Why Do People Reject God’s Signs?

﷽

سورة الأنعام ٤-٥

Allāh, Not His Creation, Chooses How Signs & Proofs Are Delivered

وَمَا تَأْتِيهِم مِّنْ ءَايَةٍۢ مِّنْ ءَايَـٰتِ رَبِّهِمْ إِلَّا كَانُوا۟ عَنْهَا مُعْرِضِينَ ٤ فَقَدۡ كَذَّبُوا۟ بِٱلۡحَقِّ لَمَّا جَاۤءَهُمۡ فَسَوۡفَ یَأۡتِیهِمۡ أَنۢبَـٰۤؤُا۟ مَا كَانُوا۟ بِهِۦ یَسۡتَهۡزِءُونَ ۝٥

“Whenever a sign comes to them from their Lord, they turn away from it. They have indeed rejected the truth when it came to them, so they will soon face the consequences of their ridicule.”

His statement, “And no sign comes to them…” begins a new passage explaining some of the causes of their disbelief and rebelliousness:

• their turning away from the signs of Allah that come to them:
  • miracles of the prophets
  • manifestations of Allah’s overwhelming power

These are proofs no rational person could doubt that they are the acts of Allah.

Turning Away (al-Iʿrāḍ)

• failing to consider and reflect upon the signs by which they ought to infer (istidlāl) the oneness of Allah.
• The particle min in “min āyatin/من آية” (“any sign”) is additive (zāʾidah) and serves to convey comprehensiveness (al-istighrāq), while min in “min āyāti/من آيات” (“of the signs”) is partitive (tabʿīḍiyyah). That is to say:

“No sign comes to them from among the signs—which constitute some of the signs of their Lord—except that they turn away from it.”

The Qur’an insists that signs come to man from one unified source. This way any criticism that might try and point to inconsistencies through multiple narrators or sources is dealt with concisely.

This is precisely what the following Verse (5) conveys. We see this in the fāʾ (ف) in His statement, “Then indeed they have denied…”, which is the response to an implied conditional clause (شَرْط مُقَدَّر). That is: if they are turning away from these signs, then they have already denied something even greater than that—namely, the Truth—“when it came to them.”

In other words their minds are already made up because they have (in their own minds) preconceived what the truth should be (conforming with their personal, tribal, cultural biases…) and therefore they are only feigning to be listening to the Prophet, to the Qur’ān.

Without the fāʾ then their denial might actually have some legs to stand on.

This is why Allah charges them with the crime of being dishonest: takdhīb.

The desert Arabs, not unlike any other people, would not want to self-incriminate in that if:

• they were to acknowledge the Qur’an as the truth,
• the Prophet as the Messenger of God,
• then they would effectively depose themselves as the authorities over their own lives.

This is precisely what the Qur’an demands (submission to God, obedience to Him, and open acknowledgement of His supreme Authority), something the Quraysh (and many who came before them) could never do.

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