The Qur'an

The Noble Qur'an

It is well known that the religious documents of Islam consist of the Noble Qur'an and the Sunna, which the scholars of jurisprudential principles define as "what is established from the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) and issued from him, other than the Qur'an, of sayings, deeds, tacit approvals and moral qualities, such as may serve as evidence for a legal ruling" (13). The order between the Qur'an and the Sunna is an order of value; that is, it is accepted among Muslims that the Noble Qur'an stands above the Sunna in value, importance, authenticity, infallibility and sanctity, and in many other respects. Of those respects, two concern us:

The first: the Qur'an is the direct Word of God, which God revealed to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) through Gabriel (peace be upon him), to be conveyed to people; whereas the noble Sunna is the word of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), in which he drew inspiration from the Word of God, His revelation and His inspiration.

The second respect: the Qur'an, being the speech of God, has its own intrinsic value and does not depend on any other source for its infallibility and perfection. The Sunna, on the other hand, has a relative value and infallibility, depending on the Qur'an, which has authority over it in acceptance and rejection, in acting upon it or leaving it, and in distinguishing milla from nihla within it. The Sunna, like the other religious texts, is under the authority of the Qur'an.

For this reason, and in keeping with the method and aim of this study, I shall confine the discussion to the Noble Qur'an as the sacred book of Islam. Singling out the Qur'an for discussion implies not the slightest lessening of the importance of the Sunna, which together with the Qur'an constitutes the fundamental source of law and morals; it is simply what the nature of the study and the method we have adhered to in treating it require.

(13) Dirasat fi al-Sunna al-Nabawiyya al-Sharifa (Studies in the Noble Prophetic Sunna), p. 26, Siddiq Abd al-Azim, Hajar for Printing and Publishing, Cairo, 1988.

The Noble Qur'an is the Book of Islam, which the trustworthy Spirit of revelation brought down upon the heart of the master of the messengers, the truthful and trustworthy Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him); its recitation is an act of worship, and it is a challenge in both wording and meaning. In the Messenger's lifetime the Qur'an was not in the form in which we see it today. It came down in instalments, and the Messenger would recite what he received and teach it to the people, and at the same time dictate it to the scribes of revelation, who wrote it on whatever lay to hand: parchment, wood, leather, or flat slabs of stone and bone. Their number reached twenty-nine scribes, the best known of them Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali, Mu'awiya, al-Zubayr ibn al-Awwam, Sa'id ibn al-As, Amr ibn al-As, Ubayy ibn Ka'b and Zayd ibn Thabit. Thus two factors combined to preserve the Qur'an from the moment it was revealed:

The memorisers, who were the majority, if not all, of the Companions. And the scribes of revelation, who were among the most eminent of the Companions.

There was also an annual review, in the month of Ramadan, between the Messenger and Gabriel (peace be upon him) of the verses of the Qur'an that had been revealed. In the final year Gabriel reviewed the Qur'an with the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) twice, which led the Messenger to foresee that his end was near. Al-Bukhari relates that Fatima said: [The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) told me in confidence: "Gabriel used to review the Qur'an with me every year, and this year he has reviewed it with me twice, and I can only think that my time has come."]⁽¹⁴⁾

After the death of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him), Umar advised Abu Bakr to bring out the Qur'an in a new form that would be easy to use and consult, since in its scattered state, on sheets of varied shape and material, there was a fear that one of them might be lost; and with the passage of time it was feared that the memorisers might die or be dispersed by the demands of jihad and the affairs of life. Abu Bakr approved Umar's view and entrusted this task to a committee of senior scribes of revelation and memorisers, at whose head he placed the scribe of revelation, the eminent Companion Zayd ibn Thabit. The committee immediately set about its momentous task on precise, scholarly foundations for collecting the sheets of the Qur'an, which required that no

(14) Vol. 1, p. 227.

manuscript be accepted unless two persons from among the memorisers of the revelation testified that it had been dictated by the Messenger personally and that it was part of the revelation in its final form as approved by the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him).

The Qur'an was collected with this exactness and extreme care; all the Companions took part in collecting it, and it met with the approval and endorsement of them all. After it had been collected and approved, the codex was handed to Abu Bakr, who kept it with him throughout his caliphate. Before his death he entrusted it to Umar, who before his own death handed it to his daughter Hafsa, Mother of the Believers, because the caliph had not yet been appointed.

