لَقَدْ وُعِدْنَا نَحْنُ وَءَابَآؤُنَا هَـٰذَا مِن قَبْلُ إِنْ هَـٰذَآ إِلَّآ أَسَـٰطِيرُ ٱلْأَوَّلِينَ
Laqad wu'idnaa nahnu wa aabaaa'unaa haazaa min qablu in haazaaa illaaa asaateerul awwaleen
To nam było już obiecane, i poprzednio naszym ojcom, lecz to są tylko baśnie przodków."
We have been promised this before, we and our forefathers. This is nothing but tales of the ancients.
Their objection is that the promise is old: they heard it, their fathers heard it, and nothing came of it, so age itself is offered as proof of fiction. Asāṭīr al-awwalīn, the legends of earlier peoples, is a charge laid nine times over, and every time by an objector rather than a believer. What follows answers with three questions about who owns the earth, which they answer correctly themselves.