Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. blessings be upon his messenger Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and his family and his companions and all those who adhere to his guidance and live by his path. We welcome everyone back to another session of the miracles of the Qur'an or the miraculous nature of the Qur'an. This is our third episode inshallah and we are going to be covering myself and my dear beloved respected Sheikh Suleiman Hani, the myth of human authorship, debunking the myth of the human authorship of the Qur'an, what is claimed and why those claims fall in the face of facts and of legitimate criticisms. And so I will hand off inshallah now to Sheikh Suleiman to take us the full course of this first half of the episode and then I'll come back inshallah and share my bit as well. Bismillah Sheikh Suleiman. Bismillah, alhamdulillah, wa salatu wasalamu ala rasulillah wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa man wala. With regards to the discussion on human authorship and the myth of human authorship, one of the most important issues that arises before we generalize and talk about human authorship in general is the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him, who is he and why is it more important to first address this myth, the myth of human authorship through the messenger, alayhi salatu wasalam, than other myths. We'll see why by the end of this discussion inshallah. First the question is what is the context of the claim? Oftentimes when you look at previous, and you can find this going way back hundreds of years, but when you look at the orientalist claims regarding Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and their claim that he is the author of the Qur'an, you find that the initial orientalist had some very harsh accusations and very un-evidenced accusations about the motives. What is the motive for Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam according to these orientalists
about why he would come up with something himself? So you had some worldly motives, material gain, power, glory, uniting people and so on and so forth, and every single one of these was debunked not only by Muslim researchers, mystics and scholars, but by later orientalists as well. So you find by the last orientalist, like Professor William Montgomery Watt, he gave a lot of credit to Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in terms of the integrity of Rasulullah alayhi salatu wasalam, and he kind of debunked the previous orientalist claims about motive. So for example, if you combine all of the orientalist claims from the beginning to the end you find what? He claimed Montgomery Watt, and this is the summary, that Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was an unrivaled genius who authored the Quran in his subconscious mind. Intellectual locution he called it. And he never accused any other human being of being able to do such a thing as well. Keep that in mind. And he mistook it as revelation from God. So this orientalist claim, Montgomery Watt's, it contradicts his own claim, his own writings in other places, as well as other orientalist view about the established sincerity of Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, as well as number two, his illiteracy. So he said he was not taught to read and write, so he agrees with this claim. And this is what Margoliath and others said as well before him. His lack of exposure to scriptures, this is something Watt also agreed with. And this is very important to keep in mind when you hear some of the rudimentary arguments against the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam or the Quran. He said it seems certain that he had not read any scripture, meaning the scriptures of the Christians and Jews. And most importantly is that you find that orientalists are unable to properly and coherently explain the concept of wahi, revelation, through a secular or materialist psychological lens. And frankly, it's because they don't want to. It's because they are rejecting that it is a logical possibility that there is revelation and that this is a Prophet of God.
So when you look at Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, you find he is one of the most documented humans in history, even in agreement with orientalist claims. You find that the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, when they told him, why don't you bring us a different Quran or change it? He was told by Allah, say, oh Prophet, it is not for me to change it of my own will. I only follow what is revealed to me and I fear the torment of a tremendous day if I were to disobey my Lord. And then the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was commanded to tell them, if Allah willed, I would not have recited it to you, nor would he have made it the revelation known to you. I lived amongst you a whole lifetime before revelation came to me. Do you not use your reason, your common sense? 40 years amongst you, I've never learned poetry. I've never sought power, never sought authority, known as a Sadiq Al-Amin, the trustworthy, the honest. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was known for all of these things and then suddenly, seemingly abruptly, he is given and commanded to convey an unrivaled and inimitable revelation from God. How can anyone accuse him, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, of coming up with something like this himself? In fact, you find that, and I think Sheikh, you commented on this in your series as well, you find that the later Orientalist who studied Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, they also agreed and they spoke as to his integrity. For example, Montgomery Watt, he said all of these things that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was known for, they argue his fundamental integrity. To accuse Muhammad as an imposter raises more problems than it solves. And no figure, no great figure in history is so poorly appreciated in the West as Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And I'm paraphrasing his statement. In other words, there is no clear motive and there is no explanation psychologically, politically, philosophically, physiologically, there is no explanation. But a person who does not want to accept the logical possibility and the clear evidence
that this is a messenger of God will try to find any cop-out possible, any excuse to avoid the truth. Now we can look to Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam in terms of the 23 years of prophethood, who he was and what he went through, and the Qur'an, let's say, as a speech that is disconnected from the one who is conveying it to the people, to mankind. And we can say, and I urge you to look at the series that Sheikh Muhammad has authored, Proofs of Prophethood, especially the last article as well, and the upcoming series inshaAllah on A'jaazul Qur'an, the miraculous nature of the Qur'an. We are summarizing, there's so much more to say, but there are at least six different ways, there's a disconnection between or separation between the Qur'an and Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. Amongst them, for example, is a stylometric analysis of the Qur'an compared to the speech of Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. You'll find that in some of these studies, 16 total experiments, the conclusion was that the Qur'an and the hadith compilation of Sahih al-Bukhari, the most important authoritative prophetic narration text that we have as Orthodox Muslims, they must have two completely different authors. There are so many findings in this study, and this is an objective statistical study. You find amongst them is that 83% of the words of the Qur'an are not found in the hadith of Bukhari, and 62% of the words from the hadith in Bukhari are not found in the Qur'an. These are referred to as discriminant words, found in one text and not the other. So this is one example. The second, I want you to consider the Prophet's lack of control over revelation. He could not control it. Here's a clear-cut example amongst many others. The rabbis, the Jewish rabbis, came to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam to ask him some questions to see is this truly a prophet of God. If he has the answers to these questions based on some of the things that they knew from previous times, then perhaps he might be a prophet of God. And they said, tell us about these things. The Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, I will tell you about what you have asked me tomorrow.
And he did not say according to the report, insha'Allah, if Allah wills. So they went away. And the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam stayed for 15 days without any revelation concerning these matters. Jibreel Alayhi Salaam did not come to him during this time. The people of Mecca, some of them started to doubt him. And they said, Muhammad promised to tell us the next day, and 15 days have gone by and he has not told us anything at all about the questions we asked. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam felt sad in terms of the delay in revelation. He started becoming grieved at what the people of Mecca were saying about him. And then finally Jibreel Alayhi Salaam came to him from Allah with the surah, basically surah al-kaaf, with the explanation and the answers and the elucidation of the questions they had asked the companions of the cave, which also had a rebuke for feeling sad about the mushrikeen, the idolaters of Quraysh. And the surah also answered their questions, the young men and the traveler, and then added also as well, there was revelation about the soul. wa yas'aluna kaAAani arrooh, quli arroohu min amri rabbi wa ma ooteetum min alAAalmi illa qaleela. And then Ibn Abbas radiAllahu anhu said, in addition were two verses. Pay attention to these two verses and never say of anything, wa la taqoolanna li shayn inni faAAilun dhalika ghada. Indeed, I will do this tomorrow. illa ayya sha Allah. Except by adding, if Allah wills. And so the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was commanded to say this, and we are commanded as believers to always say inshaAllah, if Allah wills, when you are saying I will do this thing today, tomorrow, the day after, always say if Allah wills. I want you to consider that if the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam had any control over the revelation, do you think he would have placed himself in a position for 15 days to go through what he went through and to cause people to have doubts and to cause these people to start insulting, accusing, harassing, and so on and so forth, ridiculing him, alayhi salatu wassalam. This is one of many examples. The third is to consider the separation between the emotional experiences of the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and the speech of the Qur'an that is consistent in Mecca and in Madinah. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam's children died.