This was the first stage in the collection of the Qur'an. But in the time of Uthman (may God be pleased with him), certain differences in readings were heard in various parts of the Islamic state, in addition to differences of dialect in recitation. So Uthman (may God be pleased with him) formed a committee of four of the scribes of revelation, headed by Zayd ibn Thabit, the head of the first committee, who was of the Ansar, and with him Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, Sa'id ibn al-As and Abd Allah ibn Hisham, of the Muhajirun. He charged them with making copies of the codex kept with Hafsa, as many as the principal garrison cities of the Islamic state, the writing to be in the tongue of Quraysh, in which the Qur'an had been revealed. When the committee had completed its task, these copies were bound and sent to those cities as the sole model of the Qur'an, approved by the Messenger and by all the Muslims since the time of Abu Bakr (may God be pleased with him). This is the codex in circulation in the Islamic world from the time of Uthman (may God be pleased with him) until now.

Here is what al-Bukhari relates in the chapter on the collection of the Qur'an. He relates that Zayd ibn Thabit said: [Abu Bakr sent for me at the time of the killing of the people of al-Yamama, and there was Umar ibn al-Khattab with him. Abu Bakr (may God be pleased with him) said: "Umar came to me and said: The killing has been fierce among the reciters of the Qur'an on the day of al-Yamama, and I fear that the killing of reciters will continue on other battlefields, so that much of the Qur'an will be lost. I think you should order the Qur'an to be collected. I said to Umar: How can you do something the Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him) did not do?! Umar said: By God, this is good. And Umar kept urging me until God opened my heart to it and I came to see in it what Umar saw." Zayd said: Abu Bakr said: "You are a young man of sound mind, and we have no suspicion of you; you used to write the revelation for the Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him). So search out the Qur'an and collect it." By God, had they charged me with moving one of the mountains, it would not have been heavier for me than what he ordered me to do in collecting the Qur'an. I said: "How can you do something the Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him) did not do?" He said: "By God, it is good." And Abu Bakr kept urging me until God opened my heart to that for which He had opened the hearts of Abu Bakr and Umar (may God be pleased with them both). So I searched out the Qur'an, collecting it from

palm stalks, thin white stones, and the breasts of men ... The sheets remained with Abu Bakr until God took him, then with Umar during his lifetime, then with Hafsa daughter of Umar (may God be pleased with him) ... [Then al-Bukhari relates concerning the codex of Uthman:] Hudhayfa ibn al-Yaman came to Uthman; he had been campaigning with the people of Syria in the conquest of Armenia and Azerbaijan together with the people of Iraq, and their differences in recitation alarmed Hudhayfa. Hudhayfa said to Uthman: "Commander of the Faithful, rescue this community before they differ over the Book as the Jews and Christians differed." So Uthman sent to Hafsa: "Send us the sheets so that we may copy them into codices, then we will return them to you." Hafsa sent them to Uthman, and he ordered Zayd ibn Thabit, Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr, Sa'id ibn al-As and Abd al-Rahman ibn al-Harith ibn Hisham, and they copied them into codices. Uthman said to the three men of Quraysh: "If you and Zayd ibn Thabit differ over anything of the Qur'an, write it in the tongue of Quraysh, for it was revealed in their tongue." They did so, and when they had copied the sheets into the codices, Uthman returned the sheets to Hafsa and sent to every region a codex of what they had copied, and he ordered that every other Qur'anic material, on any sheet or codex, be burned] (15).

Thus the Qur'an enjoyed, in both its chain of transmission and its text, factors of preservation that the earlier heavenly books, such as the Torah and the Gospel, did not.

The Noble Qur'an is dictated by revelation:

It is thus established that the Qur'an we have in our hands today has suffered no alteration or change since the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) dictated it, and will suffer none until the Day of Resurrection, God willing. This is a matter no one has disputed, for the Qur'an has enjoyed a soundness and continuity of transmission that no other book whatsoever has enjoyed. Even those who devoted themselves to proving the contrary, and who examined the authenticity of the Qur'an at the highest level of scholarly criticism, were unable to find any opening for impugning the soundness of its transmission and its connection to the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). They could only acknowledge that the Qur'an we have in our hands today is the very Qur'an that Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) dictated, without addition or omission. Among them, to give examples rather than an exhaustive list: Nöldeke, who wrote a massive work in several volumes entitled "The History of the Qur'an", and who came out of it with this truth, dictated to him by scholarship alone: "The Qur'anic text, from the time it came into being until now, is in the best state of completeness and conformity"; and Loiseleur [reading uncertain], who carried out a comparative scholarly study of the sacred books and declared after it, with

(15) Al-Bukhari, vol. 3, pp. 225-226. See also Sayyid al-Anam Muhammad (Muhammad, Master of Mankind), Ibn Hisham, p. 21.

clarity and decisiveness: "The Qur'an is the only divine book that contains no change worth mentioning."

