Keeping Connected with the Qur'an
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The Literary Masterpiece | Qur'anic Miracles Episode 2
Tune in for the second part of Qur'anic Miracles with Sh. Mohammad Elshinawy and Sh. Suleiman Hani.
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Bismillah, alhamdulillah, wassalatu wassalamu ala rasulillah, wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa man wala Assalamualaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh To those who are tuning in from around the world, may Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala accept from you and us. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala make us from amongst those who benefit from what we hear. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala reward Yaqeen Institute and all of its facilitators for bringing forth for us, alhamdulillah, these types of programs. We are here today, alhamdulillah, once again for our second session with Shaykh Muhammad al-Shinawi. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala reward you and preserve you, Shaykh. BarakAllahu fi. And we are talking about the i'jaz of the Qur'an, the miraculous nature of the Qur'an. We introduced the concept last week. We spoke about the pursuit of truth. And today, inshallah, we want to address the literary i'jaz, the literary miracle of the Qur'an, and some of the different facets of it. And once again, we give the disclaimer, as we did last week, it's not easy to cover everything in a short, condensed session, but we will attempt to do so as best as possible, inshallah. Shaykh, barakAllahu fi, jazakAllahu fi, for joining us. It's an honor to be with you always, Akhi. HayyakAllah. So, perhaps this week, what we'll do, inshallah, for those who are tuning in, we'll cover, inshallah, for about 10-15 minutes, one segment of the literary i'jaz, and then a second. So, I'll begin, inshallah, with the foundation of what it means when scholars say there is a literary miracle to the Qur'an. And Shaykh Muhammad will help us, inshallah, with a segment of that as well. And then we'll try to conclude with some high notes, bi'ithnillah, to showcase really what it means, even though this is in the English language, and we are trying to explain this in the English language, what it means for the Qur'an to be a miracle from the literary perspective, bi'ithnillah. Going back 1400 years to the first generations of scholars talking about this, if you go back to one of the great scholars, Al-Khattabi, rahimahullah, he was commenting on why it was, and it is, impossible for human beings to imitate the Qur'an.
And there are many facets of i'jaz, as we mentioned last week. Today, we're focusing only on the literary aspect. He said it includes the following points. First, the knowledge of human beings is not sufficient. It is not sufficient to include all of the terms of the Arabic language, and all of its words. And its words are the vehicles and the conveyors of ideas. Second, their minds, the human minds are unable to fully understand the meanings of all the things conveyed by these words. Remember the richness of the Arabic language, and the many connotations of a single word, and the multi-layered interpretations within these words. Third, their knowledge is imperfect. It's imperfect and cannot apprehend all the ways these words can be harmoniously combined. You have in the Qur'an different types of basically literary i'jaz. For example, the combining of the words which convey meanings, the ideas which subsist in passages, and the composition which organizes these words and these ideas. And there are other types of i'jaz embedded within the literary i'jaz as well. So when we say there are other categories of i'jaz, for example, the knowledge of the unseen, the knowledge of the natural sciences, the knowledge of the future, knowledge of the past that was lost to people at the time, consider that all of these categories of i'jaz are also with the literary miracle, the literary facet of i'jaz. So you're combining all of these things in one speech from beginning to end, and you have to keep in mind that there is no word in the Arabic language that can fit into the Qur'an or replace a word in the Qur'an in a better fashion. For example, when you say, inna a'taynaka al-kawthar, the shortest surah in the entire Qur'an. A surah that if we were to comment on it alone, a case study alone in terms of i'jaz, we could spend hours and hours and hours discussing it. inna a'taynaka al-kawthar, fasalli bi rabbika wal-har, inna sha'aniyaka huwa al-abtar. If you took any one of these words of the surah
