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[1] 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 revealed 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 Quran’s 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.[2]
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 Quran’s 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.[3]
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.[4]
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 God’s 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.
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