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390chapter sixIn the eyes of our honourable scholars there is no question that Godappointed them not only as the guardians of His religion but also asthe intermediaries between Him and the people, as the translatorsof His orders and prohibitions, and as the commentators of Hisverses and rules. They maintained that the preposition + suffix pronounminkum (out of you) is partitive, dividing the umma into thosewhom Allah appointed ‘to prescribe what is right and to proscribewhat is wrong’ and the rest (who were not appointed), while they,of course, embody ‘the band of people’ that Allah chose for this task.The truth is, however, that the preposition min is not partitive (outof you) but rather designative (of you), as in the sentence: ‘The emirso-and-so turned his country ( ja#la min bil§dihi) into a highly civilisednation’, implying a change of his entire country—in spite of the useof min—and not just parts of it. Moreover, the identification of aprivileged group contradicts several important principles: first, itwould condemn the majority of the population to passivity, whileonly a tiny group ‘prescribes what is right and proscribes what iswrong’ which, according to 3:110, contradicts Allah’s more generaldesignation that the entire umma are ‘the best of peoples’. Second, itwould suggest a certain hierarchy that contradicts the spirit of theBook. We know that Allah appointed His noble Prophet (ß) to prescribewhat is right, 61 after a long process (over forty years!) of selectionduring which MuÈammad (ß) lived with his peoples and hisfamily, and during which he proved himself trustworthy to carry outthis majestic task. The testing and probing was done in a rigorousmanner so that His word could be true: ‘Verily the most honouredof you in the sight of God is (he who is) the most righteous of you…’( Al-\ujur§t 49:13). Given this rigorous process of selection, is it plausiblethat God chose a group of people even before they were actuallyborn? Can such a selection be sensible when it means that meremembership of this group is enough to gain a privileged positionregardless of skill and competence? Is this not similar to the presumptuous(racist) claim that God chose one nation over all others,whereby everyone born into this nation is, by birthright, God-chosensimply because of his ethnicity and not because of his character orgood work?61‘Hold to forgiveness, command what is right, but turn away from the ignorant’( Al-A#r§f 7:199).