Allah laid down a challenge in the Qur'an to mankind in general and to
the Arabs in particular: "And if you are in doubt concerning that
which we have sent down to our slave (Muhammad) then produce a chapter
like it, and call your supporters and helpers besides Allah, if you are
truthful!" (Surah al-Baqarah 2:23) The Arabs in the time
of Muhammad, peace be upon him, had no civilization to speak of - no magnificent
roads or public buildings, nor scientific or medical institutions. In fact,
they lived a most primitive and barbarous existence. There was one thing
in which they excelled - that was their language. They were extremely found
of poetry, and prided themselves in their poetic abilities. They praised
each other, admonished - and even argued - in poetry. There was even an
annual market in Uhaz just for poetry - the finest of which was hung on
the door of the Ka'abah. The age of Muhammad was a time when the
Arabs were at the peak of their linguistic abilities. Indeed, one of the
finest poems ever written in Arabic was that of Labaid ibn Rabiyah, who's
poem, when recited at Uhaz, caused the Arabs to prostrate before him in
admiration. When this same Labaid began to hear the verses of Qur'an, he
embraced Islam, and gave up poetry altogether. When he was once asked to
recite some poetry he said: "What! After the Qur'an?" Indeed, many
of the Arabs entered into Islam just from hearing the Qur'an, because for
them it was a conclusive proof of its Divine origin. They knew that no
man could produce such eloquence. The challenge of the Qur'an for man to
produce its like is not, as some suppose, merely like the uniqueness of
Shakespeare, Shelly, Keats or Homer. The Qur'an differentiated itself in
its very structure. Poetry in Arabic falls into sixteen different "Bihar"
(rhythmic forms), and other than that they have the speech of soothsayers,
rhyming prose, and normal speech. The Qur'an's form did not fit into any
of these categories. It was this that made the Qur'an inimitable, and left
the pagan Arabs at a loss as to how they might combat it. Alqama bin Abdulmanaf
confirmed this when he addressed their leaders, the Quraish: "Oh Quraish,
a new calamity has befallen you. When Muhammad was a young man, he was
the most liked among you, the most truthful in speech and the most trustworthy,
until, when you saw grey hairs on his temple, he brought you his message.
You said that he was a sorcerer, but he is not, for we have seen such people
and their spitting and their knots. You said that he was a diviner, but
we have seen such people and their behaviour, and we have heard their rhymes
You said a soothsayer, but he is not a soothsayer, for we have heard their
rhymes; and you said a poet, but he is not a poet, for we have heard all
kinds of poetry. You said he was possessed, but he is not for we have seen
the possessed, and he shows no signs of their gasping and whispering and
delirium. Oh men of Quraysh, look to your affairs, for by Allah a serious
thing has befallen you."
The Quraish decided that the only convincing propaganda they could make
against the Prophet, peace be upon him, was that the magic of his speech
turned a man away from his father, wife, brother and family. So Abu Lahab
would wait on the road ways into Mecca in the Hajj season, and warn the
people from listening to Muhammad's speech. Tufayl ibn Amr, chief of the
Daws tribe and a distinguished poet, was one such man accosted by the Meccans,
as he himself mentioned: "I approached Mecca. As soon as the Quraish
leaders saw me, they came up to me and gave me a most hearty welcome and
accommodated me in a grand house. Their leaders and notables then gathered
and said: 'O Tufayl, you have come to our town. this man who claims that
he is a Prophet has ruined our authority and shattered our community. We
are afraid that he would succeed in undermining you and your authority
among your people just as he has done with us. Don't speak to the man.
On no account listen to anything he has to say. He has the speech of a
wizard, causing division between father and son, between brother and brother
and between husband and wife.' They went on telling me the most fantastic
stories and scared me by recounting tales of his incredible deeds. I made
up my mind then not to approach this man, or speak to him or listen to
anything he had to say. The following morning I went to the place of worship
to make tawaf around the Ka'abah as an act of worship to the idols that
we made pilgrimage to and glorified. I inserted cotton in my ears out of
fear that something of the speech of Muhammad would reach my hearing. As
soon as I entered the place of worship, I saw him standing near the Ka'abah.