Finally, the Orientalist W. Muir says: "The codex that Uthman collected has been handed down from hand to hand, by continuous transmission, until it has reached us without any alteration. It has been preserved with such great care that no change at all has befallen it in the countless copies circulating in the vast lands of Islam. There has been only one Qur'an for all the contending Islamic sects, and this common use of the same text, accepted by all to this day, is the greatest argument and proof of the authenticity of the revealed text we possess, which goes back to the ill-fated caliph Uthman, who died by murder." (16)

What a stubborn atheist or a bigoted denier disputes, however, is that the Qur'an was dictated by revelation to Muhammad son of Abd Allah son of Abd al-Muttalib, God's blessings and peace be upon him. Although this matter rests on proofs and evidence that none would dispute except one in whose heart is sickness or bigotry, an affliction that blinds both sight and insight so that one does not see the sun at its zenith, veiled by neither cloud nor mist, to such people we offer some of the proofs, that perhaps God may guide those who doubt.

The argument of these people turns on two possibilities: either the Qur'an is the fruit of Muhammad's own genius, or it was dictated by a human teacher. Here are the proofs that both claims are false:

First: the testimony of the Messenger himself. He did not claim the honour of the Qur'an being the fruit of his own genius and his own composition, although such a claim would have immortalised his name among all peoples. Moreover, the life and character of the Messenger before and after his mission are the best witness to his truthfulness and trustworthiness. Before his mission he was known among his people for uprightness, trustworthiness and noble character, so that his people called him al-Amin, a quality that gathers every trait of goodness and manliness. Then, after his mission, his people bargained with him to turn away from what he had brought, offering him wealth until he should be the richest of them, and rank until he should be king over them, and whatever he wished of the pleasures and adornments of life. His reply was: [By God, if they placed the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left on condition that I abandon this matter, until God makes it prevail or I perish in it, I would not abandon it] (17). Had he sought leadership, glory or wealth through the Qur'an, his people had placed all of this before him. But on the contrary, for the sake of conveying what the revelation had dictated to him, he endured

(16) Al-Bukhari, vol. 3, pp. 225-226.

(17) Madkhal ila al-Qur'an al-Karim (Introduction to the Noble Qur'an), pp. 39-40, Dr. Muhammad Abd Allah Draz.

all kinds of harm and humiliation. His clan and those who followed him were subjected to a boycott until they ate dry tree leaves; he and those who believed in him were driven from their property and their homes; and he fought until he was nearly killed. Yet despite this he showed no sign of weakness, retreat, compromise or bargaining in conveying what he had been charged with.

Then there is enough in the testimony of a man who, on the day he gave it, was among the fiercest of the Prophet's adversaries and the most scheming and cunning of them. That man is Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, the great man of Quraysh, who gave his testimony in response to a careful, methodical interrogation conducted with him by Heraclius, the great one of the Byzantines. After Heraclius's victory over the Persians in 628 CE, there came to him, while he was in Syria, a letter from the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) inviting him to Islam, which astonished him. He ordered that any of this messenger's countrymen found in Syria be brought to him so that he could ask about him. Abu Sufyan relates, as al-Bukhari reports:

[Heraclius sent for him among a caravan of Quraysh, who were trading in Syria during the period in which the Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him) had made a truce with Abu Sufyan and the unbelievers of Quraysh. They came to him while they were at Iliya (Jerusalem). He summoned them to his court, with the great men of the Byzantines around him; then he called them and called for his interpreter. He said: "Which of you is closest in kinship to this man who claims to be a prophet?" Abu Sufyan said: I said: "I am the closest of them in kinship." He said: "Bring him near me, and bring his companions near and place them behind him." Then he said to his interpreter: "Tell them that I am going to question this man, and if he lies to me, they are to declare him a liar." Abu Sufyan says: By God, had it not been for the shame of their reporting a lie of mine, I would have lied about him. The first thing he asked me was: "What is his lineage among you?"

I said: "He is of noble lineage among us."

He said: "Has anyone among you ever made this claim before him?"

I said: "No."

He said: "Was any of his forefathers a king?"

I said: "No."

He said: "Do the nobles among the people follow him, or the weak?"

I said: "Rather the weak."

He said: "Are they increasing or decreasing?"

I said: "Rather they are increasing."

He said: "Does any of them renounce his religion out of displeasure with it after entering it?"

I said: "No."

He said: "Did you accuse him of lying before he said what he said?"

I said: "No."

He said: "Does he act treacherously?"

