The Reason for Emphasizing Believers’ Faith in General Prophethood

The reason for emphasizing that believers have faith in general prophethood, just as they have faith in specific prophethood, without considering the race or tribe of the prophets and making no distinction between any of them, is to remind the People of the Book that they differentiate between prophets and only accept a prophet who is from their tribe. This is because you are self-centered, not truth-centered. For you, the criterion for acceptance in cases of acceptance is also being from the same tribe, not the prophethood of that prophet.

The Noble Qur’an, in analyzing this psychological issue, states: The approach of some individuals to revelation and prophethood is such that whenever the message of divine prophets aligns with their desires and benefits them, they accept it; otherwise, they deny that prophet and reject his divine message. These people are not followers of revelation, and if they accept any truth, it is because it happens to align with their desires: “Is it that whenever there came to you a Messenger with what your souls did not desire, you grew arrogant? Some you denied and some you killed.”(490), “And when they are called to God and His Messenger to judge between them, lo! a party of them decline (to come).”(491)

Based on this, the measure for acceptable and unacceptable revelation for this group is their own desires, as they consider desire to be the principle and revelation to be secondary. Amīr al-Muʾminīn Ali (a.s.), in an illuminating statement referring to the time of the appearance of Ḥaḍrat Baqīyat Allāh, pointed to this issue as follows: When others bend the Qur’an to their desires and interpret it according to their own opinions and wishes, that noble figure will bend all opinions to the Qur’an and make them subservient to it: “He will turn opinion to the Qur’an when they have turned the Qur’an to opinion.”(492)