ABSTRACT
To identify the actors in sacred history, the Quran uses ethnic, religious, and ideological labels, some frequently, some rarely or once. It refers to groups with distinct beliefs and rituals, including Arabs, Bedouins, Jews, the Children of Israel, the Children of Adam, Christians, the Byzantine Greek Christians (Q:30:2), Persians (Q:16:103; 26:198; 41:44), people of the book, people of the gospel (Q:5:49), the Magians (al-Maju¯s; Q:22:17), the Sabians (Al-S. a¯bi’u¯n; Q:2:62; 5:71; 22:17), and several others.1 By contrast with the variety of such labels, the religious typology is simple: the faithful, the submitters, the disbelievers, the idolaters and the hypocrites. The complexity now derives from the subtlety and nuance of the Quranic nomenclature. The scripture elucidates and appraises the life of faith and rejection by describing generic attitudes held by various groups, coining fertile new words and investing old words with new spiritualized meanings.