I said: "No. We are now in a truce with him and do not know what he will do in it." (No other word allowed me to slip anything in except this one.)

He said: "Have you fought him?"

I said: "Yes."

He said: "And how did your fighting with him go?"

I said: "War between us and him goes by turns: he gains from us and we gain from him."

He said: "What does he command you?"

I said: "He says: Worship God alone and associate nothing with Him, and abandon what your fathers say; and he commands us to pray, to be truthful, chaste, and to keep ties of kinship."

Then he said to the interpreter: "Tell him: I asked you about his lineage, and you said he is of noble lineage among you; and so messengers are sent from the noblest lineage of their people. I asked you whether anyone among you had made this claim, and you said no; I said that if anyone had made this claim before him, I would say he is a man imitating a claim made before him. I asked you whether any of his forefathers was a king, and you said no; I said that if one of his forefathers had been a king, I would say he is a man seeking his father's kingdom. I asked you whether you accused him of lying before he said what he said, and you said no; so I know that he would not refrain from lying about people and then lie about God. I asked you whether the nobles followed him or the weak, and you said the weak follow him, and they are the followers of messengers. I asked you whether they are increasing or decreasing, and you said they are increasing, and such is the way of faith until it is complete. I asked you whether anyone renounces his religion out of displeasure with it after entering it, and you said no; and such is faith when its delight mingles with the hearts. I asked you whether he acts treacherously, and you said no; and so messengers do not act treacherously. I asked you what he commands you, and you said that he commands you to worship God and associate nothing with Him, forbids you the worship of idols, and commands you to pray, to be truthful and chaste. If what you say is true, he will possess the very place where these two feet of mine stand. I knew that he was going to appear, but I did not think he would be from among you. If I knew that I could reach him, I would take the trouble to meet him, and if I were with him I would wash his feet." Then he called for the letter of the Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him), and in it was: "In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. From Muhammad, servant of God and His messenger, to

to Heraclius, the great one of the Byzantines. Peace be upon whoever follows the guidance. To proceed: I call you with the call of Islam. Embrace Islam and you will be safe, and God will give you your reward twice over. But if you turn away, the sin of the peasants will be upon you. And: "O People of the Book, come to a word common between us and you: that we worship none but God, associate nothing with Him, and that none of us take others as lords besides God. And if they turn away, say: Bear witness that we are Muslims."

Abu Sufyan said: When he had said what he said and finished reading the letter, the clamour around him grew, voices were raised, and we were put out. I said to my companions as we were put out: "The affair of Ibn Abi Kabsha has grown great indeed; the king of the Banu al-Asfar fears him." And I remained certain that he would prevail, until God brought Islam into my heart (18).

This is Muhammad, who called to every virtue and forbade every vice. How could he have founded his call on the root of all vices, which is lying? And if that were possible for him, why did he not claim the Qur'an for himself? There is no doubt that such a claim would have immortalised his name among all the worlds.

Then what was it that Muhammad called to? Let us learn this from one of those who believed in him, stripped himself of his wealth, family and homeland, and emigrated, fleeing with the religion that Muhammad had established.

It happened that when the plotting of Quraysh and their persecution of those who believed in Muhammad and embraced his call grew severe, God permitted the weak among them to emigrate to Abyssinia. When Quraysh saw that the emigrants had settled securely in their place of refuge and were safe in their religion, they resolved to bring them back before their cause grew strong and their call spread in Africa, which would threaten Quraysh's trade and their ties with it. So they sent 'Amr ibn al-'As and 'Abd Allah ibn Abi Umayya, laden with gifts, to the Negus, king of Abyssinia, and to his court, so that those who had emigrated to them might be returned. When the two met the king, they said to him: "O King, some foolish youths have taken refuge in your country. They have abandoned the religion of their people and have not entered your religion; they have come with a religion of their own invention, which neither we nor you know. The nobles of their people, their fathers, uncles and clans, have sent us to you so that you may return them." The Negus said: "By God, I will not hand over a people who have sought my protection and chosen me over all others until I hear from them. If what these two say is true, I will hand them over; if it is otherwise, I will protect them." Then he ordered that they all be brought, and when they came he said to them: "What is this religion for which you have parted from your people, and have entered neither my religion nor the religion of any of the milal?!"

(18) Sirat Sayyid al-Anam Muhammad (The Life of the Master of Mankind, Muhammad), by Ibn Hisham, p. 21.

