The following was revealed when the Jews said to the Prophet s ‘Whom among the messengers do you believe in?’ and he replied in God and in that which has been revealed to us Q. 2136 and when he mentioned Jesus they said ‘We know of no religion worse than yours!’ Say ‘O People of the Scripture do you spite do you repudiate us for any other cause than that we believe in God and what has been revealed to us and what was revealed to the prophets before and that most of you are wicked?’ wa-anna aktharakum fāsiqūn is a supplement to an āmannā ‘that we believe’ that is to say ‘What you repudiate in fact is our faith and your opposition to it in refusing to accept it — a refusal which is described as ‘wickedness’ this wickedness itself being the necessary consequence of such a refusal — but in fact this faith of ours is not something to be repudiated’.
