In the following verses of Surah Al-Baqarah an important tenet of Islamic faith is established: “The Holy Qur’an is the Word of Allah Almighty and has been revealed unto His servant Muhammad, peace be upon him. Moreover, the truthfulness and inimitability of Al-Qur’an al-Karim, as being the Word of Allah, cannot be challenged”. The Qur’anic challenge to the Makkan pagans and to the whole world, and for all times, has been repeated in various contexts of the Qur’an. The following two verses read:
وَإِن كُنتُمْ فِى رَيْبٍ مِّمَّا نَزَّلْنَا عَلَىٰ عَبْدِنَا فَأْتُوا۟ بِسُورَةٍ مِّن مِّثْلِهِۦ وَٱدْعُوا۟ شُهَدَآءَكُم مِّن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ إِن كُنتُمْ صَٰدِقِين ، فَإِن لَّمْ تَفْعَلُوا۟ وَلَن تَفْعَلُوا۟ فَٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱلنَّارَ ٱلَّتِى وَقُودُهَا ٱلنَّاسُ وَٱلْحِجَارَةُ ۖ أُعِدَّتْ لِلْكَٰفِرِينَ
(And if you are in doubt about what We (Allah) have revealed to Our servant, then produce a chapter like these, and call your witnesses apart from Allah, if you are truthful. But if you do not—-and you will not—–then beware the Fire whose fuel is people and stones, prepared for the disbelievers). Surah: 2, Verses: 23-24.
In order to prove the truthfulness of Qur’an and that it has been revealed by The Lord, a simple argument has been used by challenging the rhetoric ( البَلاغَة ) of the Arabs who were proud of their eloquence ( الفَصَاحَة ). If they claim that the Holy Qur’an is forged or man-made, they should bring a surah, however small, that might be paralleled to a Qur’anic surah in its eloquence, glory, beauty of expression and its force of truth. History has recorded that, despite the expertise of the Arabs in their language, no one from them came forward to respond to this challenge.
Dear readers! As discussed in the previous post some readers of the Qur’an ask: Why the last message of Allah (al-Qur’an al-Karim) was revealed in the Arabic language? The answer is: Since no other language was provided with the atmosphere and conditions which were ordained for the Arabic Language to develop, enabling it to become the vehicle of the Last Message of Allah,
the Arabic was chosen. The Arabic language, as we find it now, has been a living language at least for the last two millenniums. Since the very beginning of the known history of the Arabic language we find it in a fully developed form encompassing all the beauties of expression. It has already been mentioned that an orientalist namely: Prof. Jaroslav Stetkevych of Chicago University, has very rightly commented in his book: The Modern Arabic Literary Language, about the Arabic language: “Venus-like, it [the Arabic language] was born in a perfect state of beauty”.