Ja'far ibn Abi Talib, who was their spokesman, answered, summing up with eloquent brevity what Muhammad called to, and comparing precisely what the Arabs had followed with what Islam brought. He said: "O King, we were a people of ignorance (jahiliyya). We worshipped idols, ate carrion, committed indecencies, cut the ties of kinship, wronged our neighbours, and the strong among us devoured the weak. Then God sent us a messenger from among ourselves, whose lineage, truthfulness, trustworthiness and chastity we knew. He called us to the oneness of God, to associate nothing with Him, and to cast off the idols we used to worship. He commanded truthful speech, the fulfilment of trusts, the keeping of kinship ties, good neighbourliness, and abstaining from forbidden things and from bloodshed. He forbade us indecencies, false speech and devouring the property of the orphan, and he commanded us to pray and to fast" (and he enumerated to him the matters of Islam). "So we believed in him and accepted him as true; we forbade what was forbidden to us and permitted what was permitted to us. Then our people turned on us, tortured us and tried to tempt us away from our religion, to bring us back to the worship of idols. When they overpowered us, wronged us and stood between us and our religion, we came out to your country and chose you over all others, hoping that we would not be wronged in your presence, O King."

The Negus said: "Do you have with you anything of what he brought from God?" He said: "Yes." And he recited to him the opening of Surat Maryam. The Negus wept, and so did his bishops. The Negus said: "This and what Jesus brought come from one and the same lamp-niche. Go, the two of you; by God, I will never hand them over to you" (19).

And if we look at Muhammad's letters to the kings of the world, what do we find? We find nothing but a call to Islam and to peace, a call to love and brotherhood in God, not to the prestige or power of any person.

To Heraclius, king of the Byzantines:

[In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate! From Muhammad, servant of God and His Messenger, to Heraclius. Peace be upon whoever follows the guidance. To proceed:

Embrace Islam and you will be safe; embrace Islam and God will give you your reward twice over. And if you turn away, the sin of the peasants will be upon you.]

To al-Muqawqis, the great one of the Copts in Egypt:

[In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate! From Muhammad, Messenger of God, to al-Muqawqis, the great one of the Copts.

(19) Bab Kayfa Kana al-Wahy (Chapter: How Revelation Began), vol. 1, pp. 8-9.

Peace be upon whoever follows the guidance. To proceed:

I call you with the call of Islam. Embrace Islam and you will be safe; embrace Islam and God will give you your reward twice over. "O People of the Book, come to a word common between us and you: that we worship none but God, associate nothing with Him, and that none of us take others as lords besides God. And if they turn away, say: Bear witness that we are Muslims."]

To the Negus, king of Abyssinia:

[In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate. From Muhammad, Messenger of God, to the Negus, king of Abyssinia. Peace be upon you. I praise before you God, the King, the Holy, the Source of Peace, the Giver of Security, the Guardian; and I bear witness that Jesus son of Mary is the Spirit of God and His Word, which He cast into Mary the virgin, the good, the chaste, so that she conceived Jesus; God created him from His Spirit and breathed into him, as He created Adam with His hand and breathed into him. I call you to God alone, who has no partner, and to loyal devotion in obeying Him, and to follow me and believe in what has come to me, for I am the Messenger of God. I have sent to you my cousin Ja'far and a group of Muslims with him; when he comes to you, receive them hospitably and abandon arrogance. I call you and your armies to God. I have conveyed the message and given sincere counsel, so accept my counsel. And peace be upon whoever follows the guidance.]

To Chosroes, king of Persia:

[In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate! From Muhammad, Messenger of God, to Chosroes, the great one of Persia. Peace be upon whoever follows the guidance, believes in God and His Messenger, and bears witness that there is no god but God and that I am the Messenger of God to all people, to warn whoever is alive. Embrace Islam and you will be safe. If you refuse, the sin of the Magians will be upon you] (20).

Second: The Messenger's Unlettered State

This is a matter no one has disputed. The Prophet was unlettered in an unlettered environment; it is enough that the age was branded "the Jahiliyya" (the Age of Ignorance) until the word became its very name. It had no institutions of learning from which the Messenger could have acquired knowledge qualifying him to bring a little or a great deal of what the Qur'an brought. On the contrary, what the Qur'an brought differed from, and stood opposed to, the morals and beliefs that prevailed in his environment. Nor could the Messenger have received the Qur'an from the Christians who came to Mecca from among the Abyssinians and Byzantines, for in Mecca these were slaves or

(20) Ibn al-Athir, vol. 2, p. 32.

