Article

The Qur’ān contains numerous passages urging forgiveness of enemies and returning their evil deeds with good works, although they have not been studied analytically as a coherent ensemble (Juan Cole, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires (New York: The Nation Books, 2018), chapters 2, 3). These scattered counterparts of the Sermon on the Mount raise questions similar to those over which New Testament scholars have puzzled, of the social setting in which they arose and their social implications. In approaching them, it will be useful to remember the dictum of New Testament scholar Gerd Theissen that “It is impossible to determine what love of enemies and nonviolence meant apart from the social situation in which these demands are made and practiced” (Gerd Theissen, Social Reality and the Early Christians (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), 130).

The turn in the Medina period to a “just war” doctrine in response to military attacks has obscured the verses, both in Mecca and Medina, regarding love of the civil enemy. The concentration on the few verses of the Medina period concerning the prosecution of just war has obscured the degree to which peace, love and reconciliation remain important themes in this period. Although a comparison of the Qur’ān to the New Testament may seem outlandish to those who read the latter as consistently advocating nonviolence, the scholarly literature is more even-handed on that issue (Michel Desjardins, Peace, Violence and the New Testament).

1. Withdrawing Graciously
2. In the Qur’ān, there are two grounds on which powerful pagans are castigated. One is that although they are wealthy, they are also miserly and refuse to help the indigent (W. Montgomery Watt, Muhammad’s Mecca: History in the Quran (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1988), 82-85). The opposition of wealthy and powerful pagans created the need for a response on the part of the Prophet and his followers. It was a very different response than that common in the Old Arabic Safaitic inscriptions that recorded the culture of pastoralists. One such inscription speaks of one Habad, who made camp the year that siege was laid to one of the clans of Dayf. He scratched out on the stone his grief and mourning for Ḥay, who was killed, and cried out, “O Allat, vengeance on whosoever committed [this act]!” (M.C.A. Macdonald, M. Al Muʾazzin, and L. Nehmé, “Les inscriptions safaïtiques de Syrie, cent quarante ans après leur découverte,” Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions & Belles-Lettres (1996): 435-494). Another says, “By Sny son of Sny . . . and he was distraught with grief for Shʿr. So O Allāh [grant] vengeance [nqmt]”. Such requests to the gods for vengeance are common in the inscriptions, which speak of a culture of raiding and occasional bloodshed.

the Qur’ān (Muzammil 73:10-12) speaks of Muhammad having his integrity impugned by the affluent (al-mukadhdhibūn ūlī al-ni`ma), but the advice is given, “Be patient with what they say and take your leave of them graciously. Muhammad is advised, however, to leave the group “graciously” or, literally, “beautifully” (jamīlan). Ibn Kathīr (1300-1373), the famed exegete of Mamluk Syria, explained that God was “ordering the Messenger to be patient with the lies of the foolish among his people and to withdraw from them graciously, which is to say, without rebuke (lā itāb)” (Abū al-Fidā Ismā‘īl Ibn Kathīr, Tafsīr al-Qur’ān al-Karīm). Patience and graciousness are the key terms here for reacting to humiliation at the hands of Mecca’s elite. Asma Afsaruddin has argued that “patience” (al-ṣabr) is a keyword in the Qur’ān’s discussion of peaceful and tolerant responses to persecution (Asma Afsaruddin, “Recovering the Early Semantic Purview of Jihad and Martyrdom: Challenging Statist-Military Perspectives,” in Crescent and Dove: Peace and Conflict Resolution in Islam, ed. Qamar-ul Huda (Washington, DC: US Institute for Peace, 2010), 39–62). Clearly, Muhammad is being counseled against the opposite, impatience and coarseness. The voice of God next commands him to “leave me with those who impugn your integrity,” and his opponents are menaced with hellfire. The verb kadhdhaba is often translated as “to deny,” but it is an intensive and it implies calling someone a liar rather than simply denying what they say, which is why I suggest the rendering “to impugn the integrity of.” Muhammad is then (73:15- 16) compared to Moses, and the wealthy Meccan elite implicitly are likened to Pharaoh.

