وَإِن كُنتُمْ فِى رَيْبٍ مِّمَّا نَزَّلْنَا عَلَىٰ عَبْدِنَا فَأْتُوا۟ بِسُورَةٍ مِّن مِّثْلِهِۦ وَٱدْعُوا۟ شُهَدَآءَكُم مِّن دُونِ ٱللَّهِ إِن كُنتُمْ صَٰدِقِينَ
<p>The Guidance which the Holy Qur'an provides to man rests on two basic principles - Tauhid توحید (the Oneness of God) and Risalah (Prophethood). The two preceding verses (21 and 22) affirm the Oneness of God in presenting certain acts peculiar to Allah alone as a proof; these two verses (23 and 24) affirm the prophethood of Muhammad ﷺ in presenting the word of Allah as a proof. In both the places, the mode of argument is the same. The preceding verses mention certain things which no one could or can do except Allah - for example, creating the sky and the earth, sending down water from the sky, bringing forth fruits with water; and the point of the argument is that since no one except Allah can do these things, no one else can be worthy of being worshipped. These two verses refer to a kind of speech which cannot possibly come from anyone except Allah, and the like of which no human being can ever produce just as the helplessness of man and other creatures in the matter of creating the sky and the earth etc. is a demonstration of the fact that these are the acts of Allah alone, in the same way the helplessness of all created beings in the matter of producing something equal to or resembling the Word of Allah is a demonstration of the fact that this is the Word of Allah alone. Here the Holy Qur'an challenges all men the world over, those of the present and those of the future, to produce even a small passage like this, if they suppose it to be the work of a man, for other men may also be capable of accomplishing what one man has achieved. In case individuals should fail in such an effort, the Holy Qur'an allows them the facility of calling to their aid all possible helpers - they could even hold an international 'workshop' for the purpose. The next verse fore-warns them that such a venture would never succeed, and threatens with the fires of hell, for having once acknowledged his inability to produce something to equal the Holy Qur'an, which is a clear evidence of its being the word, not of man but of a Being who stands above all created things, if a man still persists in his disbelief, he is only seeking a place in hell. The Holy Qur'an asks men to beware of such a fate.</p><p>The Miraculous Qur'an is a prophethood of Muhammad ﷺ</p><p>Thus, the verses, in emphasizing the miraculous character of the Holy Qur'an, present it as the evidence of the prophethood of Muhammad ﷺ and of his truth. No doubt, the miracles of the Holy Prophet ﷺ are innumerable, each more marvelous than the other, but in mentioning only one of these here - one that pertains to the sphere of knowledge, namely, the Holy Qur'an - Allah has pointed out that this is the greatest. Even among the miracles of all the prophets (علیہم السلام) this particular miracle has a special distinction. It has been the way of Allah to show His omnipotence by manifesting some miracles through each prophet or messenger. But each miracle appears with a certain prophet, and ends with him. The Holy Qur'an, on the contrary, is a miracle which is to survive till the end of time.</p><p>As for the phrase: وَإِن كُنتُمْ فِي رَ‌يْبٍ :"And if you are in doubt," we may remark that the verse employs the Arabic word, raib رَ‌يْب for 'doubt'. According to Imam Raghib al-Isfahani, raib رَ‌يْب signifies a kind of hesitation or indecision or suspicion which has no basis, and can therefore be easily overcome with the help of a little reflection. That is why the Holy Qur'an says that having this kind of doubt (raib رَ‌يْب) is not consistent with being a man of knowledge, even if he were not a Muslim:</p><p>وَلَا يَرْ‌تَابَ الَّذِينَ أُوتُوا الْكِتَابَ وَالْمُؤْمِنُونَ</p><p>"So that the people of the Book and Muslims should have no doubt". (74:31)</p><p>Similarly, at the very beginning of the Surah Al-Bagarah the Holy Qur'an refers to itself as the Book :"In which there is no doubt (raib رَ‌يْب)." In the present verse again it uses the word raib رَ‌يْب to say: وَإِن كُنتُمْ فِي رَ‌يْبٍ :"if you are in doubt", the implication being that the truths enunciated by the Holy Qur'an are so clear and evident that there is no room for any hesitation or indecision or suspicion to arise except for those who do not possess knowledge.</p><p>As for the people who hesitate in accepting the Holy Qur'an as the Word of Allah, and suspect that it is the work of the Holy Prophet ﷺ or of some other man, the verse proposes an easy test - they should produce a passage (a Surah) resembling or equalling the Holy Qur'an in order to substantiate their claim; but if they fail, they should finally acknowledge the Holy Qur'an to be undoubtedly the Word of Allah. The Arabic word "Surah" means a "limited or definite piece"; as a technical term, a Surah is a passage of the Holy Qur'an which has been set apart from other passages by Divine Commandment (Wahy وحی), there being 114 Surahs in the Holy Qur'an, some long and others very short. The present verse uses the word Surah without the definite article "Al', and hence includes the shortest of the Surahs in the challenge thrown out to the doubters.</p><p>At this point, the objection can arise that the failure of one man or one group of men does not necessarily argue the inability of another man or group in the matter. The Holy Qur'an meets this objection by declaring:</p><p>وَادْعُوْا شُهَدَاۗءَكُمْ مِّنْ دُوْنِ اللّٰهِ اِنْ كُنْتُمْ صٰدِقِيْنَ</p><p>"And do call your supporters other than Allah, if you are true".</p><p>The Arabic word used here is Shuhada شُهَدَا ، the plural or Shahid which signifies 'one who is present'- a witness is called a Shahid شھید ، for he has to be present in the court of law. In this verse, the word Shuhada- شُهَدَا '' refers either to men in general - implying that the doubters could call to their aid any men whatsoever from anywhere in the world -, or specifically to the idols of the disbelievers of Makkah who thought that these blocks of stone would appear on the, Day of Judgment as witnesses in their favour.