Al Ḥijr

وَقَالُوا يَآ أَيُّهَا الَّذِي نُزّ‌ِلَ عَلَيْهِ الذّ‌ِكْرُ إِنَّكَ لَمَـجْنُونٌ

لَوْ مَا تَأْتِينَا بِالْمَلآئِكَةِ إِن كُنتَ مِنَ الصَّادِقِينَ

6. “And they (unbelievers) said: ‘O’ you to whom the (Divine) Reminder has been sent down, you are surely insane;”
7. “If you are of the truthful ones, why do you not bring to us the angels?”

The Arabic term /majnūn/ (insane) here does not signify ‘irrational’. Rather, that means being overtaken by ‘Jinns’, as is the case with the word ‘demoniac’ which means possessed or influenced by demons or by the spirit of the demons. During the age of Ignorance, there was a widespread common belief that poets could compose poems because of the relationship they had with the ‘jinns’ or ‘fairies’. In these two noble verses, cases of humiliation, ridicule, accusations, and hesitation or skepticism have been mentioned from the tongue of the pagans with respect to the Prophet (S). Employing the phrase ‘O you to whom’ instead of ‘O Prophet!’ exhibits a kind of humiliation.

The Arabic term /ŏikr/ is some kind of ridicule when applied by the pagans considering the fact that they did not believe in revelations. The Arabic word /majnūn/ meaning ‘lunatic’, applied for the Prophet (S), implies accusation. And the sentence:

makes allusions to their skepticism regarding the prophetic mission of the Prophet (S). Moreover, the Arabic signs /’inna/ and ‘Lam’ in the sentence

as well as the Arabic structure of the ‘nominative clause’, all are kinds of emphasis in various ways of their speech and exhibit their deviant form of thinking. The verse says:

“And they (unbelievers) said: ‘O’ you to whom the (Divine) Reminder has been sent down you are surely insane;”

“If you are of the truthful ones, why do you not bring to us the angels?”

Incidentally, the pagans regarded the descending of angels as the authenticity of the mission of the Prophet (S) though this was only a pretext, for, Allah elsewhere, in the Qur’an says:

“And even if We sent down the angels to them, and the dead spoke to them, and We mustered all things before them, (even then) they would not believe…” ¹