The themes of oral harassment and divine punishment are common in the early chapters of the Qur’ān. This passage describes the way the pagans made fun of the believers, with cutting remarks and jokes at their expense. Then the timescale is shifted to the perspective of eternity as the believers, rewarded in paradise with sumptuous couches, are shown gazing down into the depths of hell and laughing at the fate of their tormenters. This verse is an example of what Theissen calls the eschatological punishment model. It paints a picture of the condign punishment awaiting the smirking wicked in the next life, recalling Lk. 6:25, “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep.” Likewise, in Mt. 10:14-15 Jesus urges detachment from the destiny of the obstinate and issues a dire prediction concerning them: “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.” Theissen classed this verse of Matthew with “fantasies of vengeance’ (Theissen, Social Reality and the Early Christians, 127).

The quranic advice to “withdraw” or “turn away” from abusive pagans does not imply bearing them any ill will in this world. Al-Jāthiya 45:14 says, “Say to the believers: Let them forgive the ones who do not anticipate the days of God, so that he may be the one who gives a people the wages of their deeds.” Muhammad’s followers are to forgive (ighfir) their tormenters, who deny the Resurrection Day. This forgiveness is portrayed as an act of humility, since it relinquishes to God the imposition of the penalty for wicked deeds. Not only does the Prophet pardon the pagans, he wishes them well, and would, if he could, shower them with good things. In al-Zukhruf 43:33-35, Muhammad appears to speak in his own voice with these sentiments: “If it would not have caused all people to observe a single communal path (an yakun ummatan wāḥida) we would have bestowed roofs of silver and staircases for their houses on those who reject the All-Merciful, and would have furnished their homes with fine doors and couches on which to recline, and gilded ornaments. But all that is merely for the enjoyment of the life of this world, whereas the hereafter is for the God-fearing.” Later in the same sura, with regard to a “people who do not believe,” verse 89 contains the command, “pardon them, and say, `Peace!’ Soon they will know.” The verb “to pardon” (ṣafaḥa) can also mean to “turn away from.” But in this verse, it is coupled with an order to wish them peace and security, which is more compatible with forgiveness than it is with turning one’s back on someone. In al-Baqara 2:109, the believers are instructed concerning the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) who wish they would just go back to being pagans rather than espousing a new monotheistic religion, “then forgive (ufū) and pardon (iṣfaḥū) until God comes with his decree.”

1. The use of the two verbs as a parallelism here sheds light on their similar meaning. In al-Zukhruf Muhammad can “pardon” the pagans because their fate is God’s to determine, not his. He cannot, however, be as generous toward them as he would like lest he misguide them into thinking that their prosperity made their polytheism acceptable.
2. Qur’ānic “Beattitudes”
3. Some of the middle Mecca period suras elaborate directly and at some length on the principle of replying to harassment with wishes for the peace and well-being of one’s tormenters. Al-Furqān 25:63-76 contains a series of statements analogous to the Beatitudes of Jesus (Matt. 5:3-12) in the Sermon on the Mount. This passage enumerates the characteristics of servants of the All-Merciful. They 1) walk humbly (hawnan) on the earth; 2) they reply to the words of the unruly (al-jāhilūn) by responding with wishes of “peace;” 3) they stay up late praying and prostrating; 4) they pray to be spared hellfire; 5) they spend in moderation 6) they do not call on divinities other than God; 7) they do not take life, save, in accordance with the lex talionis, that of a murderer who killed one of their own (and in later chapters they are counseled even against that); 8) they are faithful to their spouses, or if they stray, they repent wholeheartedly and are entirely forgiven; 9) they repent and do good; 10) they are not tempted by falsehood or impiety and determinedly walk by such displays; 11) they accept the admonishment of God’s verses; 12) they pray to be good family members and moral models. Humility, praying for peace and security for their enemies, and eschewing violence in response to verbal harassment are prominent among these twelve attributes of the servants of the All-Merciful. Ṭabarī glosses Al-Furqān 25:63 as saying that they walk the earth “with an eventempered character, with divine calm (sakīna), and dignity, not arrogant nor bullying, nor committing disorder (fasād) or rebellion against God.” He says that the commentators differed as to whether hawnan meant “with dignity and calm” or “with humility.” As for 25:64, he says it means that “when those ignorant of God address them with words they are loathe to hear, the believers respond to them with kindly discourse and upright speech” (Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, 17:489).

