Has any account not reached you of the exemplary histories of those who lived before you – the people of Noah, and the ‘Ad and Thamud – and those who came after them? None save God has true knowledge about them. Their Messengers came to them with clear signs of the truth, but they thrust their hands into their mouths (in derision and anger, and frustrated by their inability to refute them), and said: "We certainly disbelieve in what you have been sent, and indeed we are in serious doubt about that to which you call us."