[YabbaIn]

salaams i was wondering where is that thread posted up back along, it was a debate between muslims and non muslim on the inimitability of the qur'an and how its structure and rythym is impossible to immitate.

also how do you respond to the claim that beethoven and or shakespear was also unique

[MizzDaizzy]

The Quran is unique at many more levels than other unique and human works. The content of the Quran teaches about man, and Allah, it gives laws on how man must live with woman, with nature with society, how to govern and very many other subjects. The human works do not even come close to such a vast scope. Could a group of people pick up the works of shakespear and basing themselves on his books recreate a living community, would they even want to if they could? Beethoven made music...no idea what I can say about him.

[Yartonbler]

but a human could make a book covering thsoe topics. im asking in the context of the qur'anic challene to produce a surah like the qur'an

[jurnalkduo]

but a human could make a book covering thsoe topics. im asking in the context of the qur'anic challene to produce a surah like the qur'an

They could make a book with all those topics but we would have to evaluate if the laws were as good. The literary and linguistic uniqueness of the words of the Quran is something non Arab speakers would not understand, so I do not know how you could display this to them.

One of the problems with our dawa is that most of our Islam is theoretical...we are not living it, there is nowhere we can point to and say there is Islam in its full glory..look at its beauty and sanity. The salfus salih were living it...where they went their actions were dawa....they did not have to explain to others why Islam was good, the others just saw the Muslims (and their sharp swords ) and embraced Islam.

Our Islam is in the masjid, or at home, it is not in our business and our trade or government. We are secularised and it looks as if most of us are content with this...no one has the means or the way to show us how we must strive to bring about the full Islam in our lives, most of us do not even know what this Islam is like, it might be a mix of democracy and capitalism some think, and I am not sure if people even want all of it if they know what it is.

[dasneycomrov]

salaams i was wondering where is that thread posted up back along, it was a debate between muslims and non muslim on the inimitability of the qur'an and how its structure and rythym is impossible to immitate.

also how do you respond to the claim that beethoven and or shakespear was also unique

Saying Shakespeare or Beethoven were unique is SUBJECTIVE. Our claim about the Quran is OBJECTIVE. Shakespeare wasn't in his literary form- he wrote in iambic pentameter which even a ten year old could do. Maybe he is the best writer in the style of iambic pentameter but his writing fits a literary form which is IMITABLE. The same can be said of the compositions of Beethoven. The Quran does NOT fit into any known arabic rhyme scheme/pattern, etc and so forms a unique pattern of its own which to this day has not been imitated.

See here: http://www.theinimitablequran.com/QuranicStyle.html

[fereupfer]

Saying Shakespeare or Beethoven were unique is SUBJECTIVE. Our claim about the Quran is OBJECTIVE. Shakespeare wasn't in his literary form- he wrote in iambic pentameter which even a ten year old could do. Maybe he is the best writer in the style of iambic pentameter but his writing fits a literary form which is IMITABLE. The same can be said of the compositions of Beethoven. The Quran does NOT fit into any known arabic rhyme scheme/pattern, etc and so forms a unique pattern of its own which to this day has not been imitated.

See here: http://www.theinimitablequran.com/QuranicStyle.html

Salam, can you explain in laymen terms how the Qur'an is inimitable. Like give an example of how a certain verse cannot be replaced or bettered. It sounds like one of the most fascinating subjects but unfortunately non-Arabic speakers will always be handicapped in regards to appreciating the miracle holistically.

[zlopikanikanzax]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPs8cApW8Bw

Nouman Ali Khan is an excellent teacher on this subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZdKv3Bijnc

[doksSirmAdods]

salaams i was wondering where is that thread posted up back along, it was a debate between muslims and non muslim on the inimitability of the qur'an and how its structure and rythym is impossible to immitate.

also how do you respond to the claim that beethoven and or shakespear was also unique

Asalaamu Alaikum,

To add to what bro ahmad12 said;

In this final part of series 6 we will discuss how the matchlessness and inimitability of the Qur'an makes it a miracle or at least a sign-post to the Divine.

William Shakespeare, who was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, is often used as an example of unique literature. The argument posed is that if Shakespeare expressed his poetry and prose in a unique manner – and he is a human being – then surely no matter how unique the Qur’an is, it must also be from a human being.