and you tried to find a better word in the Arabic language to replace it, you could not. And we say this from the objective perspective. You cannot possibly find a word that better suits that particular passage with its implications, its meanings, its interpretation, the sound, the grammar, and so on and so forth. Every word is there for a particular reason. And this is one of the many types of literary i'jaz. When you look at the usage in the Qur'an of the different tenses, when you look at the past versus present, plural versus singular in every passage and the implication that you have from that, you find that there's i'jaz in that. When you look at the difference between some passages in terms of being very concise and others with more detail and the balance of the two with the sound as well, with the grammar as well, and the words that are placed in particular passages that seem to be repetitive, but different. For example, watara al-ardha khashia, in some ayat, Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la will say, for example, in one particular ayat, watara al-ardha khashia, you see the earth barren, basically dead. This is before it's given life. Khashia also has the connotation of, and in this particular case, it is intentional because it is the Qur'an and every word is there intentionally. Watara al-ardha khashia here is because Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is also implying the importance of humility. In a different ayah, watara al-ardha haamida, so it is barren, it is dead as well. But in that particular scene, in Surah Al-Hajj, Allah is talking about his power. Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la is talking about his ability to create. And so every single word is there for a particular reason. For the one who studies tafsir more in depth and uloom al-Qur'an more in depth, they start to see more and more of this basically miracle before their eyes as they are reciting and studying the Qur'an. You find that the melody of the Qur'an, it does not fit into any single category of poetry.
And this is why they were so mesmerized by it. The greatest poets of the Arabic language could not come up with anything like it. They could not classify it as poetry. And some of them would say, I know the poetry of the human beings and the jinn, I know more poetry than any one of you. They would say to their people, to the elite of Quraysh, I cannot possibly, I cannot imagine that this is any type of poetry. This is not that. This is not the thing you are familiar with. And as we said last week, the prophets and messengers that we know of that came with miracles, mu'ajizat, they came to their people with a miracle relevant to them. So Prophet Musa Alayhi Salaam, for example, they were known to deal with and engage with sorcery and magic and illusions and so on and so forth. And he came with many miracles and signs to basically dispel that. Prophet Isa Alayhi Salaam came to a people who were known to love and deal with different types of, let's say medicine or medical sciences, trying to heal people and so on and so forth. And his miracles were relevant to that. And the miracles given to the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, there are some that were limited in that time, but the Quran was not. The Quran is the miracle that came with the language as well to the greatest of Arab poets. And this blew their minds. And this is why so many of them came to Islam. Those who were open, those who did not allow their hidden biases and agendas to stop them. They understood that this Quran, this composition could not be from a human being. You find within it the perfect blend between reason and emotion, intellect and feeling. You find that there are narrations and arguments, doctrines and laws, moral principles. The words have both persuasiveness in their teaching and emotive force throughout the entirety of the Quran from beginning to end. You find that the one who is reciting is mesmerized by it and they do not tire from it. It does not become boring to recite the Quran. When you're understanding what it is that you are reciting and listening to, and you're considering that within it,
within all of this literary ajaz, you also have all of these universal laws. You have the moral reference point. You have the inspiration. You have the areas and the passages of the Quran that really focus on emotions and spiritual renewal and coming back to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la. You have other parts of the Quran that focus on theology and all of this while maintaining perfection from beginning to end. But what I want to focus on, and these are the two main points, I will mention, I'll conclude with these. The two main points I want us to consider, since it is difficult to express sometimes, it is difficult to express in the English language just how miraculous the Quran is in the Arabic language, I want us to consider two points. The first is the perfection of the Quran and the context of its delivery. And the second is the non-chronological revelation of the Quran. And I'll mention and I'll explain what this means. First, when it comes to a high-quality product in its final form, think of any kind of, let's say, quote-unquote masterpiece. Usually it is oftentimes researched a number of times. It is edited. There's proofreading. Maybe there are usually even teams of researchers focusing on just one product. There are teams of editors for one product, one book, one manuscript, one encyclopedia, and so on and so forth before it is disseminated to the masses. And I want us to imagine, I actually, I have done this before a number of times in classrooms when discussing ajaz al-Quran. I want you to imagine a professor abruptly requesting a student to stand and to present on a random topic for 10 minutes or even five minutes. What you would find is a product that is much, let's say, it is more inferior, and I mean this very gently, inferior in quality than if that same professor were to ask the student to research the topic
