not heeded The middle section of this Quranic surah, which Ernst marks from verse 9 to 42, relates to prior Hebrew and Arab oral traditions to remind the audience of previous instances where the word of God was not heeded and stern consequences resulted. The first of the five examples is the story of Noah, whose rejection by his own people is relatable to the situation Muhammad found himself in early in his prophetic career. According to the Quran, men referred to both Noah and Muhammad as crazy or majnoon—the same Arabic word is used in both of these references. There are four more examples of rejected prophets in the middle section of surah 54, wherein the stories of ‘Ad, Thamud, Lot, and Pharaoh are mentioned to reiterate the lesson that those who fail to heed Allah’s warnings through His messengers will be punished. (The stories of ‘Ad and Thamud come from Arab folklore and the Quran briefly describes the wrath that both of these peoples incurred because of their disbelief.) Take note that the five Hebrew/Arab stories are told in a manner that assumes the audience has a working knowledge of the myth before its telling in the Quran. Unlike the Old Testament, these stories are neither told in their entirety nor are they told in a chronological narrative. Instead, key points of the story are mentioned to bring out an important faith-based lesson from the story, with the assumption that the audience already understands the underlying narrative. For example, the story of Pharaoh only takes up two verses in which there is only space to mention that a warning came to his people, they rejected the signs, and Allah “overcame them with the seizing of the Mighty, the Powerful”. Something else to note about this middle section is how many times the Quran references itself. In fact, it does so four times in the same context, at the end of the first four “disbeliever” examples. Each of these four lines (54:17,22,32,40) reads: “We have made it easy to learn lessons from the Quran: will anyone take heed?” Some versions interpret this line to say: “And certainly We have made the Quran easy to remember, but is there anyone who will mind?” The difference here is important because of the connotation of the Arabic word dhikr, which can refer to lessons, the act of remembering, memorization, recalling, and many