However there are some problems with the above argument. It does not take into account the nature of the Qur’an’s uniqueness and it doesn’t understand the uniqueness of literary geniuses such as Shakespeare. Although Shakespeare composed poetry and prose that received an unparalleled aesthetic reception, the literary form he expressed his works in was not unique. In many instances Shakespeare used the common Iambic Pentameter (The Iambic pentameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line consisting of five iambic feet. The word “pentameter” simply means that there are five feet in the line.) However in the case of the Qur’an, its language is in an entirely unknown and unmatched literary form. The structural features of the Qur’anic discourse render it unique and not the subjective appreciation of its literary and linguistic makeup.

With this in mind there are two approaches that can show that there are greater reasons to believe that the Qur’an is from the divine and a miraculous text. The first approach is logical deduction and the second is the philosophy of Miracles.

Logical Deduction

Rational deduction is the thinking process where logical conclusions are drawn from a universally accepted statement or provable premises. This process is also called rational inference or logical deduction.

In the context of the Qur’an’s uniqueness the universally accepted statement supported by eastern and western scholarship is:

“The Qur’an was not successfully imitated by the Arabs at the time of revelation”

From this statement the following logical conclusions can be drawn:

1. The Qur’an could not have come from an Arab as the Arabs, at the time of revelation, were linguists par excellence and they failed to challenge the Qur’an. They had even admitted that the Qur’an could have not come from a human being.

2. The Qur’an could not have come from a Non-Arab as the language in the Qur’an is Arabic, and the knowledge of the Arabic language is a pre-requisite to successfully challenge the Qur’an.

3. The Qur’an could not have come from the Prophet Muhammad due to the following reasons:

a. The Prophet Muhammad was an Arab himself and all the Arabs failed to challenge the Qur’an.
b. The Arabs linguists at the time of revelation never accused the Prophet of being the author of the Qur’an.
c. The Prophet Muhammad experienced many trials and tribulations during the course of his Prophetic mission. For example his children died, his beloved wife Khadija passed away, he was boycotted, his close companions were tortured and killed, yet the Qur’an’s literary character remains that of the divine voice and character. Nothing in the Qur’an expresses the turmoil and emotions of the Prophet Muhammad. It is almost a psychological and physiological impossibility to go through what the Prophet went through and yet none of the emotions are expressed in the literary character of the Qur’an.
d. The Qur’an is a known literary masterpiece yet its verse were at many times revealed for specific circumstances and events that occurred. However, without revision or deletion they are literary masterpieces. All literary masterpieces have undergone revision and deletion to ensure literary perfection, however the Qur’an was revealed instantaneously.
e. The hadith or narrations of the Prophet Muhammad are in a totally different style then that of the Qur’an. How can any human being express themselves orally over a 23 year period (which was the period of Qur’anic revelation) in two distinct styles? This is a psychological and physiological impossibility according to modern research.
f. All types of human expression can be imitated if the blueprint of that expression exists. For example artwork can be imitated even though some art is thought to be extraordinary or amazingly unique. But in the case of the Qur’an we have the blueprint – the Qur’an itself – yet no one has been able to imitate its unique literary form.

4. The Qur’an could not have come from another being such as a Jinn or Spirit because the basis of their existence is the Qur’an and revelation itself. Their existence is based upon revelation and not empirical evidence. Therefore if someone claims that the source of the Qur’an to be another being then they would have to prove its existence and in this case proving revelation. In the case of using the Qur’an as the revelation to establish Jinns existence then that would mean the whole rational deduction exercise would not be required in the first place, as the Qur’an would already have been established as a divine text, because to believe in Jinns existence would mean belief in the Qur’an in the first place.

5. The Qur’an can only have come from the Divine as it is the only logical explanation as all other explanations have been discarded because they do not explain the uniqueness of the Qur’an in a comprehensive and coherent manner.

Philosophy of Miracles

The word miracle is derived from the Latin word ‘miraculum’ meaning “something wonderful”. A miracle is commonly defined as a violation of a natural law (lex naturalis); however this is an incoherent definition. This incoherence is due our understanding of natural laws, as the Philosopher Bilynskyj observes “…so long as natural laws are conceived of as universal inductive generalisations the notion of violation of a nature law is incoherent.”

Natural laws are inductive generalizations of patterns we observe in the universe. If the definition of a miracle is a violation of a natural law, in other words a violation of the patterns we observe in the universe, then an obvious conceptual problem occurs. The problem is: why can’t we take this perceived violation of the pattern as part of the pattern? Therefore the more coherent description of a miracle is not a ‘violation’ but an ‘impossibility’. The Philosopher William Lane Craig rejects the definition of a miracle as a “violation of a natural law” and replaces it with the coherent definition of “events which lie outside the productive capacity of nature”. What this means is that miracles are acts of impossibilities concerning causal or logical connections.