</p><p>The next verse foretells that the doubters shall never succeed, even if they tried with all their individual or collective might, in producing a passage which could resemble the Holy Qur'an. If they should still persist in their denial, the verse threatens them with the fire of Hell, which has already been prepared for such stubborn disbelievers.</p><p>The infidels of Makkah, history tells us, were ready to give up their very lives for the purpose of obliterating Islam. In throwing out to them this challenge, the Holy Qur'an gave them an easy chance of accomplishing their purpose, and even hurt their tribal sense of honour by predicting that they would never be able to take up the challenge. And yet not a single contender came up for the trial, which was a clear admission of their helplessness and an acknowledgment of the Holy Qur'an being the Word of Allah. This fact establishes the Holy Qur'an as the evident miracle of the Holy Prophet ﷺ . Since the challenge still stands, the miracle too lives on, and shall live to the end of the world.</p><p>The Holy Qur'an: A living miracle</p><p>As for the Holy Qur'an being a miracle, the subject has been thoroughly discussed in scores of books by the greatest scholars in all the ages and in different languages. We may mention a few outstanding ones: Nazm نظم al-Qur'an by al-Jahiz, written in the 3rd century A.H.; 'I'jaz al-Qur'an' by Abu 'Abdullah Wasiti, written early in the 4th century; a small book, اعجاز 'I'jaz al-Qur'an' by Ibn 'Isa Rabbani, written later in the 4th century; a long and comprehensive book, اعجاز 'I'jaz al-Qur'an' by Qadi Abu Bakr Bagillani, written early in the 5th century; the subject has also been discussed at length in well-known books like Al-Itqan' by Jalal al-Din al-Suyati, 'Al-Khasa'is al-Kubra' by the same author, 'At-Tafsir al-Kabir' by Imam Razi, and 'Ash-Shifa' by Qadi 'Iyad; more recently still, اعجاز 'I'jaz al-Qur'an', by Mustafa Sadiq al-Rafi'i', and 'Al-Wahy al-Muhammadi' by Sayyid Rashid Rid-a; and finally 'I'jaz al-Qur'an' by Shabbir Ahmad Uthmani. We may, in passing, draw attention to another peculiar quality of the Holy Qur'an that, beside comprehensive and voluminous commentaries, scores of books have been written on different aspects of the Book of Allah and on the innumerable considerations which arise from it.</p><p>We cannot provide even a brief resume of all that has been written on the subject, the literature being so vast. We shall, however, give a few brief indications as to why the Holy Qur'an is held to be a miracle of the Prophet of Islam: ﷺ</p><p>Qualities that make the Qur'an a miracle</p><p>(1)	The Holy Qur'an is incomparable for its comprehensiveness even among the Sacred Books of the world; on the one hand, it brings to man the ultimate knowledge of a metaphysical order, and, on the other, provides guidance for all the spheres of human life, spiritual or physical, individual or collective. Those who suspect the Book to have been the product of a human agency should remind themselves of the simple fact that it appeared at a time and in a place which offered no facilities for acquiring the kind of education which is necessary for composing such a book - in fact, the Arabs were in those days known as the Ummiyyun, 'the illiterates', and that the Book came through the Holy Prophet ﷺ who could not even read or write, and who had not tried to learn even the arts of poetry and rhetoric on which the Arabs prided themselves. This fact, in itself, is nothing short of a miracle.</p><p>(2)	The Holy Qur'an is, no doubt, guidance for all men without any distinction of time or place, but the first to be addressed were the Arabs of the Age of Ignorance. In affirming that no human being could produce even a few verses comparable to its own, the Holy Qur'an did not confine the challenge merely to the richness of meaning and the quality of wisdom, but included the mode of expression as well. Now, the 'illiterates' of Arabia had no pretensions to wisdom or knowledge, but they certainly fancied themselves for their eloquence - to them, the aliens were just 'The Dumb' (Al-'Ajam العجم). And some of them were so mad in their hostility to the Holy Prophet ﷺ that, if they could see a chance of hurting him in doing so, they would readily have slit their own throats out of sheer spite. And yet no one came forward to accept the challenge. This helplessness in a contest which should have been easy for a people so gifted with a spontaneous eloquence - does it not argue that the Holy Qur'an is not the word of man, but the Word of Allah? As a matter of fact, the most discriminating among the contemporary Arabs did admit, though in private, that the Holy Qur'an was inimitable; some of them had the honesty to say so in public and some accepted Islam, while others in spite of this admission, could not give up the ways of their forefathers, or sufficiently overcome tribal rivalries, particularly their hostility to Banu ` Abd Munaf, the tribe of the Holy Prophet ﷺ to embrace Islam.