199فَقَرَأَهُ عَلَيهِم ما كانوا بِهِ مُؤمِنينَMuhammad Asadand had he recited it unto them [in his own tonguej, they would not have believed in it.1As the Qur'an points out in many places, most of the Meccan contemporaries of Muhammad refused in the beginning to believe in his prophethood on the ground that God could not have entrusted "a man from among themselves" with His message: and this in spite of the fact that the Qur'an was expressed "in the clear Arabic tongue", which they could fully understand: but (so the argument goes) if the Prophet had been a foreigner, and his message expressed in a non-Arabic tongue, they would have been even less prepared to accept it - for then they would have had the legitimate excuse that they were unable to understand it (cf. 41:44).