1 HE frowned and turned away,
2 because the blind man came to HIM.
3 How could YOU know? Perhaps he would purify himself,
4 or is able to take a lesson, and so would benefit from the reminder.
5 As for those who think themselves self-sufficient,
6 YOU are attentive to them;
7 but YOU are not responsible if they will not purify themselves.
8 As for those who come to YOU, full of earnest striving
9 and devout,
10 YOU ignore them.
The great historian and Qur'an commentator Muĥammad b. Jarīr al-Ţabarī (d. 923) quoted the Prophet's third wife, ¢Ā'ishah, on the significance of this passage. She said, "'He Frowned' was revealed concerning Ibn Umm Maktūm. He came to the Messenger of God and began to say, 'Guide me.' The Messenger of God was with pagan notables. The Prophet began to turn away from him, addressing someone else. The man asked [plaintively], 'Do you see any harm in what I say?' He replied, 'No.'" Despite his being blind, ¢Abd Allāh b. Umm Maktūm was later made a caller to prayer in the Medina period, according to another saying of ¢Ā'ishah. The man's name underlines his marginality in Arabian society of that time. He is the son (Ibn) of "the mother (Umm) of Maktūm (his older brother)." Arabian names were patriarchal like those of the Norse, for instance "Erik Thorsson." It was an embarrassment to lack a patronymic, to be defined only by one's mother's name. The blind ¢Abd Allāh b. Umm Maktūm would have been named with regard to his father if anyone had known who the latter was. Thus, he was a person of no social consequence in the small shrine city of Mecca.
The plain sense of these verses is clear, whether this anecdote is historical or not. The Prophet is scolded by the voice of the divine for having turned his back, annoyed, when the blind nobody dared make a demand on his time and attention. What is worse, ¢Abd Allāh did so while Muĥammad was giving his attention instead to a gathering of the wealthy Meccan elite -- those who thought they were "self-sufficient" and did not need God's grace. The voice of the divine points out that Ibn Umm Maktūm's soul was just as valuable as the souls of the pagan magnates, and it was possible that, with some pastoral care, he might accept the truth. The Prophet Muĥammad preached, according to the later Muslim tradition, from 610 to 632, and this incident is thought to have occurred early in his ministry. Was it 613? It is implied in the Qur'an that God intervened right at the beginning of Muĥammad's career to underscore that the mission work had to proceed on the basis of the spiritual equality of all potential hearers.
Skin color was used in many ways by authors in the ancient world and not always as a sign of inferiority or superiority, but there were undeniably forms where discrimination played a part. When the widely read Greek medical thinker Galen at one point described "Ethiopians," he mentioned their outward attributes, such as frizzy hair and broad noses, but then went on to describe them also as mentally deficient. Solomon's bride in the "Song of Songs" describes herself as black: "I am black and beautiful, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon." This description caused late antique Christian authors some puzzlement, since they did not associate blackness with beauty or other positive attributes. The ancient world did not have a conception of race, a modern idea that emerged in its contemporary sense in the nineteenth century; it only had a set of aesthetic preferences around appearances. But some authors clearly did invest blackness with negative connotations.