The means for establishing the messengerhood of the Prophet of Islam are
those we have already expounded. The conditions and clear signs which must exist
in every bearer of a heavenly message must be shown to exist also in the Prophet
of Islam.
Prophethood and messengerhood are closely and inseparably linked to the miracle
that proves the relationship of the claimant to prophethood with the
supra-natural realm; the miracle is the clearest and most objective evidence
that disarms those who would illogically deny prophethood, for it demonstrates
that the claim of the Prophet is founded on a reality.
All the Prophets had but a single aim in fulfilling their Divine missions; their
teachings are all of a similar type, notwithstanding the peculiarities of the
mission of each, and the truths they expounded concerning the supra-natural
realm differ only with respect to the degree of detail. It is true that there
are differences with regard to acts of worship and social dealings; a common
principle is implemented in differing ways that take into consideration the
specific characteristics of each age and represent an evolutionary process.
It appears that one of the reasons for the variation in miracles is that in the
times of earlier Prophets, people were inclined to believe only on the basis of
material observations of visible objects that lacked any spiritual content. The
fetters imposed on human thought by the seers and sages of those times caused
people's attention to be limited to a particular realm, which, in turn, was the
most significant factor in separating them from God and causing their minds to
stagnate. The destruction of such a limited mode of thought was therefore of
necessity a principal aim of the Prophets.
The Prophets were entrusted by God with the duty of attacking this source of
error by confronting the seers and soothsayers with deeds of a type similar to
that which they performed, but enjoying a special advantage that placed them
beyond the reach of all competition. By the power of the miracle they negated
and destroyed that particular cause of the human beings' separation from God-the
concentration of their attention on the dazzling acts performed by the
soothsayers of the age which enslaved their spirits. By demonstrating their own
miracles and setting forth the realistic principles of Divine religion, they
opened the doors of guidance, growth, and development toward perfection, and
linked all dimensions of human life and activity to God. All of this survives
from the real nature of the miracle.
The Prophet of Islam began conveying his heavenly message in the midst of a
society where people's minds revolved exclusively around eloquent speech and the
composition of beautiful and attractive poetry and literary excellence.
Precisely this concentration on a field of activity that cannot be counted among
the basic and vital concerns of the human being was an important factor in
prolonging the stagnation of thought and lack of attention to the source of all
existence.
Under these conditions, God equipped His Prophet with a weapon, the Quran, that
apparently belonged to the same category as the literary works of the age but
possessed unique and astonishing characteristics that were beyond the capacity
of the human being to reproduce.
The Quran's sweetness of speech, the attraction exerted by the verses of God's
book, filled the hearts of the Arabs with new feeling and perception. Their deep
attention was drawn to this Divine trust that had come to them, this inimitable
work. Fully versed as they were in the arts and subtleties of rhetoric, they
realized that the extraordinary eloquence of the Quran was beyond the power of
man to produce. It was impossible for someone to hear the Quran and understand
its meaning without being profoundly affected by its power to attract. From the
beginning of revelation, the Quran was, then, the most important factor in
bringing the human being to God's religion.
Moreover, if the Prophet of Islam had performed some miracle other than the
Quran, it would have had no meaning for that people, given their mental
structure. The path would have been open for all kinds of doubt and hesitation.
But the Arabs of that age who were addressed by the Quran could never have any
doubts about its extraordinary eloquence, for they were well aware of all the
mysteries of rhetoric and had living among them masters of language and literary
composition.
At the same time, since the Quran is intended to be an eternal miracle, revealed
to make science and learning blossom among humanbeings, it is also a scientific
miracle. It has expounded, in the most eloquent fashion, truths of a
metaphysical nature together with everything that touches, however slightly, on
the happiness of wretchedness of the human being. Although those who are not
acquainted with the Arabic language cannot fully appreciate its miraculousness,
they can perceive the miraculous nature of the meanings and truths it contains.
The limitation in time of the miracles performed by the earlier Prophets was an
indication of the impermanence of their religions and the laws that they
brought. By contrast, the miracle attesting to the prophethood fo the Prophet of
Islam cannot be temporally limited, because his message is universal and
represents the culmination of all preceding religions; his prophethood requires
an eternal miracle, a brilliant and eloquent proof of its immortality.
A permanent message must display to mankind a permanent and everlasting miracle,
one which advances with time, so that just as it offered convincing proof to
people of the past, it may do the same to people of the future. A short-lived
miracle that is imperceptible to later generations cannot be a source of
reference or judgment for the future.