His wife Khadija passed away. He and his community were completely cut off from everyone else in society. His close companions were harassed, some of them were killed, murdered. He was stoned by the people of Ta'if. He engaged in military campaigns. And yet throughout all of his human experiences as a human being, the Qur'an's linguistic style and eloquent voice and content and meaning remains consistently divine in terms of the perspective, the assertions, the style, the character. It's very clear that the one who reads the Qur'an and studies the seerah side by side says this cannot possibly be the same exact person, meaning the person who is going through these emotional experiences completely cut off in terms of the actual revelation, meaning that the Qur'an is not addressing many of these issues that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is going through. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam did not come up with a surah, for example, when Aisha was ridiculed and slandered, Alaihi Salatu Wasallam, they had to wait for revelation from Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. There clearly is no control over the revelation here. And this is a proof that he is a Prophet of God, Alaihi Salatu Wasallam, and speaking the truth. Number four is to consider the Qur'an's rebuking, so God's rebuking of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. If the Qur'an were authored by the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam or anyone, any human being, it would be extremely bizarre, strange to threaten, harshly criticize, admonish himself in a scripture recited by the entirety of the world and expected to be recited until the end of times. People generally speaking in any kind of position are resentful of criticism or harsh criticism. Now I want you to consider this is public, recited, ongoing, preserved, and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is being told, or the people are being told, if he, Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, made up about us some false speech, we would have seized him by the right hand and we would cut him from, or from him the iota, meaning he is being threatened, Alaihi Salatu Wasallam, if he prevents the revelation from being shared basically through him, Alaihi Salatu Wasallam, as a medium to other people.
The revelation is required to be sent and conveyed to all people. And Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says there is no one amongst you, to the Qurayshis and to the Muslims, who could prevent us from him. The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is being rebuked, O Prophet, why do you prohibit yourself from what Allah has made lawful for you? The Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is being rebuked, we know what they say to you grieves you, O Prophet. It is not your honesty that they question, it is Allah's signs, the revelation that they deny the wrongdoers. Now if the Qur'an was authored by the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, the dozens, not these three, but the dozens of examples of the Prophet being rebuked in the Qur'an would be very bizarre, would not make any sense. So you study the Qur'an, the tafsir of the Qur'an, and you say this cannot be the speech of Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, this cannot be a speech that he would even approve if another human being were coming up with it, which is not possible. And I want you to consider the following point. They tried to stop Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, and to address every potential human motive. Do you think the Orientals were the first to ask the question of motive? Utbah, one of the chiefs of Quraysh, he came to the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam to stop him because Islam was spreading, people were hearing the Qur'an and they were amazed by it, they said this could not be human speech, we are the people of poetry, we know this. And he told the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, if it is wealth that you want, we will gather all of our wealth, we will make you the richest person amongst us. If your motive, if you seek honor, we will make you our overlord, and we will make no decision without your consent. If you seek to become a king, we will make you our king. Basically they offered him everything worldly that someone could possibly be offered. When he went back to his people, after hearing the Prophet's response, the recitation of the Qur'an, the beginning of Surah Fussilat, he said to his people Utbah, because they saw his face, they said this is not the same Utbah that left, this is a different person, he looks changed. He said, oh people, I have heard a speech the likes of which I have never heard before. I swear by God, it is not magic, nor is it poetry, nor is it sorcery.
