#30
A Challenge by God
The Evidence
Initially,
the Meccan unbelievers said Muhammad is the author
of the Quran. God responded to them:
Or
do they say, He himself has composed this [message]?
No, but they are not willing to believe!
But then, [if they deem it the work of a
mere mortal,] let them produce another discourse
like it - if what they say be true! [Or
do they deny the existence of God implicitly by
denying the fact of His revelation?] Have
they themselves been created without anything
- or were they, perchance, their own creators?
(Quran 52:33-35)
First, God
challenged them to produce ten chapters like the
Quran:
Or
they may say, He forged it, Say, Bring ye then
ten suras forged, like unto it, and call (to your
aid) whomsoever you can, other than God! - If
you speak the truth! If then they answer
not your (call), know you that this revelation
is sent down with the knowledge of God, and that
there is no god but He! Will you then submit
(to Islam)? (Quran 11:13-14)
But, when
they were unable to meet the challenge of ten
chapters, God reduced it to a single chapter:
And if you are in doubt about what We have sent
down on Our slave, then produce a surah thereof
and call upon your witnesses other than God, if
you should be truthful. But if you do not
and you will never be able to then fear
the Fire whose fuel is men and stones, prepared
for the unbelievers.(Quran 2:23-24)
Finally,
God foretold their eternal failure to meet the
divine challenge:
Say: If all mankind and all jinn
would come together to produce the like
of this Quran, they could not produce its like
even though they were to exert all their strength
in aiding one another!(Quran 17:88)
The Prophet
of Islam said:
Every Prophet was given signs because of which
people believed in him. Indeed, I have been
given the Divine Revelation that God has inspired
to me. So, I hope to have the most followers
of all the prophets on the Day of Resurrection.(Saheeh
Al-Bukhari)
The physical
miracles performed by the prophets were time-specific,
valid only for those who witnessed them, whereas
the like of the continuing miracle of our Prophet,
the Noble Quran, was not granted to any other
prophet. Its linguistic superiority, style,
clarity of message, strength of argument, quality
of rhetoric, and the human inability to match
even its shortest chapter till the end of time
grant it an exquisite uniqueness. Those
who witnessed the revelation and those who came
after, all can drink from its fountain of wisdom.
That is why the Prophet of Mercy hoped he will
have the most followers of all the prophets, and
prophesized that he would at a time when Muslims
were few, but then they began to embrace Islam
in floods. Thus, this prophecy came true.
Explanation
of Qurans Inimitability
State
of the Prophet Muhammad
He was an
ordinary human being.
He was illiterate.
He could neither read nor write.
He was more
than forty years old when he received the first
revelation. Until then he was not known
to be an orator, poet, or a man of letters; he
was just a merchant. He did not compose
a single poem or deliver even one sermon before
he was chosen to be a prophet.
He brought
a book attributing it to God, and all Arabs of
his time were in agreement it was inimitable.
The Challenge
of the Quran
The Quran
puts a challenge out to anyone who opposes the
Prophet. The challenge is to produce a chapter
(surah) similar to it, even if it were
to be a cooperative effort. A person may
summon all the help he can from the physical and
spiritual realms.
Why this
Challenge?
First, Arabs
were poets. Poetry was their supreme ornament
and their most representative form of discourse.
Arabic poetry was rooted in the oral; it was a
voice before it acquired an alphabet. Poets
could compose intricate poems spontaneously and
commit thousands of lines to memory. Arabs
had a complex system of evaluating a poet and
the poetry to meet rigid standards. Annual
competition selected the idols of poetry, and
they were engraved in gold and hung inside the
Kaaba, alongside their idols of worship.
The most skilled served as judges. Poets
could ignite wars and bring truce between warring
tribes. They described women, wine, and
war like no one else.
Second,
the opponents of the Prophet Muhammad were strongly
determined to quash his mission in any way possible.
God gave them a non-violent approach to disprove
Muhammad.
Inability
to Meet the Challenge and its Consequences
History
is a witness that the pre-Islamic Arabs could
not produce a single chapter to meet the challenge
of the Quran.
Instead of meeting the challenge, they chose violence
and waged war against him. They, of all
people, had the ability and the motive to meet
the Quranic challenge, but could not do so.
Had they done so, the Quran would have proven
false, and the man who brought it would have been
exposed as a false prophet. The fact that
the ancient Arabs did not and could not meet this
challenge is proof of Qurans inimitability.
Their example is of a thirsty man next to a well,
the only reason he dies of thirst is if he was
unable to reach the water!
Furthermore,
the inability of previous Arabs to meet the challenge
of the Quran implies later Arabs are less competent
to meet the challenge, due to their lack the mastery
of classical Arabic that the previous, classical
Arabs had. According to linguists of the
Arabic language, the Arabs before and during the
time of the Prophet, in exclusion to subsequent
generations, had the most complete mastery of
the Arabic language, its rules, meters, and rhymes.
Later Arabs did not match the mastery of classical
Arabs.
Lastly,
the challenge is for Arabs and non-Arabs alike.
If the Arabs cannot meet the challenge, the non-speakers
of Arabic cannot claim to meet the challenge either.
Hence, the inimitability of the Quran is established
for non-Arabs as well.
What if
someone were to say: perhaps the challenge of
the Quran was met by someone in the time of the
Prophet, but the pages of history did not preserve
it.?
Since the
beginning, people have reported important events
to their succeeding generations, especially in
that which captures attention or what people are
looking out for. The Quranic challenge was
well spread and well known, and had someone met
it, it would have been impossible for it not to
have reached us. If it has been lost in
the annals of history, then, for the sake of argument,
it is also possible that there was more than one
Moses, more than one Jesus, and more than one
Muhammad; perhaps many scriptures were also revealed
to these imaginary prophets, and it is possible
the world knows nothing about it! Just like
these suppositions are unfounded historically,
it is also unreasonable to imagine that the Quranic
challenge was met without it reaching us.
Second,
had they met the challenge, the Arabs would have
discredited the Prophet. It would have been
their biggest propaganda tool against him.
Nothing like this happened, instead, they chose
war.
The fact
that no effort of the non-Muslim has succeeded
in producing a verse like a verse of the Quran
means that either no-one has taken the Quran seriously
enough to make the effort, or that they made the
effort, but were not successful. This shows
the inimitability of the Quran, a unique and everlasting
message. The uniqueness of the Quran combined
with the divine message it brings to mankind is
a sure indication of the truth of Islam. In the
face of this, every person is faced with one of
the two choices. He either openly accepts
the Quran is Gods Word . In doing so he
must also accept that Muhammad was sent by God
and was His Messenger. Or else he secretly
knows the Quran is true, but he chooses in his
heart to refuse it. If the seeker is honest
in his seeking, he need but explore this question
of its inimitability to nurture the inner certainty
that he has really found the final truth in the
religion it predicates.
CLICK
HERE