</p><p>Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (رح) has, in his 'Al-Khasa'is al-Kubra', reported a number of incidents which illustrate the point. When the Holy Prophet ﷺ and the Holy Qur'an began to attract the attention of people even outside Makkah, the enemies of Islam became worried about the huge crowds that would assemble there for the annual pilgrimage and would be likely to fall under his spell. Their tribal chiefs wanted to find an effective stratagem to prevent such a situation from arising, and they referred the problem to Walid ibn Mughirah, the eldest and the wisest among them. To begin with, they suggested that they could tell the pilgrims that the Holy Qur'an was (May Allah forgive us for reporting a blasphemy) only the ravings of a lunatic. But Walid could foresee that when the pilgrims heard the Holy Prophet ﷺ speaking with such lucidity and eloquence, they would immediately know that the allegation was not true. Next they thought of dismissing him as a mere poet. But Walid warned them that, an understanding of the arts of poetry being innate in most Arabs, the pilgrims would easily see that he was no poet. Then, they considered the possibility of putting him down as one of the soothsayers. But Walid feared that they would again discover how false the imputation was, and would only turn against the accusers. In summing up his own impression of the Holy Qur'an, he said: "By God, there is not a single man among you who knows more about Arabic poetry than me. And, by God, I find in this speech a kind of sweetness and grace which I have never found in the speech of any poet or of any eloquent man." After a good deal of thought, he finally advised them to accuse the Holy Prophet ﷺ of being a sorcerer who employed his black art in separating sons from fathers, and wives from husbands.</p><p>Exactly the same was the impression made by the Holy Qur'an on many other people, who expressed similar views - for example, Nadr ibn Harith, a tribal chief; Unais, the brother of the blessed Companion, Abu Dharr; As'ad ibn Zurarah, another tribal chief, and Qais ibn Nasibah of the Banu Sulaim tribe. Even the vilest enemies of the Holy Prophet ﷺ	like Akhnas ibn Shariq, Abu Sufyan and, of all persons, Abu Jahl himself are reported to have stealthily crept in the darkness of night to the house of the Holy Prophet ﷺ to hear him reciting the Holy Qur'an, and to have been so entranced by the Word of Allah that they could not tear themselves away from the place till it was dawn. Yet they continued to be stubborn in their denial, for, as Abu Jahl confessed in so many words, they had been successfully vying with the tribe of Banu ` Abd Munaf in all possible virtues, but now that their rivals had produced a prophet, they could not come up with something to match the claim.</p><p>In short, the Arabs failed to take up the challenge of the Holy Qur'an, and admitted their helplessness; nor has anyone else succeeded in the attempt since then - all of which goes to show that the Holy Qur'an can only be the Word of Allah, not of man.</p><p>(3)	The Holy Qur'an made many predictions about future events, and things turned out to be exactly as it had declared. For example, the infidels of Makkah were not prepared to believe the prophecy that the people of Rum روم ، or the Byzantians, would finally rout the Persians after having suffered an initial defeat. The infidels made it a point of honour, and put a wager on it, but were humiliated to see the prophecy come true before the stipulated period of ten years was over.</p><p>(4)	The Holy Qur'an gives a clear account of some of the earlier prophets, of their Shari’ ah and of their peoples, and of many historical events since the beginning of the world. Even the best scholars among the Jews and the Christians did not possess such exact information. The Holy Prophet ﷺ ، who had never attended a school nor been in the company of a learned man, could not have provided all these details for himself without having received the knowledge from Allah.</p><p>(5)	Several verses of the Holy Qur'an disclosed what certain people had tried to keep concealed in their hearts, and they had to confess that this was just what they had been thinking. We shall cite only two instances.</p><p>اِذْ ھَمَّتْ طَّاۗىِٕفَتٰنِ مِنْكُمْ اَنْ تَفْشَلَا</p><p>"When two of your battalions thought of falling away..." (3:122)</p><p>يَقُولُونَ فِي أَنفُسِهِمْ لَوْلَا يُعَذِّبُنَا اللَّـهُ بِمَا نَقُولُ</p><p>"They say in their hearts, Why does Allah not punish us for what we say?'</p><p>(6)	The Holy Qur'an predicted that such and such men would not be able to do such and such things, and then it turned out that, in spite of having the power, they could not do these things. The Jews claimed to be the 'Chosen of God' and His friends. Since one is always eager to meet one's friends, the Holy Qur'an asked them to substantiate their claim by wishing for death and for going back to Allah, but at the same time declared وَلَا يَتَمَنَّوْنَهُ أَبَدًا :"And they shall never wish for it" (62:7). Now, expressing a wish for death should not be difficult for anyone, if he wishes to establish his bonafides; for the Jews in particular, it would have been an easy way of refuting the Holy Qur'an. But, in spite of all their hatred for the Holy Prophet ﷺ they knew in their hearts that the Holy Qur'an was the Book of Allah, and feared that if they told a lie in this matter, they would actually die. And they kept quiet.</p><p>(7)	When the Holy Qur'an is recited (in Arabic, of course), it affects in a strange and indefinable way the heart of even a casual listener, Muslim or non-Muslim. History reports many instances of people accepting Islam merely because they happened to be passing by when the Holy Prophet ﷺ was reciting the Holy Qur'an - such was the case, for example, of the blessed Companion Jubair ibn Mut'im ؓ .</p><p>(8)	The best book in the world, if read four or five times, begins to lose its charm even for the most fervent admirer. But the peculiar quality of the Holy Qur'an, and of it alone, is that the more one reads or recites it, the more eager one becomes to do so again and again. Even among the sacred books of the world, the Holy Qur'an is unique in this respect.