Oh people of Quraysh, listen to me, leave this man alone, for I swear by God, the speech that I heard from him, the Qur'an will soon be news amongst all the other tribes of Arabia. This is Utbah, who is one of the elites of Quraysh, who is rejecting Islam. And he hears the Qur'an, and he is also moved by it. But I want you to consider what? That there is no explanation for any kind of motive that the Prophet shallallahu alaihi wasallam could have except that he is truly a messenger of God. Consider as well number five, the limited references to Prophet Muhammad's name in the Qur'an shallallahu alaihi wasallam, mentioned explicitly only five times by name. And you know that in the Qur'an, Musa alayhi wasallam, 136 verses, Isa alayhi wasallam, dozens of times, Ibrahim alayhi wasallam, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and other messengers, significantly more frequently in the Qur'an, the Prophet Muhammad shallallahu alaihi wasallam. And this is despite the fact that you have some people today and some people in the past, when they're trying to figure out where the Qur'an came from and they want to avoid the obvious answer that it's from God, they say, what if it's from Moses, what if it's from Jesus, what if it's from the Old Testament, the New Testament, and yet the Qur'an utilizes the stories and mentions the stories of Musa alayhi wasallam and Isa alayhi wasallam in abundance. And this is actually a proof against them. This is a proof against them. And this brings us to the last point, point number six, amongst many others, the i'jaaz of the Qur'an speaks to itself, meaning what? If you, it speaks for itself. If you consider that the Qur'an is miraculous, when you look at the facets of the i'jaaz that we are covering inshallah, condensed in this series and more elaborated in the articles inshallah, it's not possible for the Qur'an to be from a human being. So all of these other points become pretty much useless to discuss why. When you consider the undiscovered knowledge of the natural world, the predictions of the future that came to be the Romans, Abu Lahab, the conquest of Mecca, the victory, the spread of Islam, the preservation of the Qur'an, when you talk about lost knowledge of the past prophet Yusuf alayhi wasallam and the details that are utilized in the Qur'an that you cannot find even in the Old and New Testaments, when you find the story and the details of
the sleepers of the cave, the correct historical usage of Fir'aun versus King Malik, and you look at the corrections to the Old and New Testament, when you look at the linguistic miracle of the Qur'an, the universal moral reference points, the maxims and moral laws, the impact of the Qur'an on the hearts and the souls, as well as the Qur'an itself in terms of the one who is conveying it, Prophet Muhammad salallahu alayhi wasallam. You cannot look at every facet of i'jaaz and try to find some cop-out excuse and then finally say these are all hundreds of coincidences. It is not clearly from God, rather the person is saying these are like just hundreds of coincidences that all line up perfectly. This is a very far-fetched response. We don't need to just address the issue of the myth of human authorship, but rather look at the positive arguments for i'jaaz al-Qur'an and the one who is conveying it, Prophet Muhammad salallahu alayhi wasallam. Even Western Orientals like Montgomery Watt attested to his fundamental integrity. Until when will a person deny the truth? Until when will a person look away and say I don't want to accept this conclusion, I have to find some other conclusion. The Prophet salallahu alayhi wasallam, al-Sadiq al-Amin, lived amongst them for 40 years. The Qur'an was revealed over the course of 23 years, oral delivery to the people, there is no editing process, there is no proofreading process, the contents of which are miraculous, the literary miracle is intertwined with every other miracle within the Qur'an in terms of the contents. And the Prophet salallahu alayhi wasallam was consistent, he has no worldly motive. How can a person ignore all of this and not accept the truth that the Qur'an is clearly, without any doubt whatsoever, the speech of God for all of mankind until the end of times. We ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to allow us to see the truth as truth and to follow it and to allow us to see evil as evil and to stay away from it and we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to purify our hearts and connect us to the Qur'an. Allahumma ameen. I will hand it over inshallah to Sheikh Mohammed to continue with it.
BarakAllahu feekum. JazakAllahu khairan. Sheikh Suleiman, may Allah azza wa jal forever set your heart and your tongue aright. And today was a quick fire, may Allah keep you a train wreck against all ruses and unfounded indefensible claims that hinder people from guidance and use us for the same. Allahumma ameen. I feel actually kind of guilty because in considering what I wanted to speak about for today's program, it was actually the defenses, right? The responses to the criticisms, not just the positives, but I guess that's what the whole series is about. The proofs for the Qur'an's divine origins. But in this discussion of human authorship, that is entirely a discussion of creative cop-outs like you said. And so I thought to mention three or four of them if time will permit and just why they are utterly indefensible as you mentioned. You know, sometimes one of the contentions is that when you speak about human authorship, well how do we know there wasn't? I mean, all of this is assuming that your Qur'an subjectively, it's assumed that it's not subjective, that the Qur'an is a literary miracle. I mean, I'm not an expert of the Arabic language. I'm just taking your word for it and it's your word against anybody else's. How do we know that because Islamic influence became dominant, histories written by the victors, all of these imitation attempts that were just as good weren't buried? Well first and foremost, let's not compare apples and oranges. Unlike so many different examples of world history, even the Orientalist, you mentioned a beautiful quote in your paper for Bernard Lewis when he says, unlike other religions which were cradled in mystery, Islam was born in the full light of history. Its roots are at surface level.
