Messengers amongst the Jinns?
Mohamad Mostafa Nassar
Twitter:@NassarMohamadMR
The Quran is very clear that both man and jinn have recieved messengers i.e prophets:
“O ye assembly of JINNS and men! came there not unto you messengers FROM AMONGST YOU, setting forth unto you My Signs, and warning you of the meeting of this Day of yours?” They will say: “We bear witness against ourselves.” It was the life of this world that deceived them. So against themselves will they bear witness that they rejected Faith. S. 6:130
The person arguing for a contradiction then brings up these passages which supposedly contradict the above passage:
“Nor did We send before thee messengers ANY BUT MEN, whom We did inspire,- (men) from the people of the towns. Do they not travel through the earth, and see what was the end of those before them? But the home of the Hereafter is best, for those who do right. Will ye not then understand?” S. 12:109
“Before thee, also, the messengers We sent were BUT MEN, to whom We granted inspiration: If ye know this not, ask of those who possess the Message. Nor did We give them bodies that ate no food, nor were they immortals.” S. 21:7-8
And the messengers whom We sent before thee were ALL (MEN) who ate food and walked through the markets. We have made some of you as a trial for others: will ye have patience? For Allah is One Who sees (all things). Those who do not hope to meet Us (for Judgment) say: “Why are not the angels sent down to us, or (why) do we not see our Lord?” Indeed they have an arrogant conceit of themselves, and mighty is the insolence of their impiety! S. 25:20-21
So basically the person is claiming that one verse says that BOTH men and jinn get messengers, whereas the other three passages say that only men were sent.
There is no contradiction:
If one reads the verses carefully one will notice a difference amongst them. To begin with the verse claiming that messengers were sent amongst man and jinn is talking to BOTH man and jinn, the verse is being adressed to both races. The next 3 passages which say that only human messengers were sent is talking to humans only, so the context is very different.
The audience being adressed in the 3 passages saying that only humans were sent as messengers are humans, the audience being adressed in the first passage I mentioned are both man and jinn.
Furthermore the context of the three passages saying that all messengers were men were revealed against the pagans living during the prophets time, since they had a problem with the fact that the prophet Muhammad was a man.
They were expecting some angel to come down to them instead of a mere man, so the verses refute them telling that that all messengers were humans, that is that all messengers and prophets that were sent to mankind were human messengers, not angel messengers or jinn messengers.
So for mankind we have recieved human messengers, not jinn or angel messengers, for jinns they have recieved jinn messengers not human messengers, that is until the prophet Muhammad came since he was a prophet to everyone man and jinn included.
So hence there is no contradiction, just two very different contexts, and two contexts being spoken to two different audiences. No contradiction at all.
And Allah knows Best!
By Sami Zaatari