and then to submit a paper on the topic after a month. The two would not compare. Stand abruptly and present for 10 minutes on a topic that I assigned to you. Compare to what? Research a matter for a month and then submit the paper and go through all the editing that you need to go through. Now, this is not a perfect analogy to the point at hand, but I want us to consider that the Quran's oral delivery, the context in which it was delivered, it could leave no room for any errors whatsoever. And this is a scripture that begins with, as Shaykh reminded us last week, la raiba fee, there's no doubt in it. You can imagine that if somebody were to read this and then find an error, they would say, how is this from God? God is perfect. The speech of mankind cannot compare to the speech of God. So you cannot find any error in a scripture claiming to be from God. It has to be perfect without error. It has to be harmoniously flowing and intertwining the verses, meanings, the passages in terms of the rhythm, the rhetorical features, the precise word choice, the grammatical shifts, the iltifat. And it has to convey to all of its followers the message that it's intended to convey, as well as to those who are challenging it and those it is challenging to. And you find that any type of, any type of minuscule literary error would have given the opponents of Islam who were looking for any entryway into attacking the Prophet it would have given them the upper hand. It would have given them something to take advantage of. And it would have ended the claim that the Qur'an is perfect, cannot be met in terms of its challenge by any of the people of Quraysh. And if any of the people of Quraysh had met the challenge or any type of error occurred in its oral delivery in terms of the language and other things as well, it could not be retracted. It could not be ignored. So there is no process of proofreading here. This is happening live. And there are some examples of the Qur'an that are very explicit and clear about this. For example, when they would ask the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam, a question. wa yas'aluna ka'an They ask you about.
They ask you meaning, Oh, Muhammad salallahu alayhi wa sallam wa yas'aluna ka'an ar-rooh They ask you about the soul. quli ar-roohu min amri rabbi wama ooteetum min al-ilmi illa qaleela Say indeed, respond to them. The soul is the affair of my Lord and mankind has not been given of knowledge except very little. wa yas'aluna ka'an al-khamri wal-maysir and so on and so forth. Verses in which the people who are challenging the Prophet salallahu alayhi wa sallam or sometimes just asking him questions would ask and the response would come down immediately. There is no proofreading process. There's no editing process. This has to be perfect directly from God to Jibreel alayhi salam to Prophet Muhammad salallahu alayhi wa sallam to the people. You cannot assume that this is coming from Prophet Muhammad salallahu alayhi wa sallam or any other human being. And it remains as part of the Qur'an until the end of times. The second important point with regards to the literary jazz is to consider the oral delivery of the Qur'an more than 6,000 verses, 6,236. It manifests the highest order of perfection and unparalleled eloquence in its composition and its organization and yet unlike any type of human masterpiece when we talk about literary text, there's usually a development process. There is a beginning, a middle and an end and somewhat as they are being formulated there is some process. They are formulated somewhat cohesively, chronologically in their development or dissemination or ideas. I want us to consider the fact that the Qur'an with 6,236 verses, 114 suwar or chapters revealed non-chronologically over the course of 23 years of wahi, of revelation in different regions and to different audiences. And those who memorized it would be instructed by the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam as he was instructed by Jibreel, Angel Jibreel on where to place the new verse or passage or surah. For example, some scholars believe
that the very final verse to be revealed approximately nine days before the passing of Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was verse ayah 281 of Surah Al-Baqarah, the longest chapter of the Qur'an. Surah Al-Baqarah has 286 verses revealed over the course of two decades and yet the one who recites Surah Al-Baqarah and understands the basic recitation rules and how to recite, the one who reads Surah Al-Baqarah in the Arabic language does not find or assume or see some ayah that sticks out that does not belong there. It flows perfectly. And the one who studies the tafsir sees this as well even if they don't understand fully the Arabic language. Ayah 281, wattaqoo yawman turjaAAoona feehi ila Allah thumma tuwaffa kullu nafsin maa kassabat wahumna yuzlamoon Fear the day in which you shall all indeed return to Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la and then every soul will be given what it earned, what it truly earned and no one will be treated with injustice. 