The life of its founder is as well known to us today as those of the reformers of the 16th century. You know, the fact is, number one, it is a very different civilizational paradigm. Islam did not monopolize history. It actually pushed people to revive world history as, you know, Franz Rosenthal from Yale has books on this. Islam's influence on the revival of history and rigorous authentication and filtering of world history. That's from one angle, but also from another angle, consider the fact that you could not recant, as we said, the words of the Quran and the Quran documented all of the objections, all of the contentions. And so whenever there was a contention that people could believe as unfounded as it may be, the Quran responded to it, yet the Quran did not ever respond to imitation attempts, you know, of literary strength. It would have been addressed. It addressed everything else. As you said, they say this, they say that, they say this, they say that. This part was never addressed because it simply wasn't there. And for it to exist to be there, as Al-Khattabi, Rahim Allah mentions, and for it to be just ignored is inconceivable in that regard. Also, it is inconceivable that there were imitation attempts that were formidable and competent that met the bar or matched, even though the bar was set so low because of the disparity between creator and creation, of course. So just a few verses, a single surah, anything, even then, we still find them not producing this and calling him a magician, saying this is a supernatural work. You got it from the devils. That'll be our second point. They reached for their swords. Would they do all of that? And even history also does document, part of the open bookness of history, documents that Musaylimah, which was one of those who claimed to be a false prophet at the end of the prophet's time, they said, well, what have you produced?
And so he tried to imitate it. So it does document imitations. An attempt to imitate the Quran, that was just so amateur and so comical that it's reported that Talha al-Numairi, or al-Numairi, he said, what have you brought? And Musaylimah, this imposter prophet, he recited some weak, clearly imitated, shallow attempt to produce something like the Quran. And al-Numairi said to him, listen, I am absolutely positive you're lying, but a liar from Banu Hanifa is better than a truthful person from Mudar, meaning I'm only going to side with you for political reasons, because you're from the tribe that I have a greater affinity to, even if the person from Mudar, which is an ancestor of the Meccans, of Quraysh, is truthful. And so they would testify, as Amr al-As also, an ambassador between nations, history documents that when they went to Musaylimah and he recited to them this poor excuse of a reproduction of the Quran, his own Quran, he said to, he didn't tell him you're lying. He said, I swear by God, you know that I can recognize that you're lying, because there was just no comparison, aside from the fact that we will come to in a second, which is the knowledge of the unseen, that the Quran, meaning the substance, not just the knowledge of the unseen, the lost past, the predictions of the future, the substance itself, forget the gorgeous packaging, is just something that they had no reach for. They had no place to go and scoop it into their narrative.
And so the Quran did address all of the contentions that could be misperceived as delegitimizing the Quran, and it didn't address these, and we have the most transparent record of world history by Allah's grace, and we are the ones that sparked in the world a renaissance of verifying and authenticating world history. All of that combined really reduces this accusation, this contention to a faint whisper that was disregarded for very good reasons. Other people could say, okay, maybe it wasn't authored by other human beings, this was beyond human effort, fine, but how do we know it wasn't a devil? How do we know a devil didn't inspire Muhammad, like a demonic possession enabled him? Well, okay, we'll play along, right? For argument's sake, hypothetically speaking, let's say that. First of all, do you believe in devils? Because if you only believe in the physical, tangible world, then you're not actually investigating, right? You're just willing to accept any explanation that you yourself don't believe for the sake of disregarding this very valiant effort of those who are pursuing truth. That's number one. And this is very similar to something that happened to me in college once, even though I am extremely hesitant now, and I do see the premature and the overzealous nature of those trying to defend the Quran, that they reach for weaker arguments, much weaker arguments, sometimes just straight incorrect arguments when they try to justify the Quran through scientific discoveries. That's a very tangled conversation for a later time. But when we once did this, the person didn't say this is scientifically incorrect. The person in the audience, a philosophy professor, came to us and said, you guys are really cute, and that's what's beautiful about this country,