1. Lex Talionis
2. Al-Shūrā 42:39-43 both affirms the principle of an eye for an eye and yet softens it: “The retribution for a tort is a similar injury, but those who forgive and make peace will be rewarded by God. He does not love wrongdoers. Those who exact satisfaction after having been wronged are not in turn liable to any reprisal. Those subject to reprisal are only those who commit wrongs against people and exercise tyranny in the land without any right, and for them awaits a painful chastisement. But whoever shows patience (ṣabara) and forgives (ghafara), that is true steadfastness (la-min `azm al-umūr).” By urging forbearance and forgiveness rather than revenge, this passage seeks to move away from the lex talionis in a way that resembles Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount Mt 5:38-41: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.” To be fair, the examples given here are of injuries (a humiliating slap, confiscation of a garment, a lawsuit, a Roman conscription of transport animals) that fell well short in seriousness of the murder of a loved one, for which the Qur’ān had authorized the demanding of tribal justice in al-Furqān 25:68. A very late passage of the Qur’ān (al-Mā’ida 5:45) in the Medina period refers to the Hebrew Bible and paraphrases Deuteronomy 19:21. Ashraf Dockrat interprets it as describing “pardon as a non-compulsory but preferable elective leading in an immediate way to expiation (i.e., remittance of own sins)” (M. A. E. (Ashraf) Dockrat, “Retaliation and pardon as expressed in Surah 5: 45 with reference to Matthew 5: 38- 42,” Journal for Semitics, 26, 1 (Nov 2017):275-293, at 291-292).

As for Jesus, scholars have argued vigorously about whether he meant to abrogate Deuteronomy 19:21, “Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” That he was not bringing a new law was at least asserted in Matthew 5:17-18, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.” Benno Przybylski argued that Jesus may have been deploying a rabbinical, Tannaitic, form of argumentation about the law, which the rabbis referred to as “fencing it in.” That is, believers were urged to stay well clear of the limits of the law, lest they transgress it. Mt. 5:21 has this form: “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment” (Benno Pryzybylski, Righteousness in Matthew and his World of Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) 81-84, 149 n47; Francois P. Viljoen, “Jesus’ halakhic argumentation on the true intention of the law in Matthew 5: 21-48,” Verbum et ecclesia 34, 1 (2013):5). In the Qur’ān, too, there appears to be an attempt to “fence in” the lex talionis, permitting a proportional response to a tort but urging that believers instead forgive their enemies.

1. Repelling Evil with Good
2. Late in the middle Meccan period, al-Mu’minūn 23:91, 96 puts forward an even more challenging response to persecution, of replying to it by doing favors for the persecutors. “God has never taken unto Himself any offspring, and there is no other deity with Him—for then each god would have taken away what he created, and some of them would have been ranged against others. Glory be to God above how they describe Him . . . Repel the evil deed with what is better [or best, bi allatī hiya aḥsan]. We know best how they describe [the divine].” Ṭabarī glossed this as “He says, exalted my he be, in reminding his prophet, ‘Repel, Muhammad, the defect with what is better.’ That is overlooking and forgiving the undisciplined pagans, and patience with the harm they do.” The sura of al-Mu’minūn 21:110-111 goes on to praise the believers for their patience or forbearance. God addresses the pagans who mistreated the believers, “You, however, mocked the latter, until preoccupation with them caused you to forget to remember me, while you were making fun of them. I will reward them on that day for having been longsuffering (ṣābirīn). They are the ones who won out.”

