The Prophet Muhammad’s Responses to Opponents and Supporters: A Quantitative Analysis of Qur’anic Prophet–People Conversation Patterns (مقاله علمی وزارت علوم)

چکیده

This study aims to examine the Qur’anic verses that record the dialogues between the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and the people. After identifying the dialogical methods employed by the Prophet’s audience, it investigates how the Prophet responded to both opponents and supporters according to their methods. To achieve accurate results and provide a systematic analysis of the verses, association rules (a data-mining method) have been applied. The findings show that the Holy Qur’an contains 153 verses devoted to the dialogues of the Prophet with the people, which can be divided into 72 separate conversations. The main focus of this study is on the verses in which the people initiate the dialogue and the Prophet provides the response. By categorizing the Prophet’s interlocutors into opponents and supporters, and by identifying the dialogical methods used by both sides, ten dialogical methods were recognized: emotional, argumentative, interrogative, exhortative, persuasive, propagative, denunciatory, assertive, derisive, and threatening. The analysis reveals that when the opponents initiate dialogue in an interrogative manner, the Prophet’s response is propagative; when their method is denunciatory, the Prophet responds with propagative and argumentative approaches; when their method is assertive, the Prophet responds in a persuasive manner; and when their method is derisive, his response is threatening. By contrast, the dialogue method of  the supporters is predominantly interrogative, to which the Prophet responds in an exhortative manner.