For this reason, the Quran is presented as a permanent and everlasting miracle,
the final manifestation of God's revelation. The Quran itself says: "The true
and well-formulated message of your Lord has now been completed, and none is
able to change it." (6:115)
From the very first day when he presented his religion as a universal school of
thought, the influence of which was not to be contained by geographical or
ethnic boundaries, the Prophet of Islam displayed this proof of his
messengerhood to the whole of mankind, as a living proof that his mission and
the revolutionary movement he inaugurated represented the final chapter in the
history of prophetic missions and movements.
The Quran does not represent an ideological weapon for temporary use in moving
from an inferior social system to a superior one at a given stage in history; it
represents the permanent ideology of the human being living in the social and
intellectual order of Islam.
The miracle accompanying the mission of the beloved Prophet of Islam brings to
an end all the previous messages, limited as they were to a certain time. In its
unique style, the Quran provides the human being with all necessary guidance by
means of either recalling the circumstances leading to the revelation of various
verses or of recounting of historical narratives or of describing the events
that took place during the life of the Prophet, or by means of various similes
and comparisons that touch on the different concerns of human life and guide the
human being in the direction of higher degrees. By analyzing the stories and
events contained in the Quran, which include also a distinctively Quranic mode
of Judgment, it is possible to deduce certain general principles.
Although the gradual and orderly descent of the Quranic revelation was regarded
as a defect by superficial and ignorant people, it should, in fact, be
recognized as a principal factor in the triumph of the Prophet's message, given
the conditions of the age and the events with which he was confronted.
Just as chronic diseases require long-term treatment, a continuous struggle
against the factors that constantly prevent the human being from perceiving the
truths of existence and stand in the way of his growth and development must be
grounded on a firm ideational basis and a comprehensive social organization.
Only then will it be able to implement its goals over a period of time and guide
human beings to its ultimate purposc their liberation from self-alienation.
Solutions whose efficacy does not transcend events limited in time and space
will be unable to solve the problems of the human being. Islam represents the
only system which is able to answer those problems because of the attention it
pays to all phenomena.
For Muslims, the miraculousness of the Quran is a matter of religious belief;
for scholars and researchers, it is a matter of scientific belief. The Quran
possesses a remarkable comprehensiveness and richness, with respect to its
worldview and scientific content, and its ability to guide the individual and
society. There are still many matters contained in the Quran that call for
investigation and await discovery by further research.
The Extraordinary Richness of the Quran
The Quran represents the principal source of all researches concerning the
Islamic school of thought. Moreover, in every age and every part of the world,
it can serve as the basis for a developed and free society which enables all the
hidden capacities and potentials of the human being to blossom in all their
dimensions; it lays down a path to the ideal society and the government of God.
More than fourteen centuries have passed since the revelation of the Quran.
Throughout this period, mankind has undergone numerous changes, and passing
through repeated stages of development and growth, it has attained a more
comprehensive awareness of the mysteries of creation. Nonetheless, the Quran has
at all times retained its proud and dignified presence on the stage of human
history.
When this miracle first came into existence, at a time when the foundations of
human thought had not fully developed, it served to prove categorically the
messengerhood of the Prophet of Islam. In the present age, as the human being
discovers in the treasure house of the Quran, more and more remarkable
indications, commensurate with his own growth in perception, knowledge and
civilization, the Quran still stands as a permanent historical miracle and a
living universal proof for the veracity of the Seal of the Prophets. The
increase in the volume of human knowledge and the opening up of new horizons of
thought have given us the chance to benefit more fully from the Quran than past
generations.
If the Quran had been able to establish itself only during a certain segment of
time and in a limited spatial environment, it would not have been able thus
miraculously to advance together with time. The reason for the eternal vitality
and authenticity of the Quran is that it has always been a source for spiritual
guidance and command in the face of the changing events of time.
History bears witness that the emergence of the Seal of the Prophets and his
mode of activity within society marked the beginning of a new stage in human
thought and ratiocination and in the development and expansion of the will and
independence of the human being. For in his growth to maturity, the human being
now advanced in his investigations from the stage of mere observation to that of
thought; an exact and profound examination of phenomena took the place of
simplistic assumption. All this is indicated by the fact that the human beings'
acceptance of true faith was no longer on the basis of miracles involving
supranatural or extraordinary phenomena, as was the case with the mission of
previous Prophets.
Human beings turning to faith on the basis of knowledge and thought (something
to which the Quran repeatedly invites human belngs) represents in itself the
miracle wrought by the heavenly message of Islam. Reliance on sensory miracles
would not have been compatible with the nature of the final Divine message and
its aim of liberating the human being and fostering the growth of his intellect.
God, therefore, prepared the human being in the course of many thousands of
years to receive the final guidance.