1. Fred Donner has argued that Muhammad’s movement was initially ecumenical (Fred Donner, Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2010), 69–70). These Christians are are praised for giving charity to the poor, for exercising forbearance, for responding to evil deeds with good works, and for replying to oral harassment by wishing their opponents “peace.” Their repaying of evil with good and dedication to peace with their enemies will earn them a reward in heaven twice over. Ṭabarī quotes `Abd al-Rahman Ibn Zayd as saying that the group had been “muslimīn following the religion of Jesus,” which shows awareness that “muslim” in the Qur’ān means something like “monotheist” rather than referring to followers of Muhammad.22 It is likely that this passage of the Qur’ān, praising ecumenically-minded Christians for these virtues, was intended to evoke the Sermon on the Mount. In wishing peace on their unruly neighbors, they resemble the “peacemakers” (εἰρηνοποιοί) who are blessed in Mt. 5:9. By declining to tangle with them and by returning good for evil, they are turning the other cheek (Mt. 5:39). In Jesus’s first-century Jewish context, being slapped was a form of humiliation, whereas in seventh-century Mecca the Qur’ān mainly contains mentions of oral insults.23 These people of the Book exemplify the principle, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt. 5:44), since wishing “peace” for someone has the form of a prayer. The praise for their charity recalls Mt. 59:42, “Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you.” If the passage in al-Qaṣaṣ is speaking of Christians and obliquely referring to the Sermon on the Mount, it is remarkable how similar the description of their nonviolence and goodwill toward their enemies is to that given in Al-Furqān 25:63-76 of Muhammad’s believers.
2. Pagan Parents and Relatives: Accompanying with Kindness
3. Al-Qaṣaṣ 28:56-57 contains an address to Muhammad by God: “You are unable to guide those whom you love, but God guides whomever he will, and he knows better who will be guided. They say, ‘If we were to follow the guidance along with you, we would be kidnapped (nutakhaṭṭaf) away from our land.’ Have we not, however, guaranteed to them a safe sanctuary (ḥaraman) to which are brought all sorts of fruit as nourishment from us? But most of them do not know.” The relatives of Muhammad are implicitly contrasted with the Christians. Whereas the Prophet was able to reach the latter, despite their being distant from him socially, he failed to guide his own kin. The Banū Hāshim and Banū Muṭṭalib are portrayed as fearing to convert because of the danger that they would be apprehended by the militant pagans and exiled. They are reminded in this passage, however, that Mecca, the site of the shrine to the Lord, is a sanctuary in which no violence is permitted, with the implication that their fears are unfounded. This portrayal of Mecca sheds light on the commitment to nonviolence and to doing good to one’s enemies of the Meccan suras of the Qur’ān, since the believers were not facing violent persecution there. The challenge they faced was being taunted and humiliated, which they were encouraged to deal with by praying for the peace and security of their tormentors. Ethical advice attributed in the Qur’ān to the sage Luqmān (likely a reference to the ancient Greek philosopher Alcmaeon of Croton, b. 510 BC) further takes up the issue of pagan relatives and their treatment by believers. Luqmān 31:15 is a counsel regarding polytheist parents in the voice of God: “But if they try to get you (jāhadāka) to associate with me those [gods] about whom you have no knowledge, do not obey them.
4. Still, accompany them in this world with kindness (ṣāhibhumā fī al-dunyā marūfan), but follow the path of those who turn in repentance to me. You will return to me, and I will inform you about your past deeds.” The distinction is made explicitly that in this world, the believers are to associate socially with and do good toward polytheist relatives. There is no conception here of shunning pagans or behaving militantly toward them. Rather, believing children of pagan parents are to mingle with them, and behave well toward them. The term ma`rūf in the Qur’ān implies acts of kindness, and acts that are honorable, right and fair, as opposed to acts that are censured (al-munkar).