craftsmen with no cultural or social weight. Moreover, the language barrier would have prevented the Messenger from taking anything from them, even supposing they had anything to offer. In fact, this claim was raised by the obstinate among Quraysh when they said: "It is only a human being who teaches him"⁽²¹⁾. When they were challenged to name this teacher, they did not dare attribute the role to one of their own, for they saw themselves too plainly ignorant to have taught a man who brought them what neither they nor their fathers had known. So they resorted to mockery, claiming that the one dictating the Qur'an to Muhammad was a Byzantine slave-boy working as a blacksmith in Mecca. The Qur'an's reply silenced them:

The tongue of the one they allude to is foreign, while this is a clear Arabic tongue. (22)

They abandoned this claim against the Messenger (peace be upon him) because of its absurdity and incoherence, and turned to saying that the Qur'an was inspired by a power beyond the power and capacities of human beings, such as the jinn, sorcery and devils. This saying was itself an admission and acknowledgement on their part of the wondrous nature of the Qur'an and of its lying beyond the capacity and genius of human beings.

Nor could the Messenger have received the Qur'an from a teacher outside the Arabian Peninsula, because his journeys, as history has recorded them, were few and concerned with trade. Nor was Muhammad known before his mission to have any interest in theoretical learning or religious disputation. Besides, the general cultural and religious climate inside and outside the Arabian Peninsula was saturated with idolatry and vice and with everything diametrically opposed to what Muhammad preached and the Qur'an brought. Nor can it be claimed that the Qur'an was the fruit of Muhammad's contact with Christians or Jews, or of his reading their religious books such as the Torah and the Gospel, for more than one proof stands against the incoherence of this claim:

1 - The religious books of the Jews and Christians had been thoroughly altered by the Messenger's time, and those that existed were written in Hebrew, Greek or Syriac. No one is known to have troubled to translate them into Arabic, since the Arabs were an unlettered, idolatrous nation with no interest in learning about other cultures or religions. Besides this, there is the clear difference between what the Qur'an contains and what the other books of the Jews and Christians contain, all of which are in our hands today.

(21) Tarikh al-Islam al-Siyasi (The Political History of Islam), vol. 1, pp. 197-199, Dr. Hasan Ibrahim Hasan, Cairo 1935.

(22) Al-Nahl: 103.

2 - Nor can the Qur'an be, as some have claimed, the fruit of the Messenger's contact with the Jews in Medina. On the one hand, much of the Qur'an was revealed to the Prophet in Mecca before the Hijra, and it has not been established that the Messenger had any relationship with the Jews in that period. On the other hand, the Messenger's relationship with the Jews in Medina was that of teacher to pupil, reformer to the deviant, and truth to falsehood. He condemned them, denounced their morals and beliefs as foolish, and accused them of lying, alteration and forgery in their sacred books. Whoever leafs through the Noble Qur'an finds that it devotes almost entire suras to speaking of the morals of the Jews and their conduct towards their prophets from Moses to Jesus (peace be upon them both). It is hard to find a vice with which the Qur'an has not described the Jews. Here are some of the verses that speak only of the conduct of the Jews towards the Muslims in Medina and warn the Muslims of the Jews' morals and the malice of their hearts, when it addresses the Muslims, saying:

Do you then hope that they will believe you, when a party of them used to hear the Word of God and then alter it after they had understood it, knowing full well? And when they meet those who believe, they say, "We believe"; but when they are alone with one another, they say, "Do you tell them what God has disclosed to you, so that they may argue against you with it before your Lord? Do you not reason?" (23)

And among the People of the Book is one who, if you entrust him with a heap of gold, will return it to you; and among them is one who, if you entrust him with a single dinar, will not return it to you unless you keep standing over him. That is because they say, "We have no obligation towards the unlettered." And they speak falsehood against God, knowing full well. (24)

(25)

And their taking usury, though they had been forbidden it, and their consuming people's wealth unjustly. (25)

(23) Al-Nahl: 103. (24) Al-Baqara: 75-76. (25) Al Imran: 75.

Could the Jews, after this, be a model for Muhammad to follow, or a source of the teachings the Noble Qur'an brought? Moreover, none of them ever claimed any credit over Muhammad for the Qur'an he recited. On the contrary, they were among the most obstinate of his opponents and the most hostile and rancorous towards the Messenger and those who believed in him, so that the Noble Qur'an said of them:

You will surely find the most intense of people in enmity towards those who believe to be the Jews and those who associate partners with God. (26)

Yet some of them believed in Muhammad, accepting him as a messenger and the Qur'an as revelation sent down. A group of the scholars of the Children of Israel embraced Islam and bore witness to Muhammad's truthfulness on the basis of certain signs found in their books. The most famous of them is 'Abd Allah ibn Salam, the circumstances of whose conversion al-Bukhari relates to us:

[When the Prophet of God (peace and blessings be upon him) came (that is, to Medina), 'Abd Allah ibn Salam came and said: "I bear witness that you are the Messenger of God and that you have come with the truth. The Jews know that I am their chief and the son of their chief, the most learned of them and the son of the most learned of them. So summon them and ask them about me before they learn that I have embraced Islam, for if they learn that I have embraced Islam they will say of me what is not in me." So the Prophet of God (peace and blessings be upon him) sent for them, and they came and entered upon him. The Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him) said to them: "O company of Jews, woe to you! Fear God. By God, besides whom there is no god, you know that I am truly the Messenger of God and that I have come to you with the truth, so embrace Islam." They said: "We do not know that." He said: "What kind of man among you is 'Abd Allah ibn Salam?" They said: "He is our chief and the son of our chief, the most learned of us and the son of the most learned of us." He said: "What would you think if he embraced Islam?" They said: "God forbid! He would never embrace Islam." He said: "What would you think if he embraced Islam?" They said: "God forbid! He would never embrace Islam." He said: "What would you think if he embraced Islam?" They said: "God forbid! He would never embrace Islam." He said: "O Ibn Salam, come out to them." So he came out and said: "O company of Jews, fear God. By God, besides whom there is no god, you know that he is the Messenger of God and that he has come with the truth." They said: "You lie." And the Messenger of God (peace and blessings be upon him) sent them out.] (27)

3 - Nor can it be claimed that the Qur'an was the fruit of Muhammad's contact with the Christians, for they had sunk to the depths of vice and error. Of them the Qur'an says:

And from those who say, "We are Christians," We took their covenant, but they forgot a portion of what they had been reminded of; so We stirred up among them

(27) - 2, p. 335, chapter on the emigration of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him). (26) Al-Nisa: 161.

enmity and hatred until the Day of Resurrection; and God will inform them of what they used to do. (28)

This is not the word of the Qur'an alone; it is the testimony of their own scholars. It is enough to cite the testimony of two of their finest men. The Christian scholar G. Sale says: "If we read church history with care, we shall see that from the third century onward the Christian world had its image disfigured by the ambitions of the clergy, the schisms among them, their disputes over the most trivial questions, and their endless quarrels, over which division kept growing. In their eagerness to gratify their desires and their use of every kind of malice, rancour and cruelty, the Christians had almost ended by driving Christianity itself out of existence" (29).

The other is Taylor, who says in his book Ancient Christianity the following: "What Muhammad and his followers met in every direction was nothing but repellent superstitions, a degraded and shameful paganism, ecclesiastical doctrines, and dissolute and childish religious rites, so that the Arabs of enlightened mind felt that they were messengers from God charged with reforming the corruption that had befallen the world" (30).

This testimony from those who do not profess Islam confirms the truth of what Ali (may God be pleased with him) said: [On the day the Messenger rose to guide from error, the people of the earth were scattered communities, widespread whims and dispersed sects: some likening God to His creatures, some perverting His name, some pointing to another than Him; astray in bewilderment, groping blindly in sedition. Their whims had led them astray, their pride had abased them, and the darkest ignorance had made them light-headed; they were bewildered in a quaking of affairs and an affliction of ignorance] (31).

It is clear from all this that, given the general atmosphere inside and outside the Arabian Peninsula in which Muhammad, the unlettered Prophet, appeared as teacher, guide and director to truth and goodness through what God revealed to him, no one of sound mind can claim that the light Muhammad brought was the fruit of the darkness that prevailed over the world in belief and morals.

• (28) Al-Ma'ida: 14.
• (29) Madkhal ila al-Qur'an al-Karim (Introduction to the Noble Qur'an): 136.
• (30) The previous reference: 137.
• (31) Al-Islam wa al-Hadara al-'Arabiyya (Islam and Arab Civilisation), vol. 1, p. 14.
• Muhammad Kurd Ali - Lajnat al-Ta'lif wa al-Tarjama wa al-Nashr (Committee for Authorship, Translation and Publication) - Cairo 1968.

Fourth: The Inimitability (i'jaz) of the Qur'an

This is the best witness that the Qur'an is divine in origin. The Qur'an by its very nature rises above the limits of the capacity of human beings, jinn, angels and every created being.

Who among human beings knows the universe, its essence, its past, present and future, its laws and its relations, with certainty, as the Qur'an has spoken of it?!

