The Qur’anic Challenge of Producing a Surah Like It

A Christian Critique

Brother Daniel

Introduction

According to Islam, the Qur’an is the word of God which is given as the final revelation to the world. It was sent down by God to Muhammad from the “preserved tablet” through angel Gabriel (Surah 43:2-4; 85:21-22; 17:85; 25:32). Muslims believe that every word and letter was sent down from Allah, which makes the Qur’an free from any kind of human influence. They often claim that its eloquence is unparalleled by any human literature or speech, proof that the Qur’an is from Allah. This claim of supernatural eloquence is found in different Surahs of the Qur’an. In the following Surahs, Allah allegedly challenges those who doubt the prophethood of Muhammad to produce a single Surah that resembles the Surahs in the Qur’an:

And if you are in doubt about what We have sent down upon Our Servant [Muhammad], then produce a surah the like thereof and call upon your witnesses other than Allah, if you should be truthful. But if you do not – and you will never be able to – then fear the Fire, whose fuel is men and stones, prepared for the disbelievers. (2:23-24)

And it was not [possible] for this Qur’an to be produced by other than Allah, but [it is] a confirmation of what was before it and a detailed explanation of the [former] Scripture, about which there is no doubt, from the Lord of the worlds. Or do they say [about the Prophet], “He invented it?” Say, “Then bring forth a surah like it and call upon [for assistance] whomever you can besides Allah, if you should be truthful.” (10:37-38)

According to the following verse, no one can produce a book like it:

Say, “If mankind and the jinn gathered in order to produce the like of this Qur’an, they could not produce the like of it, even if they were to each other assistants.” (17:88)

The following hadith is related from Muhammad in al-Bukhari’s collection:

Narrated Abu Huraira: The Prophet said, “I have been given the keys of eloquent speech and given victory with awe (cast into the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping last night, the keys of the treasures of the earth were brought to me till they were put in my hand.” Abu Huraira added: Allah’s Apostle left (this world) and now you people are carrying those treasures from place to place. (Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 9, Book 87, Number 127)

According to the foregoing hadith, Muhammad used to believe that he was given fluency in speech as a gift from God. He presented this condition as evidence that he is a true prophet, and the Qur’an is from God. That is why we hear Muslims claiming that the Qur’an is self-evident for its truthfulness when someone recites it in Arabic. Can literary beauty be evidence for the truthfulness of a certain book? In this article, we shall examine this oft-repeated claim of Muslims.

The Argument for the Literary Beauty of the Qur’an

Our Muslim friends claim that since there is no one who can produce something which resembles the Qur’an, this proves that the Qur’an is a revelation from God. Concerning the authenticity of such a miracle, in an online article, a Muslim Sheikh, Bhanji stated:

God offered the Qur’an as the Prophet’s sign in the same way as He offered signs for all the other prophets. He sent the things most appropriate to the time in which they were sent. Thus Prophet Musa (as) had the power to divide the sea with his hand and rod, and to let the rock burst forth with water in the desert, and all his other signs in a time of magic […] If the Prophet had performed some miracle other than the Qur’an, it would have 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 Qur’an could never have any doubts about its extraordinary eloquence, for they were all aware of all the mysteries of rhetoric and had living among them masters of language and literary composition, hence their admitting that the Qur’an could not have been the production of Prophet Muhammad. (Bhanji, 2021)

According to the Muslim Sheikh, Allah gave Muhammad the “miracle of supernatural eloquence” because it was a “relevant miracle” for its time and place more than any other miracle.

Since Allah supposedly stated in the Quran that none can imitate the Qur’an and produce something which matches its eloquence, in the Muslim mind, anyone who attempts to produce a Surah or a book like it must fail. Sophia wrote: “The theories that sought to interpret this failure can be broadly divided into those which located the miracle in God’s rendering men incapable of such imitation, and those which argued instead that the miracle consisted in the stylistic features of the text and its extraordinary eloquence.” (Sophia, 2002, p. iii)

It seems those Muslims who believe that the failure to imitate the Qur’an is rooted in God’s disallowance of the ability for men to do so, are convinced in their minds that men by nature are capable of producing a competent text. Yet, the position of the Qur’an which is supported by a hadith in which Muhammad claimed to be given a supernatural eloquence is that since the Qur’an’s eloquence is supernatural, it is not possible for men to imitate it. In this sense, the claim is objectionable and proves that the Qur’an is not from God. We will mention four reasons why this claim is wrong:

A Deceitful Test

Muslims have no inclination to accept or tolerate the challenge posed by the Qur’an because the Qur’an had already said that the challenge cannot be met, binding those who accept it as a true word of God not to try if the test really works. Thus, the Qur’an’s declaration of victory before the battle begins makes the test deceitful and meaningless.

A “Miracle” that only Few can Understand

To begin with, this “miracle of beauty” was said to be in Arabic only, hence it is a defilement of Allah’s sovereignty by limiting the miracle of Allah to only one language. Additionally, because it demands knowledge of Arabic, it discriminates against the overwhelming majority of non-Arabic-speaking people of the world. A non-universal test that neglects the vast majority of people cannot be a true test.

