The notion of a common fate of sin shared by Muslims and others is most explicitly expressed in a fatalistic saying attributed to the Prophet, which will here be referred to as the “sunna statement”. This statement asserts that the Muslims are destined to follow the evil sunna of other communities. The various occurrences of the statement again reveal the role of the Qurʾān as a source for literary models of Israelite sins, as well as its function as a basis for schism, and hence of assimilation of Arabs with others.

The term sunna as used in the sunna statement does not represent the virtuous model of the Prophet and his Companions, but rather the evil one of past communities, and the statement itself predicts the deviation of the Muslim believers from the former to the latter. This deviation in turn signals the assimilation of the Muslims with the other sinful communities.

The historical perspective of the sunna statement is embedded in Qurʾānic concepts. The Qur'an uses the term sunna in the sense of the evil model of previous communities. In this sense the term functions in passages warning the believers of sunnat al-awwalīn, “the way of the first [generations]”. Not only do these verses warn the believers of the sins of the ancients (al-awwalūn), but also of their punishment; they thus imply that the same punitive fate awaits the Arabs unless they repent.1 The Qur'an also uses the plural form sunan to issue the same warning. When signifying punishment inflicted on previous generations, the word sunna is often appended to God's name: sunnat Allāh.

Modern scholars referred only briefly to the sunna statement. S.D. Goitein adduced one version in his Jews and Arabs at the beginning of a chapter placing the origins of Islam in a Jewish context, which seems to indicate that to Goitein the sunna statement merely meant that Muslims were aware of Jewish influence on Islamic conduct. Goitein's romantic belief in what he called Jewish-Arab “symbiosis” prevented him from grasping the bitterness of the statement. M.J. Kister also briefly mentioned some versions and noted that they convey the idea of an identical fate shared by Jews and Muslims alike. He rightly observed that “these points of resemblance refer, of course, to pejorative aspects of Jewish history. They are used to point out dangers which the Muslim community is facing.”