</p><p>(9)	The sacred books of many religions have been lost or no longer exist in an integral and authentic form. But Allah has promised in the Holy Qur'an that He Himself will protect this Book, and preserve it against the slightest change upto the end of time. During the fourteen centuries of the history of Islam, millions of copies, written by hand or printed, have been spread all over the globe as no other sacred book has been. But in this respect the greatest miracle of the Holy Qur'an is that in all the ages and in all the places where Muslims have lived, there have been millions of people who have known the Book by heart without the alteration of a single consonant or vowel. So, Allah has preserved His Last Book not merely in the shape of written words, but, above all in the hearts of men. Allah is Ever-Living, so will His Word live forever beyond the interference of created beings.</p><p>(10)	There is no other book which should comprehend all the forms of knowledge and wisdom in so short a space as does the Holy Qur'an, fulfilling all possible spiritual needs of man, and providing him with guidance for all the spheres of his internal or external, individual or social activity.</p><p>(11)	It is not merely a theoretical guidance that the Holy Qur'an has offered. Which other book, sacred or otherwise, has had such a vast and deep impact on the history of mankind in such a short time? Which other book has brought about such a radical change in the individual and collective life of millions of men within the space of a few years? For when the Holy Prophet ﷺ departed from this world, Islam had, in spite of all opposition and without the modern media of communication, already established a new order of life all over the Arabian peninsula, and within the next few decades the message of the Holy Qur'an had reached India on one side, and Spain on the other. Can such pervasiveness be anything but a miracle?</p><p>Answers to some doubts</p><p>Before we leave the subject, we may also deal with certain doubts which have been expressed with regard to the miraculous nature of the Holy Qur'an. It has, for example, been suggested that some people, at one time or another, must have taken up the challenge of the Holy Qur'an, and produced something comparable to it, but their compositions have not been preserved and have not come down to us. But the objection is fanciful. The number of people hostile to Islam has, in any age, been much larger than that of Muslims, and they have possessed far greater and much more efficacious means of publicity than Muslims ever have. If any seemingly successful attempt had been made to produce an imitation of the Holy Qur'an, it would not only have been preserved but also been widely publicised. After all, the infidels of Makkah used to bring all kinds of wild and fanatic charges against the Holy Prophet ﷺ For instance, they accused him of having learnt all that he taught from the monk, Buhira whom he had met only once in Syria; or, they imputed the Holy Qur'an to the authorship of a Roman slave who, being an alien, could not have been a master of the Arabic language and of the characteristically Arab form of eloquence - the Holy Qur'an itself has reported this calumny. But even they, for all their venom, never pretended to have produced something resembling the Holy Qur'an. Anyhow, whatever funny or flimsy attempts have been made to match the Holy Qur'an are on record in the books of history. For example, Musaylama کّذاب of Yemen, known as the Great Liar, came out with a string of obscenities as a reply to the Word of Allah, but his own people dismissed them for what they were worth. At a later date, the famous man of letters, ` Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa' thought of trying his wits against the Holy Qur'an, but soon gave up in despair.ll</p><p>11. A latter-day adventurist has been the Irish novelist James Joyce who congratulated himself on having faced up to the Challenge of the Holy Qur'an in his "Finnegans Wake". Soon recognized to be at least very funny, this book can already be seen to be going up in a smoke of jokes.</p><p>The point, however, is that if someone had really produced even three or four verses comparable to those of the Holy Qur'an, the matter could not have gone without being passed down to us at least by the enemies of Islam. Of late a different kind of objection has sometimes been raised. They say that the impossibility of successfully imitating a book does not by itself argue that it is the Word of Allah or a miracle, for poets like Shakespeare or Hafiz too have never been imitated successfully. But a miracle is, by definition, something which occurs without the like means having been employed. Every poet or writer in the world, even the greatest, is known to have undergone a process of education and training in his art, and to have made use of certain means and methods which are humanly possible. But the Holy Prophet ﷺ ، as we have said before, did not even know reading or writing, and was never interested in learning the arts of eloquence. Moreover, it is not merely a question of literary style. In considering the Holy Qur'an as a miracle, we must, above all, take into account the spiritual efficacy and. the transforming power it has, and which it has been showing these last fourteen hundred years.12</p><p>12. We may conclude this discussion by quoting a passage from the well-known scholar of comparative religion and traditional civilizations, Frithjof Schuon: The superhuman value of a revealed Book cannot be apparent in an absolute fashion from its earthly form, nor from its conceptual content alone; in reality, the Divine and therefore miraculous quality of such a Book is of an order quite other than that of the most perfect dialectic or the most brilliant poetry. This quality shows itself first of all in a richness of meanings - a feature that is incapable of being imitated - and also in what might be called the underlying divine 'magic' which shines through the formal expression and proves itself by its results in souls, and in the world, in space and in time. Only this Divine substance can explain the spiritual and theurgic efficacy of the Qura'nic verses, with its consequences in miraculously rapaid expansion of primitive Islam in the conditions in which it took place, as well as in the stability of Moslem institutions and the extraordinary fruitfulness of Islamic doctrine." ("Dimensions of Islam", London, 1970 page 55).</p>