How could a human being know God and His attributes, what is necessary, what is impossible and what is possible with respect to Him; and the world and man, and man's relation to God and to the universe, and what he must do and must not do if he desires happiness in this world and the Hereafter, as the Qur'an has spoken of it?!

How could a human being tell of what lies hidden in the depths of the past and in the womb of the future, with truthfulness and complete certainty, as though he were describing a polished mirror reflecting time and place and all they contain in a single moment and instant, as the Qur'an has spoken of it?!

How could a human being speak of the bee, the spider and the fly with the same knowledge and clarity with which he speaks of the sun, the moon, the earth, the stars and the planets, and of what is smaller than this and what is greater than this, as though the whole universe, with all that is in it and all who are in it, were before his knowledge a single word, as the Qur'an has spoken of it?!

And how could a human being know truth from falsehood, error from correctness and beauty from ugliness, and bring a law containing guidance for all human beings, not for one day, place, generation or age, but for every day, every place and every human being, presiding over all time and over all people, whatever their tongues and colours, their ranks and their lands, and then challenge time, place and man with this law, saying:

Then whoever follows My guidance will not go astray, nor will he suffer. But whoever turns away from My remembrance will have a straitened life, and We shall raise him blind on the Day of Resurrection. (32)

No single human being, no single jinn, nor all human beings together, nor all the jinn together, nor all of them together cooperating and supporting one another, is capable of any of this. This is the inimitability and the challenge that the Qur'an set before them all, and the inimitability and the challenge still stand until God inherits the earth and all who are upon it:

Say: If mankind and the jinn came together to produce the like of this Qur'an, they would not produce its like, even if they were helpers to one another. (33)

And if you are in doubt about what We have sent down upon Our servant, then produce a sura like it, and call upon your witnesses besides God, if you are truthful. (34)

So those who doubt that the Qur'an comes from God must accept the challenge; perhaps their inability will be the cause of their guidance to Islam. Indeed, perhaps this challenge is one of the Qur'an's ways and one of its aims in calling to Islam. For it is worth reflecting that there is no sincere scholar, free of bias in seeking the truth, who has accepted this call to the challenge and examined the Qur'an with an objective method, without his research leading him to acknowledge the infallibility and sanctity of the Qur'an: its scientific infallibility in the subject of inquiry and its freedom from error and contradiction, and its sanctity in its perfection and its transcendence of human abilities. Perhaps one of the most recent contemporary experiences in this matter is the scientific experiment undertaken by the famous French scientist Maurice Bucaille, who spent most of his life and effort in this kind of objective scientific examination of the Noble Qur'an, and who, after a careful critical study of the Qur'an in his field of research lasting thirty years (35), arrived at a conclusion that can rightly be considered

(33) Al-Isra: 88.

(34) Al-Baqara: 23.

a scientific testimony that cannot be refuted: that the Qur'an cannot have been composed by Muhammad (peace be upon him) nor by any other human being. Here is the text of his testimony:

He says: "The Qur'an, which contains no scientific statement that is unacceptable ... makes the hypothesis of those who see Muhammad as the author of the Qur'an untenable. For how could a man who was deprived of learning in his upbringing become the foremost writer in all of Arabic literature, telling of truths of a scientific order beyond the reach of any human being of that time, and yet without making a single error?!

"It is impossible to conceive of a man living in the seventh century of the Christian era who was able to set forth in the Qur'an ideas on extremely varied subjects, ideas that were not those of his age, and that would agree with what people would discover of them centuries after him. As for me, the Qur'an has no human explanation" (35).

If I may add a comment on this objective testimony: valuable as this testimony is, along with many like it, the Qur'an itself will always remain the greatest and supreme witness to its own perfection and inimitability. Whoever looks closely will find that no one disputes this truth except from a moral standpoint, and never from a scientific one in any way whatsoever: he is either ignorant, and that is a vice, or fanatical out of whim, and that is the ugliest of vices. He will find that no one has ever harmed the Qur'an or diminished it by denial or doubt, and that everyone who has raised doubts about the Qur'an has only sown doubt in his own soul and gambled with his own existence and happiness. For there is no source outside the Qur'an on which man can rely in explaining his origin, his function, his relations and his ends, or that can give him confidence and certainty about his past, present, future and destiny, or free him from hunger and fear and grant him security and peace. Whoever disputes any of this need only ask history and geography, or time and place; if he asks well, he will find that nothing is worth counting on, relying on or trusting except the Qur'an.

(35) See pp. 106-118 of his book The Bible, the Qur'an and Science (Arabic translation: Al-Tawrat wa al-Injil wa al-Qur'an wa al-'Ilm), Dar al-Kindi, Beirut

1978.