A Mission Reaching Others Not Yet Come

Al-Jumua describes Muhammad as sent to the unlettered and also to 'others of them who have not yet joined them' (62:3), a phrase classical exegesis, drawing on a hadith concerning the Persian companion Salman al-Farisi, reads as extending the Prophet's mission beyond his immediate Arab audience to later, non-Arab peoples who would embrace the faith only after his own lifetime. The identification with Salman, an early Persian convert who travelled widely in search of true religion before reaching Medina, is cited by commentators as giving the verse a concrete, named example rather than leaving its scope purely abstract.

The verse is cited in later Islamic universalist writing alongside similar statements elsewhere in the Quran describing Muhammad's mission as extending to all mankind, though here the emphasis falls specifically on futurity, people not yet born or not yet reached, rather than on geographic breadth alone. Classical commentators read the phrase as anticipating, from within the Quran's own Medinan setting, the faith's later spread among non-Arab peoples across Persia, Africa and beyond, a expansion later Islamic historical writing frequently connects back to this and similar Quranic anticipations.