note/ref11:118(Why Were We Create?)
note/ref11:118(Why Were We Create?) . 11:118 And had thy Sustainer so willed, He could surely have made all mankind one single community: but [He willed it otherwise, and so] they continue to hold divergent views'. Note. Le., about everything, even about the truths revealed to them by God. - For a discussion of the term ummah wahidah ("one single community") and its wider implications, see surah ✔️2:213, notes 197 and 198; the second part of ✔️2:253 ; and the second part of ✔️5:48 . Thus, the Qur'an stresses once again that the unceasing differentiation in men's views and ideas is not incidental but represents a God-willed, basic factor of human existence. If God had willed that all human beings should be of one persuasion, all intellectual progress would have been ruled out, and "they would have been similar in their social life to the bees and the ants, while in their spiritual life they would have been like the angels, constrained by their nature always to...