23 years, every single verse of the Qur'an coming down at a certain time or place and it came down and you look at the final product and you don't see, you don't see anything but a masterpiece beyond any type of human masterpiece. And the one who sees just these two points very clearly and objectively and understands a few examples relating to this truly understands that this is not something a human being could come up with. This is not something Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam could come up with, nor any other human being. And that is why no one could meet the challenge because it is the speech of God. We ask Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la to allow us to fully experience and understand and benefit from the literary ijaz of the Qur'an every time we listen to it and every time we recite it and we ask Allah Subh'anaHu Wa Ta-A'la to keep our minds and our hearts connected to the Qur'an. Allahumma ameen. Now on this note, oftentimes people ask about human masterpieces. What about so-and-so? What about Shakespeare? What about this and that? And the reality is all of these claims that you find where people are bringing up Shakespeare and others,
these are very weak claims and they're so easy to debunk. What we'll do inshallah, we'll shift over to Sheikh Muhammad who has written about this as well extensively and Sheikh maybe can enlighten us with a good discussion on why there is a Shakespearean myth when it comes to this discussion as well as many, inshallah, maybe some of the examples of those who were affected by the Qur'an when they first heard it despite them being the most foremost in poetry. BarakAllahu feekum Sheikh. JazakAllahu khayran Sheikh Suleyman and ameen, ameen to your dua. I mean, the Qur'an at the end of the day came down for that, for that tadabbur, to look at what is behind each and every word that was so perfectly placed therein and in every word and every passage of the Qur'an is a transformative potential for us, may Allah ta'as that gift, that divine gift and that divine grace. And yes, there are some very superficial responses or retorts when we say the Qur'an is a masterpiece that human beings could not put together. Some people, they say, okay, we'll meet you halfway, it is a masterpiece and this is something that we should note always that on the literary level, the Qur'an as a literary masterpiece is a matter of consensus for the most part among the experts, Muslim and non-Muslim. The debate, the real debate is not whether the Qur'an is literarily in a league of its own, that's not it. It's that people wish to stop there sometimes and say it's in a league of its own, but that does not mean we should exaggerate and become hyperbolic and say it is supernatural, it is otherworldly. And they give the example, as you mentioned, JazakAllah khairan, of Shakespeare, like every language, every literary genre and every language has its own masterpieces. You have the Homer's Iliad, if you wanna talk about Greek, you have Shakespeare's sonnets, if you wanna talk about English.
And so this is no different. This claim was made by Arthur J. Arbery, an Orientalist who happens to have a translation of the Qur'an in print actually, but he's not Muslim and he makes this claim. He levels his claim against the Qur'an. And this is a very superficial criticism. And I tried to summarize primarily sourced from Dr. Sami Amiri's Barahin Nubuwwa in my paper, the Aqeem paper on the imitability of the Qur'an. I tried to summarize or speak about 10 points, contrasts between Shakespeare and between the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam that are very consequential, that do in fact justify us not being worthy of the accusation of exaggerating when we say it is supernatural. It is beyond human capacity, even a collective human capacity. All of humanity combined would not be able to bring about the lights of this Qur'an. So first and foremost, number one, unlike the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, Shakespeare was school taught, right? He was school taught Greek, he was school taught Latin. He had mentors, he had seniors that took him under his wing, learned under their tutelage. He had access to libraries, books that he built on for his own writings. Scholars, historians try to estimate how many people in all of the city of Mecca where the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam spent his lifetime were even literate. Forget playwrights or otherwise. And they estimate maybe nine, maybe 11 people were literate in the city of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. He was by and large in a literate civilization. Number two, Shakespeare then was not just school taught. He earned a living as a professional playwright, meaning he got paid to sit there and refine his craft day after day, year after year with every novel production. While the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, it's actually been established that he has never once recited,