The Challenge had Already been Met

Throughout history, non-Muslims have been claiming to have produced books and chapters that resemble the Qur’an, and have found the “literary beauty” of the Qur’an less exciting. For example, a book called “The True Furqan” (al-Furqān al-ḥaqq in Arabic) which was written by Arab Christians as a response to the challenge of the Qur’an had troubled so many Muslims around the world. It is reported that many Arabic-speaking people found it better than the Qur’an. Since the challenge of the Qur’an is directed toward non-Muslims, how can Muslims say that the challenge had never been met? Even numerous verses in the Qur’an indicate that during the time of Muhammad those who rejected his prophethood did not find the Qur’an attractive. They rejected it as an ordinary collection of ancient fables (16:24; 101; 21:5; 25:4-6; 6:25; 8:31; 10:38; 11:11, 13, 35; 16:24, 83; 27:68; 46: 8-9, 17; 52:33; 68:15; 83:13; 6:33; 10:41; 35: 4). However, Muslims have denied this fact and argued in the light of the Qur’anic assertion which makes their denial based on pre-conception that the Qur’an is true. According to Muslims’ judgment, no one had been able to meet the challenge. This challenge had, in the opinion of non-Muslims, been frequently and successfully met, and the Qur’an was shown to be incorrect. People who believe in the Qur’an are not allowed to try the challenge because they are captives of the Qur’an, but non-Muslims tried the challenge and are convinced to be successful. Muslims can accuse those people of being ignorant, hateful, or satanic; however, such accusations are nothing more than proof that Muslims are jailbirds of the Qur’an.

Subjective Standard

The basic premise of this challenge is that beauty is a measurement of truth. This cannot be acceptable for two reasons. The first is that there is no fixed standard for beauty. As the old saying goes, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” What is beautiful to someone may be ugly to another. For example, pentatonic music is popular with people in the part of the world where I live, but for others, the reduction of two of the seven voices obscures the beauty. Many people in this part of the world also think that heptatonic scale or Seven-note Scale music is unattractive due to the addition of two “extra” tones. This shows that it is difficult to set an objective standard for beauty. We can witness this even in our daily lives.

The second reason which makes the challenge to be unacceptable is that it is based on a false premise that every beautiful piece of literature is true. Beauty is as much a servant of falsehood as it is a servant of truth. Not every beautiful word is true, and not all unappealing words are false. Beauty should never be a measurement of truth and falsehood. We must not forget that many false prophets ensnare their followers using their persuasiveness. An uncut diamond is maybe not attractive in the eye of the observer but still, it is a diamond. What makes a message true or false is not its beauty but the content.

Conclusion

It is important to note that the argument for the matchlessness of the Qur’an wasn’t fully developed until four centuries after its compilation. Rippin stated that the Qur’an itself presents doubts as to its early formulation, and certainly creates suspicion concerning its inimitability. It wasn’t until the end of the tenth century that the idea of inimitability took its fullest expression, mainly in response to the Christian polemical writings of that time (Rippin, 1990, p. 26).

In fact, the right balance should not be a matter of whether a speech is beautiful or not, but whether it is true or not. This is why the apostle Paul wrote:

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. (I Cor. 2:1)

A message that is based solely on the beauty of speech is probably untrue. Understandably, a true message can be conveyed in a beautiful way, but the truth can be revealed if and only if the speech is proven it can stand the test of truth when it is divorced from an obscuring cloak of rhetoric. Mature people and civilized societies do not weigh in on the beauty of the message, but on conveying the message of truth. That is why in some Western countries, people who have made beautiful speeches during election campaigns are not elected, and people with relatively weak speech skills win the election. Among the less civilized communities, however, the beauty of speech and emotion are of great value.

To what extent can the messages of Christianity and Islam be true when we take off the colored glasses of “beautiful speech”? This is an important question to answer! If Muslims care about the truth, they have to be willing to weigh the message of their book with an honest balance, abandoning the meaningless challenge of “Create a Surah like it”.

References

Bhanji, Muslim. (2021). The Exclusive Eloquence of the Qur’an. Accessed on 18 May 2021, from https://www.al-islam.org/authenticity-quran-shaykh-muslim-bhanji/exclusive-eloquence-quran

Rippin, Andrew. Muslims, Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. Vol. 1, London, Routledge, 1990.

Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 9, Translated by Muhsin Khan. Accessed on 18 May 2021, from https://sunnah.com/bukhari/9

Vasalou, Sophia, and فاسالو صوفيا. “The Miraculous Eloquence of the Qur’an: General Trajectories and Individual Approaches. Journal of Qur’anic Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, 2002, pp. 23–53. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25728072. Accessed on 20 May 2021.

For more on this topic, I recommend visiting this page: https://www.answeringislam.org/Quran/Miracle/index.html