(2)
The Argument of Priority
On the challenge verse in El-Baqarah Chapter , we read almighty saying:
{ وَإِن كُنتُمْ فِي رَيْبٍ مِّمَّا نَزَّلْنَا عَلَى عَبْدِنَا فَأْتُواْ بِسُورَةٍ مِّن مِّثْلِهِ وَادْعُواْ شُهَدَاءكُم مِّن دُونِ اللّهِ إِنْ كُنْتُمْ صَادِقِينَ فَإِن لَّمْ تَفْعَلُواْ وَلَن تَفْعَلُواْ فَاتَّقُواْ النَّارَ الَّتِي وَقُودُهَا النَّاسُ وَالْحِجَارَةُ أُعِدَّتْ لِلْكَافِرِينَ }
"And if ye are in doubt as to what We have revealed from time to time to Our servant, then produce a Chapter) like thereunto; and call your witnesses or helpers (If there are any) besides Allah, if your (doubts) are true. But if ye cannot- and of a surety ye cannot- then fear the Fire whose fuel is men and stones,- which is prepared for those who reject Faith."
http://www.muslimaccess.com/quraan/arabic/002.asp
What a colossal verse!
(إن كنتم في ريب ... فأتوا ..) و(إن لن تفعلوا... فاتقوا ..)+
"If ye are in doubt … , then produce…" and " and of a surety ye cannot- then fear"
The concept of the condition in the first clause means that whoever is unable to produce such chapter will not have any cynicism or skepticism.
However, what if man was unable to produce such Chapter, and then he would say: If I were unable, then maybe another person would be able to do it. In other words, if people were unable today, it is possible that others would be able to perform this task in the coming eras.
Doesn't this cause skepticism again? How can we compromise between this and refuting doubt due to a mere personal incompetence to produce such chapter of Quran as understood by the verse?
Every believer of Quran thinks that the challenge of Quran is absolute for the creation universality and not relative.
Then there is another issue, the parenthetical clause (وَلَن تَفْعَلُواْ): (" and of a surety ye cannot") sustain negation by the use of
(َلَن ) "Cannot" denotes absolute negation. In other words, it means neither humankind nor jinn can produce such chapter in all future times.
A believer of Quran has no doubt in the seriousness of Almighty Allah concerning what He said. However, the challenge here is addressed to the doubtful infidel. It does not make sense that Quran brings the answer itself and builds on it without hearing from the disbeliever first! The challenging infidel must have a belief of the inability of man – not him or another- to produce such Quran. This belief should come from another source rather than Quran. On the other hand, this belief should eliminate all doubt and, according to its very clause, future ability to respond to challenge someday, somewhere.
Without all of this, there won't be a real challenge.
Well!
We said that any miracle other than language is not suitable to be a subject for the challenge produced by Quran for it is the only thing which all people practice, know and appreciate and it is not confined to a class rather than the other.
There is another characteristic of the language which is not shared by another. It is the prime key in all our inferences: Language is the only thing where one cannot imagine or accept in it that the successor will surpass the predecessor.
It is true that the successor may be better informed than the predecessor, policies of the successor may be more ongoing than the predecessor’s, the age of the successor may be longer that that of the predecessor … etc, But: Definitely and unquestionably, the successor cannot precede the predecessor in language, which he, I mean the latter, invented and taught the former!
Note that I am not talking about the evolution of language as the successor can change the language partly or wholly as has happened here in the so-called dialects, and as happened in Latin when French, Spanish and Italian were derived from it. Nevertheless, what is generated from derivation and distortion is not considered as a language of the ancestors.
I speak about Oratory (eloquence) which is another thing. I consider Umru-ul-Qais Kais as more eloquent than a thousand Ibn Taymiyya, despite that fact that the first is infidel and unbeliever and Ibn Taymiyya is the knowledgeable scholar of Islam and a sect reviver, besides, an old Bedouin woman from the Arabian desert during the pre-Islamic age is more eloquent and knowledgeable than Almutannabi who was renowned worldwide and occupied people minds with his eloquent poetry.
The secret in this is that language is mainly vocabulary whose meanings were agreed upon and used within agreed contexts and terms. Time elapse would cause forgetfulness of some meanings or add up new meanings and in both cases; the language becomes either poorer or distorted. But the miracle of Quran is that it stopped and prevented the Arabic language from evolving and developing; for our language today is the same language of pre-Islamic time (compare this with the French for example who translate the French language of Rawunsar who lived in the thirteenth century to the French of Sartre)
The Great Imam" Malik Ibn Anas “said, in his methodological saying something which we should willingly adopt and abide by:
(( what was not considered "religion” at that time, should not be considered religion nowadays too)), and I also follow suit and say: what was not then considered as an Arabic language should not be taken today as an Arabic language".
If the addressees were unable to bring such a Chapter of the Quran, then those who came after them (successors) would be thus more unable, since we have established that a language originator is more eloquent than that who isn’t. In addition, a teacher is more informed than the student. We can not also consider that some non-Arabs excelled the language and surpassed their teachers such as Siebawayh, al-Zamkhshari and others because we say they excelled due to their knowledge of other language sources and not due to their mental capabilities or intelligence. For, language matters have nothing to do with intelligence!
The challenging person in the two verses of Baqarah Chapter is definite that mankind cannot obtain such Quran in future based on the rational basic of syllogism: The successor's inability is more likely / logical than that of the predecessor’s who invented or originated. ..
This would negate any likelihood of the possibility that successors would be able to do what predecessors failed to.
According to this syllogism, the argument was set for everyone, for those well informed of the Arabic language became in a fix when the inability of their predecessors was established. So, the non-Arabs in turn can not claim their ability if the Arabs themselves failed! Thus, all routes to claims are closed. This is the absolute reality for any one who is ]
not supercilious
to be continued......... stay tuned
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