uttered a single couplet, a full couplet of poetry in his entire life, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And at the same time, it was never possible for him. As you mentioned, to retract anything for quality control, since this is an oral narrative. And consider also that he would speak it not just to people that were yes-sayers. This is to a vast audience of followers and rejecters. So number one, he was not school taught nor literate ﷺ. Number two, he never had a chance to refine his craft. You know, by the way, that number two, some people ask, why is it that the Quran was sent down over 23 years? What is the wisdom in that? One of the wisdoms perhaps is the fact that the Quran had no maturation to exhibit, to show how the Quran did not mature. You know, interestingly, it reminds me of another superficial criticism, Orientalists make that they say, well, the Quran did mature because in Mecca, there were shorter verses and shorter surahs. And then when he went to Medina, which was more lush, more vibrant, maybe someone could say a more cosmopolitan city, that's when the longer surahs, and maybe that by and large was the case, but they forget. And we should know better of what our Quran looks like, that Surat Al-An'am, Surat Al-A'raf are two of the longest surahs of the Quran that came down in Mecca. So although those patterns were there for a wisdom, the fact that there is no extensive, long, elaborate writing, if you will, authorship, if you will, Quran in Mecca from the earliest days ever, this is not true. And so from day one, there was no maturation. It was as perfect as it was in year 23. Consider someone when they wrote that paper, the professor that you mentioned, Sheikh Suleiman, gave them a month to write, then that person who came back to that paper 20, 25 years later, and wanted to write on the same topic for their third PhD on the subject. Yes? Number three, sonnets themselves, the style of writing that Shakespeare used, they were
known for centuries. Remember Shakespeare, while the Quran came with a very unique structure in its composition that had no precedent whatsoever. It departed from every framework, every rubric the Arabs used, the master poets used and mastered over centuries. He walked away from all of that, alayhis salatu was salam, in the Quran that he spoke, meaning the Quran departed. Obviously not him, his own personal words are not in this Quran. Number four, unlike Shakespeare, and I have to speed up now, whose words agreed with his words. Like Shakespeare had a hallmark style. He had patterns. Experts can recognize Shakespeare's writing. If they were to come across a new manuscript, they'd say, yeah, that does match the style of Shakespeare. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam did not just break away from the styles of the Arabs. The Quran broke away from the style of the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam. And many people did not accept this claim of the Muslim scholars, and so they put together these objective, like numerical, mathematical studies, cystics, they call it stylometrics. Actually Sheikh Suleiman, I'm indebted to you for opening my eyes to some of the research on this. And they speak about the fact that there is such a contrast between the words of the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasalam in his everyday life, the hadith, and the words of the Quran themselves, which would make it absolutely impossible for a person to have two sets of vocabulary, two styles of speaking, and police his language to keep them from like bleeding into each other for a lifetime. That would be absolutely impossible. So not just that he departs from the ways of the Arabs in their linguistic styles and techniques, but he departed from the way that he himself speaks alayhi salatu wasalam. Number five, Shakespeare's sonnets were not uniformly eloquent. Like they had distinct parts of brilliance that experts memorize and always highlight in their classrooms and in their writings.
Whereas as you mentioned, the brutal, savage, naqd tradition that was the literary critique tradition of the Arabs, that was their thing. They took such pride in linguistics, in articulation, that they would dismantle, critique each other's poetry to say there was room for improvement here. This word would have been better there. This order would have been better than that order for greater emotive force. Not one of them ever identified a single part of the Quran that could be bettered. So it does not have segments of brilliance like the works of Shakespeare, rather in its entirety was uniformly a masterpiece. Number six, Shakespeare himself and all of his peers never considered his work beyond the reach of human effort. Like he was a champion for sure, but in some people's eyes, number one, and number two, in an arena of very worthy competitors, very comparable rivals. There are actually many experts on Shakespeare, some of which we reference in the paper, but there are others as well that rank Shakespeare as the third, not the first, greatest playwright ever in the English language. Some rank him at seventh. And so there is no landslide consensus on him being the undisputed champion whatsoever. The prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam's message to the world, the Quran that he recited to the world, this was in a league of its own. And not just that, he would go out to the people and recite to them that God said, you can't do anything like this. This is beyond human effort. Bring anything like it, bring a fraction like it, forge, make up a minuscule or the most brief type of narrative like it. And no one ever did. And if they did, we would have known. And that's a subject we can talk about later, how we could have known. Number seven, very quickly, Shakespeare enjoyed the creative liberties of fictional storytelling.
