In the first part of this article we briefly discussed the first four criteria for the truth of a theory:
(i) Correspondence (ii) Coherence (iii) Usefulness (iv) Robustness.
We also saw how Islam as a theory fulfills these criteria. Now let’s move on to the remaining three criteria here:
(v) Advanced features (vi) Predictions (vii) Elegance.
We’ll begin with the advanced features of the Qur-aan the book and Islam the religion. Surprisingly again, the Qur-aan claims to have several advanced features that it asserts are evidences for its claim that it’s beyond human.
(1.) To repeat a point I made in the previous article, one advanced feature that I found to be astonishing was that after having separately deduced the criteria for the truth of a theory, I discovered that Islam too claims its truth based upon those same criteria! It was hard to ignore the ‘miracle’ here:
An illiterate man of 7th century Arabia suddenly brings forth a gigantic theory at the age of forty and claims its truth upon the same criteria that thinkers employ to test the truth of theories even one and a half millennium later! This is indeed an advanced feature of Islam in terms of epistemology, and it struck me hard and deep and facilitated my return to Islam! Let’s delve now into another advanced feature of Islam that blew me away:
The advanced literature of the Qur-aan.
(2.a) In its 52nd chapter, verses 33-34, the Qur-aan threw a challenge to its detractors:
If you doubt that Muhammad is the author of this book then if Muhammad as a human can produce it then other humans too should be able to produce it; so bring together as many accomplices as possible, all the masters of Arabic literature, all the thinkers and geniuses, and produce one book like the Qur-aan.
The challenge went undefeated.
The Qur-aan reduced the magnitude of the challenge (in its 11th chapter, verses 13-14):
If you cannot produce an entire book, then produce ten chapters like any of the chapters of the Qur-aan.
Again, the challenge remained undefeated.
What next?
The Qur-aan diluted the challenge further (in its 10th chapter, verses 38-39, and in its 2nd chapter, verses 23-24):
Bring forth at least one chapter, even if somewhat close to, any of the chapters of the Qur-aan!
Surprisingly, none of the literary geniuses of 7th century Arabia could produce anything even close to any of the chapters of the Qur-aan!
(2.b) Now, why is this a big deal?
It was a really big deal because Arabic literature had reached its pinnacle in the 7th century. Literature was the lifeblood of the Arabs. Poetry was their most prized art and they were naturally talented at it. Arabs took so much pride in their prose and poetry that they labeled the non-Arabs as ‘Ajam’ or ‘dumb’! Their tribes competed with each other in producing the best poets. Their inter-tribe poetry competitions were so fierce that the losing tribe, on several occasions, had to change its name out of sheer shame! On the other hand, it was a matter of immense glory for a tribe if one of its poet’s compositions were hung on the walls of the Kaabah!
So if the Qur-aan challenged their literary skills by inciting their top masters of literature to produce something like the Qur-aan, it was like bearding a lion in its den! Hence this challenge and the Arabs’ failure to meet it was a big blow to the pride of Muhammad’s critics.
(2.c) But how do we know for sure that the Arab opponents of Muhammad failed to meet the Quranic challenge?
(i) The answer is simple:
If the critics of Muhammad could have succesfully met the Quranic challenge, then they would have brutally disparaged Muhammad in the open and this word would have spread like wild fire, killing Muhammad’s mission in its infancy itself. That didn’t happen. Muhammad’s mission achieved triumphant success.
(ii) Another fact that attests to this is: Some of the best literary talents of Arabia, like Hassan ibn Thabit al Ansari, Abu Baqr, Umar ibn al Khattab, Dumaad al Azdi, Suwaid bin Saamit, Tufail ibn Amr ad Dawsi, etc.; became Muslims, in several instances, on spot, after listening to the Qur-aan! They listened and they judged that it was not the composition of Muhammad.
(iii) Even those experts of Arabic literature and aristocrats of Makkah who didn’t agree with Muhammad, affirmed that it was not the handiwork of Muhammad. Al-Waleed ibn al-Mughirah and Utbah bin Rabia are two prominent examples. They were delegated to Muhammad by his opponents to convince him to abandon his mission and receive in return whatever riches, power, and glory that his heart desired. In response, Muhammad simply recited to them some Quranic verses and got them flabbergasted. They returned to their cohort and reported that the Qur-aan was neither like the poetry of poets, nor like the prose of soothsayers; and Muhammad was neither mad nor possessed (Insinuating that the originator of the Qur-aan cannot be Muhammad)! Thus the best accusation that they could agree upon to malign Muhammad’s reputation was to label him a magician! This shows how intellectually weak they were versus the Qur-aan. They were responding to a literature by accusing it of having magical properties! They were answering an intellectual natural challenge with an accusation of supernatural nature!
