The Cow
IN THE NAME OF GOD, THE MOST GRACIOUS, THE DISPENSER OF GRACE[2:213]
ALL MANKIND were once one single community; [then they began to differ –] whereupon God raised up the prophets as heralds of glad tidings and as warners, and through them bestowed revelation from on high, setting forth the truth, so that it might decide between people with regard to all on which they had come to hold divergent views. Yet none other than the selfsame people who had been granted this [revelation] began, out of mutual jealousy, to disagree about its meaning after all evidence of the truth had come unto them. But God guided the believers unto the truth about which, by His leave, they had disagreed: for God guides onto a straight way him that wills [to be guided].

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* v.213 : By using the expression ummah wāhidah (“one single community”) to describe the original state of mankind, the Qur’ān does not propound, as might appear at first glance, the idea of a mythical “golden age” obtaining at the dawn of man’s history. What is alluded to in this verse is no more than the relative homogeneity of instinctive perceptions and inclinations characteristic of man’s primitive mentality and the primitive social order in which he lived in those early days. Since that homogeneity was based on a lack of intellectual and emotional differentiation rather than on a conscious agreement among the members of human society, it was bound to disintegrate in the measure of man’s subsequent development. As his thought-life became more and more complex, his emotional capacity and his individual needs, too, became more differentiated, conflicts of views and interests came to the fore, and mankind ceased to be “one single community” as regards their outlook on life and their moral valuations: and it was at this stage that divine guidance became necessary. (It is to be borne in mind that the term al-kitāb refers here – as in many other places in the Qur’ān – not to any particular scripture but to divine revelation as such.) This interpretation of the above Qur’anic passage is supported by the fact that the famous Companion ‘Abd Allāh ibn Mas‘ūd used to read it thus: “All mankind were once one single community, and then they began to differ (fakhtalafū) – whereupon God raised up...,” etc. Although the word fakhtalafū interpolated here by Ibn Mas‘ūd does not appear in the generally-accepted text of the Qur’ān, almost all of the authorities are of the opinion that it is implied in the context.
* Or: “God guides whomever He wills onto a straight way.” As is made clear in the second part of verse 253 of this sūrah, man’s proneness to intellectual dissension is not an accident of history but an integral, God-willed aspect of human nature as such: and it is this natural circumstance to which the words “by His leave” allude. For an explanation of the phrase “out of mutual jealousy,” see 23:53 and the corresponding note 30.