you can say whatever you want, no matter how ridiculous. He was patronizing us. We were freshmen in college, and I think we deserved it on some level. We were speaking a little bit from a high horse, and our proofs, we walked away from them after a while, just to be honest. That sometimes you can be a lousy lawyer for a great case, we should be aware of that. And that's why if someone gives you a proof of the Quran, by the way, being true, and that proof falls through, always remember what Sheikh Suleiman just said, the hundreds of proofs, the overwhelming proofs, allow for that to be fine, to be a non-factor. Because if this one doesn't hold, or this one I don't understand, it does hold, I just don't see how it holds water overall. So anyhow, this philosophy professor said to us, what about these scientific, supposed scientific facts in the Quran? He said, well, maybe Muhammad had a microscope that the world didn't know about. So the idea is like, you are willing to accept a notion that Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam had invented, the type of glass that could allow for a microscope that wasn't primitive, over a thousand years before the world knew what microscopes were, over considering the truth of this. And so sometimes the discussion on a devil inspiring the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is down that line. Consider a few other things now, if you do believe that devils do exist, we do believe that they are a life form that we are generally not privy to seeing, we cannot observe, the world of the jinn, which are not all devils, and other creatures among them are the righteous, and among them are the sinister and the wicked. Why would the Quran tell us before we recite the Quran to seek refuge from the devils? Someone could say, yeah, that's just good tactics, that's reverse psychology, they're trying to like decoy, turn your attention away from the fact that it is from the devils, but it is. First of all, if you say devils also, that's better than saying that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam was insane. Some people try to cite, some oriental cite the fact of like he underwent seizures and otherwise,
and this is another claim that perhaps is not worth addressing, because gather all of the people that are clinically insane, gather all of the people that have mental health challenges in all of the institutions around the globe, what have they produced? And that's why a huge chunk of the discussion on his prophethood is what he offered the world, the message itself. Sheikh Suleiman spoke about the teachings, the value, the substance of the message itself, and the blessings that this world benefited from in that, abolishing racism, abolishing alcoholism. What society has ever really done that? Or tribalism and otherwise? And state and human rights and animal rights and environmental rights over a millennium before the rest of the world was even discussing these, even if they were discussing them for ulterior motives. And so it's better than calling him insane, because the insane accusation could not be more foolish. Also part of it, by the way, with the insanity accusation, let me just say very quickly that because he had seizures, that you could visibly see that he was receiving revelation, that's what's cited. But it was not just him. I mean, what do you do with the other narrations that give you the full story about the animal he's riding actually not being able to stand and buckling under him? And so it was not an internal experience. It was a very synthetic, real experience that could be felt by others that had their body touching his, that could see him, that could see what he was riding. It was felt and it was very real. And so the devil one is probably slightly better than the insanity one. But why are we asking Allah to protect us from the devil? Okay, if it's reverse psychology, then how do you explain the substance of the Quran? The devils, they may know some of the unseen. Maybe they live slightly longer lives than us. Maybe they have slightly better transportation mechanisms than us. They can get around.
But how do you solve the fact of the predictions regarding the future? And so many other facets of the Quran. Like I said, it's a flood of profundity, profoundness. And also shayateen, devils, I mean, we all agree whether they exist or they're in our imagination. Devils are sinister. And so what blossoms from the Quran? That's why Allah Azza wa Jal said, by the way, that the devils did not bring down this narrative, did not bring down this book, and it is unbefitting. It doesn't match what we all consider devils as. Nor are they ever capable of doing something like this. The third major contention regarding human authorship or authorship other than from Muhammad salallahu alayhi wasalam. They say, how do we know he wasn't spoon fed by scholars from the Jewish and Christian orientation? Well, don't refer us to an unknown. Which scholars? Who? Bahira is an unconfirmed report. Some people try to cite. And if it's confirmed, it was for a few hours. Right. How do you bring about a corpus that has everything that this Quran has of magnificence and detail and balance and accuracy? You're going to say, Waraq ibn Nawfal, he met him also once. And the narration says he died immediately thereafter, after the introductions. You're going to mention that some Roman blacksmith slave boy that existed in Mecca, who was not a scholar, was not clergy, was not anything learned in a world that was illiterate all around, is where he got it from. So who are you referring to? And so also consider, and maybe we'll come back to this in the following weeks, the historical accuracies of the Quran. If the Prophet ﷺ took it from Judeo-Christian sources, there are so many historical facts in Judeo-Christian sources that have been rejected by historical research. Until our present day, it just continues to happen.