You know how they always say based on a true story, because they want to add some dramatic effect and they want to sensationalize it and romanticize it for the appeal to be more selling, because it's entertainment. At the end of the day, the Quran did not come to entertain people, but how did it keep people's attention? And also the Quran insisted on doing something that most authors flee from, which is repeat itself. Of course, in a variety of ways to retain its freshness, its rhetorical freshness and richness unblemished for sure. But these two things, the fact that it insisted on engaging the nuances of morality, correct and what is incorrect about counter theologies, all of these discussions being surgically accurate on the natural order of the world or the historical events of lost civilizations and perished nations, that is a very difficult philosophical existential truths, very dry, very stiff topics. The fact that the Quran could retain while addressing all of those subjects and repeating them to reinforce its value system, its appeal is something that we haven't seen anywhere else. And this is something also we can talk about at a later time in greater depth with examples. Number eight, unlike what suits the entertainment genre for London in the 17th century, the Quran had to be a religious text that appealed to a millennium and a half and going, and it does and it continues to and its appeal continues to grow. The Quran also had to appeal to those that are more emotionally inclined, those that are more intellectually inclined, those that are more spiritually inclined, oriented, different categories of reasoning, categories of understanding across the globe, across generations and it continues to gain that momentum and pass that test of multi-appeal.
Number nine, winding down now, Shakespeare had decades of deliberation to decide what to include and what to omit from his works. And like you said, Sheikh Suleiman, just to echo that concept that is just very staggering. For one, he spoke impromptu to newly emerging events. Sometimes those events were, they rocked a city. Sometimes they shook the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam to his very core. It was the death of his relatives, the massacres of his friends. So you would think that in these times of turmoil, these times of trauma, the quality would be a little bit different, recognizably different than something that you sit and write and they say the best writing is rewriting, right? A masterpiece is never finished, you know, for 10 years, 20 years under, you know, the serene candlelight or moonlight tranquility. And also, as you mentioned, there are many times in response to questions, there are 13 times in the Quran when that phrase arises. They ask you about this, they ask you about that, which makes it like astronomically more difficult, countless times more difficult to be accurate about a subject that you're not choosing to speak on, your audience is dictating the themes. Number 10 and finally is what you said, that the Quran of Shakespeare wrote his works, you know, with so much practice under, you know, not having under the comfort of the candlelight serenity. And just like any other author in human history in linear fashion, the Quran, this is just so mind boggling, the non-chronology of the descent of the Quran, that the order of the Quran that we have now is not the order in which the verses came down. Like to have a book be in a league of its own without dispute, despite the fact that
this masterpiece in a league of its own was put together almost in puzzle fashion, right, to us like seemingly random fashion. Can you imagine building a perfect structure that everyone agrees cannot be topped, but then like this, you're putting the bricks in, not layered in the way that anyone would write in linear fashion. It was interspersed, various themes, different lengths, so many unpredictable external events you have to put in as bricks of that building or accents of that, you know, majestic tapestry. And so when you put all this together, it starts putting you in a place where you're either going to be honest and say, yeah, this is beyond human production until the end of time, or you can always dismiss it and find a reason and a way to silence the conscience as we discussed. And that's why we began with that topic last week together, the necessity for being objective, being humble, being truth seeking, and Allah Azza wa Jal will never see someone reaching for his guidance and seeking out his truth and his pleasure and let them down and not rush to them faster than they rush to him, Subhanahu wa ta'ala. Sheikh Suleiman, do we have time to wrap up or are we done? I'm done with the contrast at least, the Shakespeare contrast. I was going to only add one thing, Sheikh Barak Lawfiq, which is the quote of Al-Waleed, and I can hand it back over to you, Sheikh, now. Al-Waleed was an elite of Quraysh, one of the foremost poets, one of the highly esteemed poets of Mecca at the time of the Prophet, salallahu alayhi wa sallam. When he heard the Quran, he was so moved by it. Here's the quote, and it is a translation, of course. He said to the other elites, he said, what can I say? I swear by God, there is no one amongst you who knows poetry as well as I do, nor can anyone compete with me in composition or rhetoric, not even in the poetry of jinn, and yet I
