وَإِذَا تُتْلَىٰ عَلَيْهِمْ ءَايَٰتُنَا قَالُوا۟ قَدْ سَمِعْنَا لَوْ نَشَآءُ لَقُلْنَا مِثْلَ هَٰذَآ ۙ إِنْ هَٰذَآ إِلَّآ أَسَٰطِيرُ ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ
Wa izaa tutlaa 'alaihim Aayaatunaa qaaloo qad sami'naa law nashaaa'u laqulnaa misla haazaaa in haazaaa illaaa asaateerul awwaleen
And when Our verses are recited to them, they say, "We have heard. If we willed, we could say [something] like this. This is not but legends of the former peoples."
Themes in this ayah
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The Quran & revelation
8:31Ayah 175
3 ayahs in Al-Anfaal are strongly about the Quran and revelation. This is one of them.
← Previous on The Quran & revelation8:21And do not be like those who say, "We have heard," while they do not hear.Next on The Quran & revelation →8:41And know that anything you obtain of war booty - then indeed, for Allah is one fifth of it and for the Messenger and for [his] near relatives and the orphans,
Tafsir
Scholars offer complementary perspectives
And when Our verses namely the Qur’ān were being recited to them they said ‘We have already heard! If we wish we can speak the like of this — al-Nadr b. al-Hārith said this for he used to travel on trading business to al-Hīra where he would buy books containing the tales of the Persians and would recount these to the Meccans; this Qur’ān is nothing but the fables the lies of the ancients’.
Related Hadiths
We narrate what we have heard.
We said to Zaid bin Arqam: 'Tell us a Hadith from the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ).' He said: 'We have grown old and have forgotten, and (narrating) Ahadith from the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) is difficult (not a simple matter).'"
"I heard Ibn 'Abbas saying: 'We used to memorize Ahadith, and Ahadith were memorized from the Messenger of Allah (ﷺ). But if you go to the extremes of either exaggeration or negligence (in narrating Ahadith), there is no way we can trust your Ahadith.'"
A hadith like this have been narrated on the authority of Nafi', who based his narrations of the words of Ibn 'Umar but with a slight variation of words.
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