(2.d) So why did the geniuses of Arabia fail to dissect the Qur-aan?
It’s because the Qur-aan’s literary form was neither prose nor poetry, as attested to by the experts of Arabic literature of the time, as mentioned above in (2.c.ii) and (2.c.iii). That is, the Quranic style belonged to none of the two types of literature in vogue in Arabia at the time. The reason being:
Prose didn’t have rhythm, and could be either rhyming or plain; but the Qur-aan has rhythm, so it couldn’t be classified as prose.
Poetry had both rhythm and rhyme, and the Qur-aan has both rhythm and rhyme; yet the Qur-aan couldn’t be classified as poetry either, because the rhythm of Arabic poetry followed the rules of Al-Bihaar, but the Qur-aan doesn’t follow ‘Al-Bihaar’, hence it’s not poetry!
‘Al-Bihaar’ is a set of 16 meters or rhythmical patterns named ‘at-tawil’, ‘al-basit’, ‘al-wafir’, ‘al-kamil’, ‘ar-rajs’, ‘al-khafif’, ‘al-hajaz’, ‘al-muttakarib’, ‘al-munsarih’, ‘al-muktatab’, ‘al-muktadarak’, ‘al-madid’, ‘al-mujtath’, ‘al-ramel’, ‘al-khabab’, and ‘as-saria’. These basically determine how the rhyming verses of Arabic poetry move. The Arab poems always had one or the other of the 16 metrics/rhythmic patterns of ‘Al Bihaar’, and the Qur-aan didn’t follow ‘Al-Bihaar’, thus, it was not even poetry!
The Qur-aan was neither prose nor poetry, it was a third, new class/type/style/form of Arabic literature which was unheard of until the Qur-aan arrived.
Thus the Quranic literary form was a novelty for 7th century Arabia. It was too advanced for its time.
(2.e) So why is the advanced literary form of the Qur-aan an evidence that it is from God?
It’s because Muhamamd couldn’t possibly have produced such an ingenious product!
But why not?
Because:
(i) Muhammad was an illiterate man. He knew neither reading nor writing.
(ii) He was never known to have composed any prose or poetry or shown any inclination towards it. He never sat in the congregation of poets, never took part in their competitions. He had neither any training nor any interest in literature whatsoever! Not even in any other domain of knowledge or field of intellectual rigor. There were no signs of his intellectual evolution in this direction. He was a mere trader until the age of forty.
(iii) So it’s inconceivable that he could have created this novel form of literature, all of a sudden, at the age of forty, without any prior endeavor in the field!
(iv) Therefore, the Qur-aan was not the product of Muhammad’s mind. Hence it is beyond human, thus it’s from God (as it claims to be).
(3) But my agnostic skeptic mind had responded to the above Islamic argument(s) with the following counterarguments (which kept me back from Islam for more than five years):
(i) To compose prose or poetry, it was not necessary to be able to read and write, since oral composition of prose and poetry was in vogue in Arabia at that period. Experts in the field could orally produce and transmit compositions of thousands of verses! So Muhammad too could have done it; being illiterate had no bearing on one’s ability to orally compose prose or poetry.
(ii) And Muhammad could have done it without any prior training as he is known to have indulged in intense meditations for days altogether, in a cave called ‘Hira’ on the outskirts of Makkah, prior to his proclamation. The intense meditations could have enhanced his mental capabilities, raising his ingenuity drastically, enabling him to produce a novel form of literature while at the same time deluded him into believing that he was receiving it from God! That is, Muhammad was a ‘deluded-super ingenious’ man.
My ‘deluded-super ingenious’ hypothesis regarding Muhammad made sense to me, considering the extraordinary capabilities of the human brain which is so powerful that it can create an entire world in dreams which feel absolutely real! This shows how powerful the brain of even the ordinary person is! If this power is increased and fine-tuned with meditations, then it seemed highly probable to me that the ingenuity of the human brain could be increased exponentially.
(iii) Muhammad was not a liar because he was reputed as a truthful (‘saadiq’) and trustworthy (‘ameen’) man in Makkah. Moreover, a liar wouldn’t be able to withstand, for the sake of a false mission, the kind of adversities and suffering that Muhammad suffered.
(iv) Languages do develop spontaneously with time. New dialects are produced and even new languages evolve with time across geographies. So no big deal that the super ingenious Muhammad too developed a new form of Arabic literature in 23 years (since the Qur-aan was revealed over a period of 23 years).
(v) One book in a new form of literature, produced in 23 years is no big deal, especially because the Qur-aan had undergone many editions before being finalized!
These arguments I developed in my agnostic days kept me back from Islam for a very long time. But then I defeated these arguments after a five year spanner. So what are the arguments that brought me back?
That calls for a separate article as this one has grown too big! Will continue this in the next part. Keep reading!