swear by God, Muhammad's recitation, meaning the Quran, does not bear any similarity to anything I know, and I swear by God, the speech that he says is very sweet and is adorned with beauty and charm. Its first part is fruitful, and its last part is abundant, meaning it is full of meanings, and it conquers all other speech and remains unconquered. It shatters and destroys all that has come before it, meaning of poetry due to its eloquence. And they told him, your people will not be satisfied until you speak against him, meaning what you are saying here. As the most esteemed poet of Mecca, it's actually a testimonial for him speaking the truth and being a messenger of God. You have to come up with something else, some lie, some fabrication, so that people don't hear this testimonial of yours to the others, and this will cause basically the message to spread. But it is inevitable that it would spread, and this is also found in other stories and other narrations where they heard the Quran and they were so moved by it. And these are the foremost of poets. And if someone says, I cannot understand fully in the English language why this is so mesmerizing, even a slight understanding of the categories of i'jaz, literary i'jaz, that you'll find in the papers inshaAllah, the paper that Shaykh Muhammad wrote and the series that will come out soon inshaAllah on i'jaz al-Quran as well. Just a slight understanding as well as these testimonials, not just one thing on its own, but all of these combined together, for the one who is seeking the truth will recognize that there is no way on earth this could be from any human being. Forget Shakespeare, forget the claims that maybe it was other people, maybe this is just a composition of random text, that does not make any sense at all. The one who studies this properly sees there is no other explanation. We are not talking here about probabilities. We are saying there is no other explanation except that this is the speech of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And the one whose heart is there will come to it.
The one whose heart is open will see that this is the truth and will accept it. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala guide others through us and keep us guided. Allahumma ameen. JazakAllah khair, Shaykh Suleiman. You know, interestingly, right after they pressed and guilted and shamed Al-Walid into hiding that honest testimony of his, he settled on what? He settled on fine. We can't call him this, this or this because those are ridiculous. The best we can do is call him a magician. And so what settled was the accusation of sorcery. Not realizing, subhanAllah, Allah blinded their strategy, their tactic from realizing that when they settled on poetry, on sorcery, they were implying that it was supernatural. Poetry in and of itself is something otherworldly, right? Something metaphysical. And so they were agreeing that it is supernatural by virtue of the accusation. And then after they said poetry, they said, so we have to take a united, aggressive force against it. And they reached for their swords. Who in their right minds would reach for their swords and kill their fellow clansmen and lose their leadership and do everything that they did? At that point forward, they went militant. Gradually from that point forward, why would you reach for your swords, as one of the scholars said, except that you are certain that you have been failed by your words. So may Allah protect our hearts from being blindfolded by biases and by arrogance. And may Allah illuminate our minds and hearts with his book. Inshallah, make sure you catch all the other yaqeen programming, all the evenings that are trying to keep it Quran themed, to keep us connected to the Quran as we zone out or phase out of the month of Ramadan. And of course, next week, inshallah, on the following Tuesday, we will continue with another aspect of the ijazah, another aspect of the inimitability and the literary and beyond miracle of the Quran. Jazakallah khairan everybody.
Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah.
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