Re: religion of prophet before Islam came
I didn’t say that it was strong in Arabs. I said that the concept was historically there there and always alive. It’s like Islam in Poland. It’s followed by less than 0.1% of the population, but has a history of being practiced there going back 7 centuries. If a Polish person decided to learn about Islam it would not be as surprising as, say, if a North Korean did, given that a North Korean would have no Muslims around to talk to at all.
Monotheism amongst Mecca’a arabs would be the same way. A tiny fraction kept it alive, going back to through what their fathers heard about what their fathers heard all the way back to Ismail (pbuh). They were not the only monotheists in Mecca, through, others followed deviated forms of monotheism (Christians and Jews).
Ebionite Christians, the sect to which Waraka ibn Nawfal belonged, already rejected the idea of Hazrat Isa (pbuh) being the son of God, they viewed him as just a prophet (hence they lived in Arab lands, they were persecuted by other Christians). They therefore could not have been the targetted audience of that Surah, which instead was condemning the beliefs of the 99.9% of the broader Christian community that followed the Nicene creed that did assign a son to God.