Controversies have raged for two millennia about the meaning of the “sword” (μάχαιρα) invoked by Jesus. The parallel verse in Luke 12:54 says, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division (διαμερισμός)!” The church fathers tended to interpret the “sword” as allegorical, and to see the passage as a prediction that relatives would persecute Christian converts rather than as an indication that Christians would take up the sword against them. Some twentieth-century exegetes influenced by anti-colonial revolutions saw the passage as a sign that Jesus was no pacifist but was willing to deploy revolutionary violence, a position, however, that has been largely rejected by the academy (N. Clayton Croy, “Sword Handling: The Early Christian Reception of Matthew 10:34,” Journal of the Bible and its Reception, 6 1 (2019): 135–162). Still, the New Testament authors portrayed Jesus’s disciples as walking around armed with swords, and showed Jesus as willing to deploy violence on occasion, as when he went into the temple in Jerusalem to accost moneylenders and livestock brokers with a bullwhip that he had sat and carefully constructed for the purpose (Jn 2:13-16). John Dominic Crossan saw Jesus’s comments on “hating” one’s mother and father (Lk 14:26) and his prediction of familial conflict as the challenge of a younger generation to an older patriarchal family establishment (John Dominic Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2009), 66-67).

1. The early community of believers were a missionary community, but they are told in the Qur’ān to pursue that vocation in ways that did not injure the feelings of their interlocutors. Even in the course of the dramatic story of the confrontation of Moses with Pharaoh, in sura Ṭaha 20:44, God is said to have told Moses and Aaron, “Speak gently (qawlan layyinan) with him, in hopes that he may take a lesson and be struck with fear.” Surely such an instruction is intended to model for Muhammad’s believers the ideal sort of interaction with their pagan associates. With regard to Jews and Christians as well, the believers are urged to eirenic methods of mission and dialogue, as in al-`Ankabūt 29:46: “Debate (tujādilū) the scriptural communities only in the best of ways, except for those who do wrong. Say ‘We believe in the revelation sent down to us, and the revelation sent down to you; our God and your God is one, and to him we have submitted.’” The believers are also counseled to this course of action in al-Naḥl 16:125, with regard to Jews with whom they had a dispute over the Sabbath: “Call to the way of your lord with wisdom and good counsel (wa al-mawʿiẓati al-ḥasanati). Debate them in the best of ways (bi allatī hiya aḥsan). For your lord knows best who has strayed from his path, and he knows best who is guided.”
2. Medina
3. In Medina, they turned instead to a doctrine of just war. It has been pointed out that Church Fathers such as Augustine of Hippo supported imperial Christian Roman warfare, or “just war,” in terms difficult to distinguish from those of the Qur’ān, even if scholars have for the most part called the struggles urged in the latter not “just war” but “holy war” (a misnomer, since no such phrase or conception occurs in the Muslim scripture) (Khalid Yahya Blankinship, “Parity of Muslim and Western Concepts of Just War,” Muslim World 101, no. 3 (2011): 412–426; Philip Wynn, Augustine on War and Military Service). Even in the era of hostilities, however, hopes are expressed in the Qur’ān for reconciliation between the warring parties. A verse in the sura alBaqara 2:190 says, “Fight in the path of God those who enter into combat against you, but do not commit aggression. God does not love aggressors.” Al-Anfāl 8:38 and 8:61, which later authorities attribute to the year 624 in the wake of the Battle of Badr, contain these sentiments: “Say to the pagans that if they desist they will be forgiven for what went before. But if they backslide, the way of the ancients has already passed” and “If they incline toward peace, you must incline toward it. Trust in God—he is all-hearing and omniscient.” The just war policies of the Medina period are not necessarily in contradiction with the pacifist policies of the Meccan period, since the two situations were not comparable. Mecca was a peaceful shrine city where believers were at most ridiculed and ostracized.

