persuasion, all intellectual progress would have been ruled out, and “they would have been similar in their social life to the bees and the ants, while in their spiritual life they would have been like the angels, constrained by their nature always to believe in what is true and always to obey God” (Manār XII, 193) – that is to say, devoid of that relative free will which enables man to choose between right and wrong and thus endows his life – in distinction from all other sentient beings – with a moral meaning and a unique spiritual potential.