The Miracle of the Qur'an

In the early years of Islam, many converts were won over by the sheer penetrating language of the Qur’an. Muhammad’s miracle, in a highly literary culture, was the mere recitation of the Qur’an in a language and structure that had hitherto been unknown to them.

Scholarly work by Ernest Renan sums up the miracle of the Qur’an as being a text that was revolutionary on both the literary and religious levels. In fact, the language of the Qur’an, in the early years of Islam, was a certain sign of God’s pre-eminence and his most precious gift to the Arab race.

One of the early verses of the Qur’an affirms the miracle of the revelations by challenging those who doubted Muhammad to produce a passage (sura) such as those recited by the Prophet:

“And if ye are in doubt as to what we have revealed from time to time to Our servant (Muhammad), then produce a Sura like thereunto.. ”

History, however, tells us that Muhammad had a fair share of rivals who rose to the Qur’an’s challenge. Both Musaylima and Sajah of central Arabia are cases in point of other prophets, treated by Muhammad as impostors, who recited revelations in rhymed prose in the same style as that of the earliest revelations of the Qur’an.

The language of the Qur’an, which was recited in the Arabic dialect of the tribe of Quraysh, was also to be superseded by the richer Arabic language of the middle ages which was inspired by Hellenistic philosophy. *

It is no surprise that one of the leading reformers of Islam Sheikh Rifaa al-Tahtawi conceded in the 19th century that the contention of the superiority of the Arabic language, believed to be the language of Allah, is all but a fallacy.

* Please refer to my previous post ' Qur’ an and reason ' for more details