1. The Christian monk Athanasios of Alexandria (d. 373) wrote, “For even in the case of the other actions in life we will find that there are differences based upon the circumstances in which they are done. For example, it is not permitted to commit murder, but in wars it is both lawful and praiseworthy to destroy one’s enemies, so much so that those who displayed valor in war are deemed worthy of the highest honors, and monuments to them are erected to proclaim their achievements. And so, the same action is not permitted in certain circumstance and at certain times, but is allowed and excused in different circumstances and at the right time” (Athanasius, “Letter to Amoun,” trans. Mark DelCogliano, in Ellen Muehlberger, ed., The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writings, vol. 2, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 66-67; Louis J. Swift, “Early Christian Views on Violence, War, and Peace,” in War and Peace in the Ancient World, ed. Kurt Raaflaub (Oxford: Blackwell’s, 2006), 286).
2. The Social Setting of Nonviolence
3. heissen suggested that only roaming holy men could afford to have a consistent policy of turning the other cheek, since if settled burghers consistently let people take advantage of them, it would encourage their tormenters to go further and further (Theissen, Social Reality and the Early Christians, 149; Aaron Milavec, “The Social Setting of ‘Turning the Other Cheek’ and “Loving One’s Enemies’ in Light of the Didache,” Biblical Theology Bulletin: Journal of Bible Culture (1995): 131-143). He posits that Jesus had been such a charismatic wanderer, and that the logia in Q urging this policy derived from that milieu, such that he was replying to harassment from Romans. He compares this ethic of nonviolence and non-resistance to that of the mobile Cynics who espoused Stoic philosophy. Theissen argues that the later, settled, Christian communities received Jesus’ logia on turning the other cheek and doing good to one’s enemies in two main ways. The Matthew tradition, he argues, was that of a Jewish Christian milieu who saw themselves as righteous “sons of God” who, by being magnanimous, were imitating God himself. They had been defeated by the Romans in 70, and asserted themselves as spiritually victorious and inwardly sovereign. Melavic rejects this interpretation, arguing along with John Dominic Crossan that the main context for the Matthew verses about turning the other cheek and loving one’s enemies are the extended Jewish family, within which young Christians would have faced constant harassment from elders. The youth are instructed to respond lovingly and with self-abnegation while upholding their new faith (Milavec, “The Social Setting of ‘Turning the Other Cheek’,” 136-141; Crossan, Jesus, 66-67). Theissen said that the Lucan reception of these logia reflected instead the concerns of Gentile converts with a Hellenistic outlook. This community tended to universalize these precepts.

They exhibited anxiety about conflict between the wealthy and the poor and about commercial disputes between moneylenders and borrowers within the Gentile community. The Sitz-im-Leben of the quranic prescriptions for forgiving and doing good toward enemies was very different from that of the New Testament, though mobility may have been a common context between the life of Jesus and the early career of Muhammad. The merchants and peddlers of the Hijaz, including Muhammad and his initial circle, may have been relatively mobile, traveling among small towns for trade fairs, and so may not have had to deal consistently with the same elites. Many of the believers are portrayed in the Qur’ān as merchants and peddlers (Patricia Crone, “How did the quranic pagans make a living?” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 68, 3 (2005), 387 – 399). Certainly, some Abbasid-era accounts suggest such mobility (Aziz Al-Azmeh. The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allah and His People (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 194-197).

1. Conclusion
2. Unlike Matthew, the Qur’ān contains no indication that the believers were attempting an imitatio dei when they shed their forgiveness on all, including enemies. Moreover, the Qur’ān depicts Muhammad’s believers and their pagan foes as having the same ethnicity, so that the Jewish-Gentile dynamics Theissen discerned in Matthew did not arise. The Melavic-Crossan interpretation of Matthew as having to do with intra-Jewish generational divisions, or the Lucan concern with wealth inequality, are closer to the situation described in the Qur’ān. The constitution of the Mecca community as a sort of lay order, devoted to supererogatory prayers and strict morality, may be a further context for the ethic of repelling evil with good, so that it is no accident that some of these Qur’an verses somewhat resemble sentiments of monks such as Maximos the Confessor in the same era. Some passages of the Qur’ān, praising ethnic and gender diversity as a good that the inquisitive should take advantage of to increase their knowledge, display a more Lucan universalist emphasis. Like Luke, the Qur’ān, exhibits a concern with smoothing out conflicts between the wealthy and the poor. One reason given for doing good to enemies was that Muhammad’s early community possessed no authority over the pagans and so had no choice but to bear their rude behavior graciously and to leave the punishment of these polytheists to God.