And perhaps that's what prompts the quote unquote revised editions of these books. And so he ﷺ would have had to, or he did, meaning the Quran itself tiptoed around all of these historical inaccuracies. How could he be so carefully selective when that information didn't exist? Unless we're saying then that it did exist, and the Prophet ﷺ somehow had access to the only correct copy of the manuscripts from thousands of variant manuscripts. And that this manuscript existed only in the 7th century, only in Arabia of all places, and existed in a language that Muhammad ﷺ knew secretly, that no one knew he knew. And then that manuscript vanished without a trace and was never recovered in human history again. That's what it would take for him to know the right facts that none of the other manuscripts of the Bibles and all the New Testaments had. You know, look up in the encyclopedia Britannica or otherwise, these books were not translated except the 7th or the 8th or the 9th or the 10th centuries. There's a consensus that the Old Testament was not translated into Arabic until the 10th century. A partial translation. You know, the New Testament, Church Fathers mentioned, a partial, primitive, non-circulated translation was made, you know, hundreds of years after the Prophet ﷺ in Spain somewhere, right? And so where did he get it from? And then even if you're able to identify as bizarre as that hypothetical I just drew is about where he got it from, how do you explain the language? That only explains the source, right? How does it explain the end product, the literary brilliance of the end product? And that's why Allah Azza wa Jal said, لسان الذي يلحدون إليه أعجمي وهذا لسان عربي مبين. We know that they say a human being is spoon feeding you, O Muhammad ﷺ.
Notice how it's addressing all the contentions like we said earlier. And then it says, but the tongue, the language they are saying you are plagiarizing from is non-Arabic. It's other than Arabic. And this is a clearly Arabic Quran. So it doesn't explain the end product even if it's supposedly explained using that hypothetical, the source. The last thing is if the Quran is Arabic then what's so special about it? It's just human language. Arabic is human language. That's something some people say. And I found this beautiful quote by Dr. Musfer Al-Qahtani which I'll close with. He said, how do we reconcile, many people struggle to reconcile between the Quran being Arabic but then being special at the same time. Because human language, it's hard to understand how it can be special. It's just language. Some is better than others and that's all. Nothing supernatural about that. He says, and I just love this quote. He says, however, the miraculousness of the Quran lies in this very paradox. The paradox of it being Lisan Al-Arabiyy Al-Mubeen, of it being truly Arabic and it being at one and the same time a new language. This might appear to be illogical. He says, however, the logic of miracle inheres in precisely the fact that it surpasses logic. A miracle that rests on logic ceases to be a miracle. So this is not saying that it's illogical or not rational. It is beyond rational. It doesn't contradict rationale. It's clearly Arabic. But at the same time it is beyond rationale. You know if it was another language that no human being ever spoke, it wouldn't even be understandable. Nevertheless, you know, appreciable. How do you appreciate something like this? But the fact that it was, but it broke away from everything else and to that effect in that sense it wasn't is what made it a miracle. That's all. I hope some of this was coherent and beneficial and helps reinforce our confidence and patch up the walls if they've been punctured by criticisms.
In the intelligentsia of the largely anti-religious world. May Allah infuse us and you with certainty and benefit us. I think we went a little over time today so I'll just close out quickly unless Sheikh Suleiman wants to add something. Jazakallahu khairan Sheikh, barakallahu khairan. We ask everyone who is interested to read further into the articles because this is a very deep long conversation. And obviously we couldn't cover everything. So if you thought of something that wasn't addressed here, know that we are trying as best as possible to condense this ocean of a discussion into these 35-40 minutes. Barakallahu fikum Sheikh, barakallahu fik. Barakallahu fik, ahsanallahu alaik Sheikh. Jazakallahu khairan everyone. Once again, don't miss out on the great programs with our mashayikh and our scholars and our specialists throughout the month of Shawwal every night with these Qur'anic themes. And of course our next episode which will likely be our last next Tuesday night inshallah on the miraculous nature of the Qur'an. Jazakallahu khairan wa salamu ala ala alihi wa sahbihi ajma'in. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullah.
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