The Guidance which the Holy Qur'an provides to man rests on two basic principles - Tauhid توحید (the Oneness of God) and Risalah (Prophethood). The two preceding verses (21 and 22) affirm the Oneness of God in presenting certain acts peculiar to Allah alone as a proof; these two verses (23 and 24) affirm the prophethood of Muhammad ﷺ in presenting the word of Allah as a proof. In both the places, the mode of argument is the same. The preceding verses mention certain things which no one could or can do except Allah - for example, creating the sky and the earth, sending down water from the sky, bringing forth fruits with water; and the point of the argument is that since no one except Allah can do these things, no one else can be worthy of being worshipped. These two verses refer to a kind of speech which cannot possibly come from anyone except Allah, and the like of which no human being can ever produce just as the helplessness of man and other creatures in the matter of creating the sky and the earth etc. is a demonstration of the fact that these are the acts of Allah alone, in the same way the helplessness of all created beings in the matter of producing something equal to or resembling the Word of Allah is a demonstration of the fact that this is the Word of Allah alone. Here the Holy Qur'an challenges all men the world over, those of the present and those of the future, to produce even a small passage like this, if they suppose it to be the work of a man, for other men may also be capable of accomplishing what one man has achieved. In case individuals should fail in such an effort, the Holy Qur'an allows them the facility of calling to their aid all possible helpers - they could even hold an international 'workshop' for the purpose. The next verse fore-warns them that such a venture would never succeed, and threatens with the fires of hell, for having once acknowledged his inability to produce something to equal the Holy Qur'an, which is a clear evidence of its being the word, not of man but of a Being who stands above all created things, if a man still persists in his disbelief, he is only seeking a place in hell. The Holy Qur'an asks men to beware of such a fate.The Miraculous Qur'an is a prophethood of Muhammad ﷺThus, the verses, in emphasizing the miraculous character of the Holy Qur'an, present it as the evidence of the prophethood of Muhammad ﷺ and of his truth. No doubt, the miracles of the Holy Prophet ﷺ are innumerable, each more marvelous than the other, but in mentioning only one of these here - one that pertains to the sphere of knowledge, namely, the Holy Qur'an - Allah has pointed out that this is the greatest. Even among the miracles of all the prophets (علیہم السلام) this particular miracle has a special distinction. It has been the way of Allah to show His omnipotence by manifesting some miracles through each prophet or messenger. But each miracle appears with a certain prophet, and ends with him. The Holy Qur'an, on the contrary, is a miracle which is to survive till the end of time.As for the phrase: وَإِن كُنتُمْ فِي رَ‌يْبٍ :"And if you are in doubt," we may remark that the verse employs the Arabic word, raib رَ‌يْب for 'doubt'. According to Imam Raghib al-Isfahani, raib رَ‌يْب signifies a kind of hesitation or indecision or suspicion which has no basis, and can therefore be easily overcome with the help of a little reflection. That is why the Holy Qur'an says that having this kind of doubt (raib رَ‌يْب) is not consistent with being a man of knowledge, even if he were not a Muslim:وَلَا يَرْ‌تَابَ الَّذِينَ أُوتُوا الْكِتَابَ وَالْمُؤْمِنُونَ"So that the people of the Book and Muslims should have no doubt". (74:31)Similarly, at the very beginning of the Surah Al-Bagarah the Holy Qur'an refers to itself as the Book :"In which there is no doubt (raib رَ‌يْب)." In the present verse again it uses the word raib رَ‌يْب to say: وَإِن كُنتُمْ فِي رَ‌يْبٍ :"if you are in doubt", the implication being that the truths enunciated by the Holy Qur'an are so clear and evident that there is no room for any hesitation or indecision or suspicion to arise except for those who do not possess knowledge.As for the people who hesitate in accepting the Holy Qur'an as the Word of Allah, and suspect that it is the work of the Holy Prophet ﷺ or of some other man, the verse proposes an easy test - they should produce a passage (a Surah) resembling or equalling the Holy Qur'an in order to substantiate their claim; but if they fail, they should finally acknowledge the Holy Qur'an to be undoubtedly the Word of Allah. The Arabic word "Surah" means a "limited or definite piece"; as a technical term, a Surah is a passage of the Holy Qur'an which has been set apart from other passages by Divine Commandment (Wahy وحی), there being 114 Surahs in the Holy Qur'an, some long and others very short. The present verse uses the word Surah without the definite article "Al', and hence includes the shortest of the Surahs in the challenge thrown out to the doubters.At this point, the objection can arise that the failure of one man or one group of men does not necessarily argue the inability of another man or group in the matter. The Holy Qur'an meets this objection by declaring:وَادْعُوْا شُهَدَاۗءَكُمْ مِّنْ دُوْنِ اللّٰهِ اِنْ كُنْتُمْ صٰدِقِيْنَ"And do call your supporters other than Allah, if you are true".The Arabic word used here is Shuhada شُهَدَا ، the plural or Shahid which signifies 'one who is present'- a witness is called a Shahid شھید ، for he has to be present in the court of law. In this verse, the word Shuhada- شُهَدَا '' refers either to men in general - implying that the doubters could call to their aid any men whatsoever