He was praying in a fashion which was different from our prayer. His whole
manner of worship was different. The scene captivated me. His worship made
me tremble and I felt drawn to him, despite myself, until I was quite close
to him. Notwithstanding the precaution I had taken, God willed that some
of what he was saying should reach my hearing and I said to myself: 'What
are you doing, Tufayl? You are a perceptive poet. You can distinguish between
the good and the bad in the poetry. What prevents you from listening to
what this man is saying? If what comes from him is good, accept it, and
if it is bad, reject it.' I remained there until the Prophet left for his
home. I followed him as he entered his house, and I entered also and said:
'O Muhammad, your people have said certain things to me about you. By God,
they kept on frightening me away from your message so that I even blocked
my ears to keep out your words. Despite this, God caused me to hear something
of it and I found it good. So tell me more about your mission.' The Prophet,
peace be upon him, did and recited to me Surah al-Falaq. I swear by God,
I had never heard such beautiful words before. Neither was a more noble
or just mission ever described to me. Thereupon, I stretched out my hand
to him in allegiance and testified that there is none worthy of worship
except Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah. This is how I
entered Islam. Even the leaders of Quraish were unable to resist hearing
the Qur'an."
The Seerah (i.e. Prophetic Biography) of Ibn Ishaq reports one incident
when Abu Sufyan, Abu Jahl and Al-Akhnas snuck out of their houses at night
to listen to the Prophet reciting the Qur'an - hiding in their places until
dawn. On the way home, they met and reproached one another, saying: "Don't
do it again, for if one of the weak minded fools see you, you will arouse
suspicion in their minds." This happened three nights in a row, until
they took from each other a solemn oath not to do it again. Utba bin Rabi'a,
a chief of Quraish, during one of their meetings in which they discussed
possible means to stop Muhammad's preaching, suggested to make some proposals
to Muhammad and "give him whatever he wants, so he will leave us in
peace." Their leaders agreed, so Utba went and sat by the Prophet,
peace be upon him, and said: "Oh my nephew, you are one of us as you
know, of the noblest of the tribe and hold a worthy position in ancestry.
You have come to your people with an important matter, dividing their community
thereby and ridiculing their customs, and you have insulted their gods
and their religion, and declared that their forefathers were unbelievers,
so listen to me and I will make some suggestions, and perhaps you will
be able to accept one of them." The Prophet agreed, and he went on:
"If
what you want is money, we will make you our chief so that no one can decide
anything apart from you; if you want sovereignty, we will make you king,
and if this ghost which comes to you, which you see, is such that you cannot
get rid of him, we will find a physician for you, and exhaust our means
in getting you cured, for often a familiar spirit gets possession of a
man until he can be cured of it." The Prophet, peace be upon him, listened
patiently, and then said: "Now listen to me". The Prophet, peace
be upon him, then recited from the beginning of Surah Fussilat (41)
until the verse of prostration, were the Prophet prostrated, and all the
while Utba listened attentively, sitting on his hands, and leaning on them.
The Prophet, peace be upon him, then said: "You have heard what you
have heard, Abu'l Waleed; the rest remains with you.' When Utba returned
to his companions they noticed that his expression completely altered,
and they asked him what had happened. He said that he had heard words that
he had never heard before, which were neither poetry, nor witchcraft.
"Take
my advice and do as I do, leave this man entirely alone for, by God, the
words which I have heard will be blazed abroad. If the other Arabs kill
him , others will have rid you of him; if he gets the better of the Arabs,
his sovereignty will be your sovereignty, his power your power, and you
will be prosperous through him.' They said: 'He has bewitched you
with his tongue". To which he answered: "You have my opinion, you
must do what you think fit'.
Such was the power of the Qur'an that Umar ibn Al-Khattab, who was on his
way to kill the Prophet, discovered his sister and her husband reciting
the Qur'an. Upon reading twenty verses, instead went to the Prophet, peace
be upon him, and embraced Islam. So how is it possible for an un-lettered
and un-learned man, not versed in poetry, to be able to produce
a work of unrivaled eloquence and perfect rhetoric, so that even the assembled
experts and masters of all the forms poetry and the Arabic language were
unable to produce the like of its smallest chapter? Indeed they chose rather
to fight the Prophet, peace be upon him. Thus the flower of their nobility
were killed, and their trade and reputation destroyed. How could they choose
this rather than counter the verses of Qur'an? It is as at-Tabari wrote
in the introduction to his Tafseer (commentary on the Qur'an): "There
can be no doubt that the highest and most resplendent degree of eloquence
is that which expresses its self with the greatest clarity, making the
intention of the speaker evident and facilitating the hearer's understanding.
But when it rises beyond this level of eloquence, and transcends what man
is capable of, so that none of the servants of God is able to match it,
it becomes a proof and a sign for the Messengers of the One, the All-powerful.