The Miraculous Qur’an

What makes the Qur’an a miracle, is that it lies outside the productive capacity of the nature of the Arabic language. The productive capacity of nature, concerning the Arabic language, is that any grammatically sound expression of the Arabic language will always fall within the known Arabic literary forms of Prose and Poetry.

The Qur’an is a miracle as its literary form cannot be explained via the productive capacity of the Arabic language, because all the possible combinations of Arabic words, letters and grammatical rules have been exhausted and yet the Qur’an’s literary form has not been imitated. The Arabs who were known to have been Arab linguists par excellence failed to successfully challenge the Qur’an. Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot who was a notable British Orientalist and translator states:

“…and that though several attempts have been made to produce a work equal to it as far as elegant writing is concerned, none has as yet succeeded.”[1]

The implication of this is that there is no link between the Qur’an and the Arabic language; however this seems impossible because the Qur’an is made up of the Arabic language! On the other hand, all the combinations of Arabic words and letters have been used to try and imitate the Qur’an. Therefore, it can only be concluded that a supernatural explanation is the only coherent explanation for this impossible Arabic literary form – the Qur’an.

When we look at the productive nature of the Arabic language to find an answer for the unique literary form of the Qur’an, we find no link between it and the divine text, thus making it an impossibility requiring supernatural explanation. So it logically follows that if the Qur’an is a literary event that lies outside the productive capacity of the Arabic language, then, by definition, it is a miracle.

Please forward and share (and discuss!).

[1] F. F. Arbuthnot. 1885. The Construction of the Bible and the Koran. London, p 5.

^Written by Hamza Tzortiz.

[Foriaelalse]

As Salaam Alaykum.

Bismillah Irahman Irahim.

Although Much could be written on this topic, however I think the following story will suffice. I have extracted it from a book called, " Muhammad (Sallallahu alaiyhi wassallam) The Prophet Of Revolution" by Ml Wahiduddin Khan, Who himself has taken the story from Sheikh Tantawis commentary on the Quran. Jawahir fi Al-tafsir Al- Quran Al-Karim.

Sheikh Tantawi (ra) writes " On 13 June 1932, I met an Egyptian writer, Kamil Gilani, who told me an amazing story. One day he was with an American orientalist by the name of Finkle, with whom he enjoyed a deep intellectual relationship."Tell me, are you still among those who consider the Quran a miracle? whispered Finkle in Gilani's ear, adding a laugh to indicate his ridicule of such belief.

He thought that Muslims could only hold this belief in blind faith. It could not be based on any sound objective reasoning. Thinking that his blow had really gone home, Finkle was visibly pleased with himself. Seeing his attitude, Gilani too started laughing. " Before issuing any pronouncement on the the style of the Quran," he said, "we should first have a look and see if we can produce anything comparable to the Quran or not."

Gilani then invited Finkle to join him in putting a Quranic idea into Arabic words. The idea he chose was:' Hell is extremely vast' , Finkle agreed, and both men sat down with pen and paper. Between them, they produced about twenty Arabic sentences. " "Hell is extremely vast," " Hell is vaster than you can imagine,"
"Mans's intelligence cannot fathom the vastness of Hell," and many examples of this nature, were some of the sentences they produced. They tried until they could think of no other sentences to express this idea. Gilani looked at Finkle triumphantly. " Now that we have done our best, we shall be able to see how the Quran stands above all work of men." he said " What, has the quran expressed this idea more eloquently.?" Finkle enquired. " We are like little children compared to the Quran," Gilani told him. Amazed, Finkle asked what was in the Quran.


Gilani recited this verse from Surah Qaf: " On the Day when we Will ask Hell: " Are you full? " And Hell will answer Are there any more? " (50:30) Finkle was startled
on hearing this verse. Amazed at the supreme eloquence of the Quran, he openly admitted defeat." you were right, quite right," he said, " I unreservedly concede defeat." " for you to acknowledge the truth," Gilani replied, " is nothing strange, for you are a man of letters, well aware of the importance of style in language." This particular orientalist was fluent in English, German, Hebrew and Arabic, and had spent all his life studying the literature of these languages..
(Sheikh al Tantawi (ra) Al Jawahir fi tafseer Al Quran Al Kareem, Vol. 23pp.11-12.)

______________________________________________

[xpllmr]

There is also a site by Nouman Ali khan dedicated to this very subject.....http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct...xJp67v6iO-qX-w