from anywhere in the world -, or specifically to the idols of the disbelievers of Makkah who thought that these blocks of stone would appear on the, Day of Judgment as witnesses in their favour.The next verse foretells that the doubters shall never succeed, even if they tried with all their individual or collective might, in producing a passage which could resemble the Holy Qur'an. If they should still persist in their denial, the verse threatens them with the fire of Hell, which has already been prepared for such stubborn disbelievers.The infidels of Makkah, history tells us, were ready to give up their very lives for the purpose of obliterating Islam. In throwing out to them this challenge, the Holy Qur'an gave them an easy chance of accomplishing their purpose, and even hurt their tribal sense of honour by predicting that they would never be able to take up the challenge. And yet not a single contender came up for the trial, which was a clear admission of their helplessness and an acknowledgment of the Holy Qur'an being the Word of Allah. This fact establishes the Holy Qur'an as the evident miracle of the Holy Prophet ﷺ . Since the challenge still stands, the miracle too lives on, and shall live to the end of the world.The Holy Qur'an: A living miracleAs for the Holy Qur'an being a miracle, the subject has been thoroughly discussed in scores of books by the greatest scholars in all the ages and in different languages. We may mention a few outstanding ones: Nazm نظم al-Qur'an by al-Jahiz, written in the 3rd century A.H.; 'I'jaz al-Qur'an' by Abu 'Abdullah Wasiti, written early in the 4th century; a small book, اعجاز 'I'jaz al-Qur'an' by Ibn 'Isa Rabbani, written later in the 4th century; a long and comprehensive book, اعجاز 'I'jaz al-Qur'an' by Qadi Abu Bakr Bagillani, written early in the 5th century; the subject has also been discussed at length in well-known books like Al-Itqan' by Jalal al-Din al-Suyati, 'Al-Khasa'is al-Kubra' by the same author, 'At-Tafsir al-Kabir' by Imam Razi, and 'Ash-Shifa' by Qadi 'Iyad; more recently still, اعجاز 'I'jaz al-Qur'an', by Mustafa Sadiq al-Rafi'i', and 'Al-Wahy al-Muhammadi' by Sayyid Rashid Rid-a; and finally 'I'jaz al-Qur'an' by Shabbir Ahmad Uthmani. We may, in passing, draw attention to another peculiar quality of the Holy Qur'an that, beside comprehensive and voluminous commentaries, scores of books have been written on different aspects of the Book of Allah and on the innumerable considerations which arise from it.We cannot provide even a brief resume of all that has been written on the subject, the literature being so vast. We shall, however, give a few brief indications as to why the Holy Qur'an is held to be a miracle of the Prophet of Islam: ﷺQualities that make the Qur'an a miracle(1)	The Holy Qur'an is incomparable for its comprehensiveness even among the Sacred Books of the world; on the one hand, it brings to man the ultimate knowledge of a metaphysical order, and, on the other, provides guidance for all the spheres of human life, spiritual or physical, individual or collective. Those who suspect the Book to have been the product of a human agency should remind themselves of the simple fact that it appeared at a time and in a place which offered no facilities for acquiring the kind of education which is necessary for composing such a book - in fact, the Arabs were in those days known as the Ummiyyun, 'the illiterates', and that the Book came through the Holy Prophet ﷺ who could not even read or write, and who had not tried to learn even the arts of poetry and rhetoric on which the Arabs prided themselves. This fact, in itself, is nothing short of a miracle.(2)	The Holy Qur'an is, no doubt, guidance for all men without any distinction of time or place, but the first to be addressed were the Arabs of the Age of Ignorance. In affirming that no human being could produce even a few verses comparable to its own, the Holy Qur'an did not confine the challenge merely to the richness of meaning and the quality of wisdom, but included the mode of expression as well. Now, the 'illiterates' of Arabia had no pretensions to wisdom or knowledge, but they certainly fancied themselves for their eloquence - to them, the aliens were just 'The Dumb' (Al-'Ajam العجم). And some of them were so mad in their hostility to the Holy Prophet ﷺ that, if they could see a chance of hurting him in doing so, they would readily have slit their own throats out of sheer spite. And yet no one came forward to accept the challenge. This helplessness in a contest which should have been easy for a people so gifted with a spontaneous eloquence - does it not argue that the Holy Qur'an is not the word of man, but the Word of Allah? As a matter of fact, the most discriminating among the contemporary Arabs did admit, though in private, that the Holy Qur'an was inimitable; some of them had the honesty to say so in public and some accepted Islam, while others in spite of this admission, could not give up the ways of their forefathers, or sufficiently overcome tribal rivalries, particularly their hostility to Banu ` Abd Munaf, the tribe of the Holy Prophet ﷺ to embrace Islam.Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (رح) has, in his 'Al-Khasa'is al-Kubra', reported a number of incidents which illustrate the point. When the Holy Prophet ﷺ and the Holy Qur'an began to attract the attention of people even outside Makkah, the enemies of Islam became worried about the huge crowds that would assemble there for the annual pilgrimage and would be likely to fall under his spell. Their tribal chiefs wanted to find an effective stratagem to prevent such a situation from arising, and they referred the problem to Walid ibn Mughirah, the eldest and the wisest among them. To begin with, they suggested that they could tell the pilgrims that the Holy Qur'an was (May Allah forgive us for reporting a blasphemy) only the ravings of a lunatic. But Walid could foresee that when the pilgrims heard the Holy Prophet ﷺ speaking with such lucidity and eloquence, they would immediately know that the allegation was not true. Next they thought of dismissing him as a mere poet. But Walid warned them that, an understanding of the arts of poetry being innate in most Arabs, the pilgrims would easily see that he was no poet. Then, they considered the possibility of putting him down as one of the soothsayers. But Walid feared that they would again discover how false the imputation was, and would only turn against the accusers. In summing up his own impression of the Holy Qur'an, he said: "By God, there is not a single man among you who knows more about Arabic poetry than me. And, by God, I find in this speech a kind of sweetness and grace which I have never found in the speech of any poet or of any eloquent man." After a good deal of thought, he finally advised them to accuse the Holy Prophet ﷺ of being a sorcerer who employed his black art in separating sons from fathers, and wives from husbands.Exactly the same was the impression made by the Holy Qur'an on many other people, who expressed similar views - for example, Nadr ibn Harith, a tribal chief; Unais, the brother of the blessed Companion, Abu Dharr; As'ad ibn Zurarah, another tribal chief, and Qais ibn Nasibah of the Banu Sulaim tribe. Even the vilest enemies of the Holy Prophet ﷺ	like Akhnas ibn Shariq, Abu Sufyan and, of all persons, Abu Jahl himself are reported to have stealthily crept in the darkness of night to the house of the Holy Prophet ﷺ to hear him reciting the Holy Qur'an, and to have been so entranced by the Word of Allah that they could not tear themselves away from the place till it was dawn. Yet they continued to be stubborn in their denial, for, as Abu Jahl confessed in so many words, they had been successfully vying with the tribe of Banu ` Abd Munaf in all possible virtues, but now that their rivals had produced a prophet, they could not come up with something to match the claim.In short, the Arabs failed to take up the challenge of the Holy Qur'an, and admitted their helplessness; nor has anyone else succeeded in the attempt since then - all of which goes to show that the Holy Qur'an can only be the Word of Allah, not of man.(3)	The Holy Qur'an made many predictions about future events, and things turned out to be exactly as it had declared. For example, the infidels of Makkah were not prepared to believe the prophecy that the people of Rum روم ، or the Byzantians, would finally rout the Persians after having suffered an initial defeat. The infidels made it a point of honour, and put a wager on it, but were humiliated to see the prophecy come true before the stipulated period of ten years was over.(4)	The Holy Qur'an gives a clear account of some of the earlier prophets, of their Shari’ ah and of their peoples, and of many historical events since the beginning of the world. Even the best scholars among the Jews and the Christians did not possess such exact information. The Holy Prophet ﷺ ، who had never attended a school nor been in the company of a learned man, could not have provided all these details for himself without having received the knowledge from Allah.(5)	Several verses of the Holy Qur'an disclosed what certain people had tried to keep concealed in their hearts, and they had to confess that this was just what they had been thinking. We shall cite only two instances.اِذْ ھَمَّتْ طَّاۗىِٕفَتٰنِ مِنْكُمْ اَنْ تَفْشَلَا"When two of your battalions thought of falling away..." (3:122)يَقُولُونَ فِي أَنفُسِهِمْ لَوْلَا يُعَذِّبُنَا اللَّـهُ بِمَا نَقُولُ"They say in their hearts, Why does Allah not punish us for what we say?'(6)	The Holy Qur'an predicted that such and such men would not be able to do such and such things, and then it turned out that, in spite of having the power, they could not do these things. The Jews claimed to be the 'Chosen of God' and His friends. Since one is always eager to meet one's friends, the Holy Qur'an asked them to substantiate their claim by wishing for death and for going back to Allah, but at the same time declared وَلَا يَتَمَنَّوْنَهُ أَبَدًا :"And they shall never wish for it" (62:7). Now, expressing a wish for death should not be difficult for anyone, if he wishes to establish his bonafides; for the Jews in particular, it would have been an easy way of refuting the Holy Qur'an. But, in spite of all their hatred for the Holy Prophet ﷺ they knew in their hearts that the Holy Qur'an was the Book of Allah, and feared that if they told a lie in this matter, they would actually die. And they kept quiet.(7)	When the Holy Qur'an is recited (in Arabic, of course), it affects in a strange and indefinable way the heart of even a casual listener, Muslim or non-Muslim. History reports many instances of people accepting Islam merely because they happened to be passing by when the Holy Prophet ﷺ was reciting the Holy Qur'an - such was the case, for example, of the blessed Companion Jubair ibn Mut'im ؓ .(8)	The best book in the world, if read four or five times, begins to lose its charm even for the most fervent admirer. But the peculiar quality of the Holy Qur'an, and of it alone, is that the more one reads or recites it, the more eager one becomes to do so again and again. Even among the sacred books of the world, the Holy Qur'an is unique in this respect.(9)	The sacred books of many religions have been lost or no longer exist in an integral and authentic form. But Allah has promised in the Holy Qur'an that He Himself will protect this Book, and preserve it against the slightest change upto the end of time. During the fourteen centuries of the history of Islam, millions of copies, written by hand or printed, have been spread all over the globe as no other sacred book has been. But in this respect the greatest miracle of the Holy Qur'an is that in all the ages and in all the places where Muslims have lived, there have been millions of people who have known the Book by heart without the alteration of a single consonant or vowel. So, Allah has preserved His Last Book not merely in the shape of written words, but, above all in the hearts of men. Allah is Ever-Living, so will His Word live forever beyond the interference of created beings.