It is then the counterpart of raising the dead and curing of lepers and
the blind, themselves proofs and signs for the Messengers because they
transcend the realm of the highest attainment of man's medicine and therapy
. . .". Continuing on, at-Tabari says: ". . . it is obvious that
there is no discourse more eloquent, no wisdom more profound, no speech
more sublime, no form of expression more noble, than this clear discourse
and speech with which a single man challenged a people at a time when they
were acknowledged masters of the art of oratory and rhetoric, poetry and
prose, rhymed prose and soothsaying. He reduced their fancy to folly and
demonstrated the inadequacy of their logic. He dissociated himself from
their religion and summoned all of them to follow him, accept his mission,
testify to its truth, and affirm that he was the Messenger sent to them
by their Lord. He let them know that the demonstration of the truth of
what he said, the proof of the genuineness of his prophethood, was the
bayan (the clear discourse), the hikma (the wisdom), the furqan (the criterion
between truth and falsehood), which he conveyed to them in a language like
their language, in a speech whose meanings conformed to the meanings of
their speech. Then he told them that they were incapable of bringing anything
comparable to even a part of what he brought, and that they lacked the
power to do this. They all confessed their inability, voluntarily acknowledging
the truth of what he had brought, and bore witness to their own insufficiency
. . . ".
If we examine analytically the claim of anyone
to Prophethood then there are three possibilities concerning such a claim.
The first possibility is that the individual is a liar. The second possibility
is that the individual sincerely believes he or she is receiving revelation,
but is only suffering some form of delusion, and the third is that the
individual really is receiving revelation, and is speaking the truth. It
is interesting to mention some of the arguments raised by the Christian
and secularist Orientalists against Muhammad, peace be upon him, because
taken as a whole they offer a conclusive proof in his favour. One school
of thought has suggested, in essence, that Muhammad was a liar and a fabricator;
that he learnt from various rabbis and Christian priests, and during his
various retreats to the Mountain of Light, composed the Qur'an. Some have
tried to soften these accusations by claiming that he was motivated by
a sincere desire to reform his people, and so invented Islam to achieve
this. Others accuse him of more worldly interests and cite the large number
of wives as a proof of this. This approach has been rejected altogether
by the second school, who upon observing the evidence of Muhammad's character
which places him far above lying and deceit, and the reality of his life
style which was a paragon of simplicity and even poverty. Having found
no substantiating proof that he had any rabbi's or priests as teachers,
and the complete acceptance of his claim by his close family and wives,
to whom any duplicity would inevitably have been exposed, have claimed
that he was totally sincere in his claim to prophethood, and that he truly
believed that he was a prophet receiving revelation. They, also unable
to accept the possibility that Muhammad truly was a Prophet, attempt various
psycho-analytical explanations, such as the Qur'an being a voice of the
subconscious, or the revelation being bought on by trances induced by epileptic
fits. The basic claim being that Muhammad was deluded. We will not attempt
to refute these accusations in detail here. The cursory examination of
the opposing positions will suffice. What makes this a conclusive proof
in Muhammad's favour is that he could not be a calculating liar and be
deluded at the same time. A man who sincerely believes that he is a
Prophet, does not sit down thinking and planning what he will say the next
day, because he believes that God is going to reveal it to him! Yet
the opponents of Islam need both to explain the phenomena of Muhammad.
He needs to be a cunning and calculating deceiver in order to explain the
information and linguistic inimitability of the Qur'an, yet he needs to
be deluded in order to explain his obvious sincerity. If one takes
these two bodies of information together the only way to reconcile them
is the third possibility, that he was indeed what he claimed to be - the
Messenger of Allah.
Indeed, the Quraish found it very hard to produce a convincing argument
against Muhammad, peace be upon him. They knew that Muhammad, peace be
upon him, was unable to produce the likes of the Qur'an, either in its
eloquence, or in the knowledge it contained. They were also familiar with
his character and personality, and admitted that he had been the best,
most trusted and well liked amongst them. Even Abu Lahb, the Prophet's
persistent enemy, said: "We don't call you a liar, Muhammad, we just
don't believe in what you have brought." In reality, Abu Lahb's motivation
for refusing to accept Muhammad was tribal rivalry. When the Prophet, peace
be upon him, first received revelation to call his people openly to Islam,
he went to the top of Mount Saffa and called all the tribes of Mecca, until
they had all gathered or sent a representative. He said to them: "Oh
my people, if I was to tell you there was a band of horsemen about to attack
from behind this hill, would you believe me?" They all replied: "Yes!
Why should we not believe you, we never heard anything but truth from you!"
So the Prophet, peace be upon him, said: "I have come to warn you of
a terrible chastisement from your Lord." So Muhammad's people testified
to his truthfulness, and that they had never heard lies from him. And as
Heraculus, the Byzantine Roman Emperor, said, when questioning Abu Sufyaan
about the Prophet, peace be upon him: "If he does not lie about men,
then he would not lie about Allah!"