Investigating the Quranic Proposition “وَ إِنْ يَرَوْا كُلَّ آيَةٍ لا يُؤْمِنُوا بِها”, Regarding to Syntagmatic Relations and Thematic Content Analysis

Abstract

One of the Divine ubiquitous and eternal traditions has been to invite people to Faith through sending messengers. This invitation to Allah was usually accompanied by presenting a verse or a collection of verses which indicate the connection of the Messenger with the unseen world. The Qur’anic verses proves that the reaction of people to the prophets’ invitation, has been done in three levels: disregard for the invitation, minimum acceptance, or maximum denial of the invitation. The Qur’anic proposition «وَ إِنْ يَرَوْا كُلَّ آيَةٍ لا يُؤْمِنُوا بِها» points to the definite unbelief of a group of people in all verses presented by the prophets. This research aims to discover the origin of this proposition and the reason of the denial, which is undergone through the exploratory method of thematic content analysis and the use of syntagmatic relations in the discourse analysis. Findings show that this proposition is used in two positions of the Qur’an and in a single context. It is in syntagmatic relation to the theme of “denial” and the denialist people are its main origin. Content analysis of the theme of “denial” shows that human beings went to the position of denying religion because of committing “oppressive behaviors” and “continuous fisq (evils/sins)” and thus the denial of religion has made them “soul-losing” and consequently “unbelief”.