Our investigations of the Quran can be of value only when we empty our minds of
all pre-existing notions and attitudes, because fanatical convictions concerning
the contents of the Quran will yield nothing but mental stagnation and
immobility. This is a pitfall that every alert and fair-minded researcher must
seek to avoid.
It is an undeniable reality that the Quran is too elevated a book to be the
product of ideas held by a group of scholars. It is even more impossible for it
to have been produced by a single individual or to have been borrowed by him
from other sources, particularly an individual who was unlettered, had not even
studied, and had grown up in the degenerate environment of the Arabian peninsula
at that time, an environment which was totally alien to science and philosophy.
When we consider the system and program of action proposed by the Quran for the
uplift of the human being and compare it with the laws and systems of the past,
we realize that it borrowed nothing from them and bore no resemblance to them.
It represents an entirely new phenomenon, original and unprecedented in its
fundamental nature, and among its lofty aims are the transformation of human
societies and their restructuring on the basis of justice, equality, and freedom
for the oppressed and deprived masses.
The Quran speaks in detail of the history of earlier Prophets and their
communities, referring constantly to the events that occurred during their
careers. When we encounter the narratives contained in the Quran, the events
that it relates, we are brought into direct contact with reality, in an
unparalleled fashion. Every reference they contain, direct and indirect,
acquaints us with the very substance of truth. It is, then, totally impossible
that the narratives of the Quran should have been borrowed from the Torah or the
Gospels. The Quran always presents the stories of the Prophets in a positive
framework by changing and modifying them so as to purge them of unworthy
excesses and elements contrary to pure monotheism, reason, and sound religious
thinking. A copying would have resulted in mere imitation, and would have been
entirely negative.
Dr. Maurice Bucaille, the French scholar, expresses himself as follows on this
point: 'In the West, Jews, Christians and Atheists are unanimous in stating
(without a scrap of evidence, however) that Muhammad wrote the Quran or had it
written as an imitation of the Bible. It is claimed that stories of religious
history in the Quran resume Biblical stories. This attitude is as thoughtless as
saying that Jesus Himself duped His contemporaries by drawing inspiration from
the Old Testament during His preachings: the whole of Matthew's Gospel is based
on this continuation of the Old Testament.... What expert in exegesis would
dream of depriving Jesus of his status as God's envoy for this reason?
"The existence of such an enormous difference between the Biblical description
and the data in the Quran concerning the Creation is worth underlining once
again on account of the totally gratuitous accusations leveled against Muhammad
since the beginnings of Islam to the effect that he copied the Biblical
descriptions. As far as the Creation is concerned, this accusation is totally
unfounded. How could a man living fourteen hundred years ago have made
corrections to the existing description to such an extent that he eliminated
scientifically inaccurate material and, on his own initiative, made statements
that science has been able to verify only in the present day? This hypothesis is
completely untenable. The description of the Creation given in the Quran is
quite different from the one in the Bible."
Taking these factors into consideration, no truth-loving individual can conceive
of an origin other than Divine revelation for the Ouran which is not only a
book, but also a proof of messengerhood and a manifestation of the
miraculousness that supported the Prophet.
The Quran thus came to be the profound, brilliant and eternal miracle of God's
Messenger enabling the teachings and laws of Islam to retain their validity
through time. The Divine commands and instructions were made manifest in phrases
and sentences that were marked by miraculousness, thus implementing God's will
for the preservation of religion when faced with the assaults of rancorous
enemies and for the frustration of their conspiracies.
Through the permanence and stability of the mould in which God's Commands are
uniquely set, these enemies who would reach out against them in order to change
and distort them are permanently prevented from attaining their goal; the
eternal teachings and laws of God will last throughout time, immune from change
or distortion.
Another aspect of the miraculousness of the Quran which has had a great effect
is the revolutionary transformation it brought about in human civilization. A
matter calling for serious attention in the study of Islam is the fact that it
received no assistance from factors external to itself when it began to create
the nucleus of a universal society out of a scattered and disunited people that
lacked all science and free thought and did not even seek to unify its
constituent tribes; and when it began, moreover, to found a uniquely, vast and
spiritual civilization. All the factors for changing the world, for putting
forward an international law with the slogan of unity among races, peoples, and
social classes, for creating a movement for the liberation of thought and the
ennobling of knowledge, were derived from the very text of the Quran, from the
culture that emerged from the Quran and from the Islamic order. Islam never
relied on a government or a power situated outside the society it had itself
brought into being.
Even the aggressors who attacked the Islamic lands and triumphed over the
Muslims, thanks to their military superiority, lost their dominance in the end
when they were confronted with the spiritual power of Islam, and they adopted
the religion of the people they had conquered. This history of nations does not
record any other example of a victorious aggressor adopting the religion of the
people it had defeated.
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