(10)	There is no other book which should comprehend all the forms of knowledge and wisdom in so short a space as does the Holy Qur'an, fulfilling all possible spiritual needs of man, and providing him with guidance for all the spheres of his internal or external, individual or social activity.(11)	It is not merely a theoretical guidance that the Holy Qur'an has offered. Which other book, sacred or otherwise, has had such a vast and deep impact on the history of mankind in such a short time? Which other book has brought about such a radical change in the individual and collective life of millions of men within the space of a few years? For when the Holy Prophet ﷺ departed from this world, Islam had, in spite of all opposition and without the modern media of communication, already established a new order of life all over the Arabian peninsula, and within the next few decades the message of the Holy Qur'an had reached India on one side, and Spain on the other. Can such pervasiveness be anything but a miracle?Answers to some doubtsBefore we leave the subject, we may also deal with certain doubts which have been expressed with regard to the miraculous nature of the Holy Qur'an. It has, for example, been suggested that some people, at one time or another, must have taken up the challenge of the Holy Qur'an, and produced something comparable to it, but their compositions have not been preserved and have not come down to us. But the objection is fanciful. The number of people hostile to Islam has, in any age, been much larger than that of Muslims, and they have possessed far greater and much more efficacious means of publicity than Muslims ever have. If any seemingly successful attempt had been made to produce an imitation of the Holy Qur'an, it would not only have been preserved but also been widely publicised. After all, the infidels of Makkah used to bring all kinds of wild and fanatic charges against the Holy Prophet ﷺ For instance, they accused him of having learnt all that he taught from the monk, Buhira whom he had met only once in Syria; or, they imputed the Holy Qur'an to the authorship of a Roman slave who, being an alien, could not have been a master of the Arabic language and of the characteristically Arab form of eloquence - the Holy Qur'an itself has reported this calumny. But even they, for all their venom, never pretended to have produced something resembling the Holy Qur'an. Anyhow, whatever funny or flimsy attempts have been made to match the Holy Qur'an are on record in the books of history. For example, Musaylama کّذاب of Yemen, known as the Great Liar, came out with a string of obscenities as a reply to the Word of Allah, but his own people dismissed them for what they were worth. At a later date, the famous man of letters, ` Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa' thought of trying his wits against the Holy Qur'an, but soon gave up in despair.ll11. A latter-day adventurist has been the Irish novelist James Joyce who congratulated himself on having faced up to the Challenge of the Holy Qur'an in his "Finnegans Wake". Soon recognized to be at least very funny, this book can already be seen to be going up in a smoke of jokes.The point, however, is that if someone had really produced even three or four verses comparable to those of the Holy Qur'an, the matter could not have gone without being passed down to us at least by the enemies of Islam. Of late a different kind of objection has sometimes been raised. They say that the impossibility of successfully imitating a book does not by itself argue that it is the Word of Allah or a miracle, for poets like Shakespeare or Hafiz too have never been imitated successfully. But a miracle is, by definition, something which occurs without the like means having been employed. Every poet or writer in the world, even the greatest, is known to have undergone a process of education and training in his art, and to have made use of certain means and methods which are humanly possible. But the Holy Prophet ﷺ ، as we have said before, did not even know reading or writing, and was never interested in learning the arts of eloquence. Moreover, it is not merely a question of literary style. In considering the Holy Qur'an as a miracle, we must, above all, take into account the spiritual efficacy and. the transforming power it has, and which it has been showing these last fourteen hundred years.1212. We may conclude this discussion by quoting a passage from the well-known scholar of comparative religion and traditional civilizations, Frithjof Schuon: The superhuman value of a revealed Book cannot be apparent in an absolute fashion from its earthly form, nor from its conceptual content alone; in reality, the Divine and therefore miraculous quality of such a Book is of an order quite other than that of the most perfect dialectic or the most brilliant poetry. This quality shows itself first of all in a richness of meanings - a feature that is incapable of being imitated - and also in what might be called the underlying divine 'magic' which shines through the formal expression and proves itself by its results in souls, and in the world, in space and in time. Only this Divine substance can explain the spiritual and theurgic efficacy of the Qura'nic verses, with its consequences in miraculously rapaid expansion of primitive Islam in the conditions in which it took place, as well as in the stability of Moslem institutions and the extraordinary fruitfulness of Islamic doctrine." ("Dimensions of Islam", London, 1970 page 55).