ثُمَّ أَرْسَلْنَا رُسُلَنَا تَتْرَا ۖ كُلَّ مَا جَآءَ أُمَّةً رَّسُولُهَا كَذَّبُوهُ ۚ فَأَتْبَعْنَا بَعْضَهُم بَعْضًا وَجَعَلْنَـٰهُمْ أَحَادِيثَ ۚ فَبُعْدًا لِّقَوْمٍ لَّا يُؤْمِنُونَ
Summa arsalnaa Rusulanaa tatraa kulla maa jaaa'a ummatar Rasooluhaa kazzabooh; fa atba'naa ba'dahum ba'danw wa ja'alnaahum ahaadees; fabu'dal liqawmil laa yu'minoon
Sonra birbiri peşinden peygamberlerimizi gönderdik. Her ümmete peygamberi geldikçe onu yalancı saydılar. Onları birbiri peşinden yok edip hepsini birer efsane yaptık. İnanmayan millet, rahmetden ırak olsun!
Then we sent our messengers in succession. Every time a messenger came to a community, they denied him, so we made them follow one another, and we turned them into tales. Away with a people who will not believe!
The last word carries the sting: these communities became aḥādīth, the stuff of other people's conversation, remembered as an anecdote. Surah al-Muminun is moving through history at speed here, one people after another, which quietly places the reader somewhere in the same sequence. What a civilization is finally left with, when it turns away every messenger sent to it, is being talked about.