Revelation: Qur'an part 2
© Shlomi Tal
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As for i'jaazu l-Qur'aan, the incapacity to imitate the Qur'an, the Muslims have sealed the verdict upon it. Look at the quote from Suuratu l-Baqara above, where it is written, walan taf'aluu, which is translated as "and ye can never do it" (literally, "and ye will never do"). With a sentence like this included in the divine revelation, does anyone expect Muslims to accept anything as a surah like it? I think this phrase "and ye can never do it" should be rendered as "and they will never accept it" instead. Let there be the most talented native-speaking Arab poet, born and bred in the desert of Arabia, grown in a house of famous shu'araa' (poets, from singular shaa'ir), and let him produce a whole chapter which seems not to be classified among the 16 oceans of Arabic poetry. It will be all for nought, for the Qur'an has spoken: walan taf'aluu, which means that all attempts necessarily fail. It is a circular argument: the Qur'an is divine because there can be no chapter made like those in it, and we know there can be no chapter made because the Qur'an says so, and we believe the Qur'an, because it is divine, because it is impossible to make...
What about the 16 oceans of Arabic poetry? Who made the categories? A devotee of Shakespeare may just as well categorize English poetry into 16 oceans and show that Shakespeare's poetry does not fall into any one of them. The believers make the rules. They have a religious axe to grind, so how can they be trusted? A court never brings testimony from the object of the sentence alone; an external verifier is needed. If the Qur'an is the only witness to its divinity, just as Muhammad was the only witness to being given a message by Jibraa'iil, then the foundations of the religion are shaky indeed. What of the claim that the Qur'an is a unique work in a time and place of outstanding poets (7th-century Arabia)? It may be true, but so are Shakespeare's works unique in a time and place of outstanding poets (15th and 16th-century London). By what authority does one deny the divinity of Shakespeare's work? How can one explain such unique, inimitable literature without recourse to divine intervention? I challenge you to produce a single scene like those of Shakespeare, and I do not hesitating in making this challenge, for I know full well that you can never do it. Yes, I have seen attempts at making scenes, even whole acts, similar to those in Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet, but they are not it - the real Shakespeare is always recognized as such, never to be imitated. His works are a massive compendium of timeless lessons for humanity, of messages to people who think, statements of future events (is not the fall of Macbeth foretold?) and scientific miracles (such as the Friar's treatise on herbs in Romeo and Juliet). If there is a shortage of explicit rules for life in those works, then we can always extract further, implicit rules by tafsiir (exegesis).
