Response To Claims Made Against The Elo­quence of the Qur’an

Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi

Intro­duc­tion

This arti­cle was writ­ten to exam­ine the lan­guage of the Qur’an and the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing it, in ref­er­ence to its super­nat­ur­al elo­quence. We will also at the same time scru­ti­nize a post­ing by a Chris­t­ian apol­o­gist, Pete Nash — or oth­er­wise known as Kip Rid­er, which attacks the elo­quence claim of the Qur’an and see whether it stands up to the examination.

The Mirac­u­lous Elo­quence of The Qur’an

Mr. Pete Nash alias Kip Rid­er expounds his claims as follows :

    Unlike the Bible, which is full of mir­a­cles that many dif­fer­ent wit­ness­es saw over a peri­od of thou­sands of years, the Qur’an is not such a book. Muham­mad claimed that the Qur’an itself, was a mir­a­cle. Most Mus­lims believe that it was the only mir­a­cle that Muham­mad offered as proof of his claims to be a prophet. There are sev­er­al rea­sons giv­en by Mus­lims as to why they con­sid­er the Qur’an to be a mir­a­cle. One of the main rea­sons is the Qur’an’s unique lit­er­ary style”. We are told that the Qur’an has an elo­quence about it that no oth­er book even approach­es. It’s beau­ty is unsur­passed say the Mus­lim apol­o­gists. It is that aspect of the Quran that I want to briefly address. Is it the work of art that the Mus­lims claim ? Is it lin­guis­ti­cal­ly supe­ri­or to all oth­er books ? Also, is elo­quence a valid test to prove the divine inspi­ra­tion of a book ?

He then tries to answer his last ques­tion by saying :

    If the Qur’an is elo­quent (and I’m not say­ing that it is), it would only prove that Muham­mad was a gift­ed per­son. It would not prove that the Qur’an orig­i­nat­ed from God. If elo­quence were a valid test for divine inspi­ra­tion, then one could make the case that Mozart’s sym­phonies were divine­ly inspired. Or how about Home­r’s Ili­ad” and Odyssey”. Or Shake­speare’s works, such as Romeo and Juli­et”. No one would claim that these works, as elo­quent as they are, were divine­ly inspired. The peo­ple that wrote them were just very tal­ent­ed. So, elo­quence is a poor indi­ca­tor of divine inspiration.

We would not address the claims of one thou­sand and one” mir­a­cles of the Bible, since this is not the issue of this arti­cle and irrel­e­vant, and there­fore we will go straight to the gist of the mat­ter, i.e. the super­nat­ur­al elo­quence of the Qur’an. To argue that elo­quence is not the proof of divine inspi­ra­tion, i.e. that is, there are oth­er works of so-called equal” elo­quence such as Homer and Shake­sphere, reflects a deep igno­rance of the Ara­bic and the sub­ject mat­ter by the writer. We should keep in mind that dur­ing pre-Islam­ic Ara­bia, the Arabs were well-known for their suprema­cy in lan­guage. So proud and haughty were the Arabs of their lan­guage that they refer to oth­er races as عُجْم (ajam), or dumb. As Philip K. Hit­ti observes :

No peo­ple in the world, per­haps, man­i­fest such enthu­si­as­tic admi­ra­tion for lit­er­ary expres­sion and are so moved by the word, spo­ken or writ­ten, as the Arabs. Hard­ly any lan­guage seems capa­ble of exer­cis­ing over the minds of its users such irre­sistible influ­ence as Ara­bic.Philip K. Hit­ti, His­to­ry of the Arabs, 10th edi­tion (Macmil­lan Press, 1970), p. 90. Par­tial­ly cit­ed by Hus­ton Smith, The Reli­gions Of Man (Harp­er & Row, 1958), p. 204

Hus­ton Smith com­ments, in ref­er­ence to the above obser­va­tion made by Philip K. Hit­ti, that :

It is not dif­fi­cult to sur­mise why this is so. Nomads are pro­hib­it­ed by their tran­sient way of life from devel­op­ing visu­al art. Their archi­tec­ture is restrict­ed to flap­ping tents, their crafts to the few pots and fab­rics they can car­ry with them. With life one long process of pack­ing and unpack­ing, one is not like­ly to accu­mu­late a muse­um. Blocked on the visu­al side by the need to keep gear light, the nomad’s art took a ver­bal turn. Wis­dom,” says a famous adage, has alight­ened on three things : the brain of the Franks, the hands of the Chi­nese, and the tongue of the Arabs.“Hus­ton Smith, ibid., p. 204

When the Qur’an was first recit­ed, the Quraysh imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized it to be of great speech and elo­quence, but were try­ing to make excus­es to hide the fact. Ibn Ishaq recounts the inci­dent of their con­sul­ta­tion with al-Walid b. al-Mughi­ra in his book Sir­at Rasul Allah as fol­lows :

A num­ber of the Quraysh came to al-Walid b. al-Mughi­ra, who was a man of some stand­ing and he addressed them in these words : The time of the fair has come round again and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Arabs will come to you and they will have heard about this fel­low of yours, so agre upon one opin­ion with­out dis­pute so that none will give the lie to the oth­er’. They replied, You give us your opin­ion about him.’ He said, No, you speak and I will lis­ten.’ They said, He is a kahin.’ He said, By God, he is not that, for he has not the unin­tel­li­gent mur­mur­ing and rhymed speech of the kahin.’ Then he is pos­sessed,’ they said. No, he is not that,’ he said, we have seen pos­sessed ones and here is no chok­ing, spas­mod­ic move­ments and whis­per­ing.’ Then he is a poet,’ they said. No, he is not a poet, for we know poet­ry in all its forms and metres.’ Then he is a sor­cer­er.’ No, we have seen sor­cerors and their sor­cery, and here is no spit­ting and no knots.‘A. Guil­laume, The Life of Muham­mad : A Trans­la­tion of Ibn Ishaq’s Sir­at Rasul Allah, 1978, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, p. 121

So what is the mir­a­cle of the Qur’an, exact­ly ? As recog­nised by the Arabs quot­ed above, Abdur Raheem Green men­tions that :

    These are the six­teen al-Bihar (lit­er­al­ly The Seas”, so called because of the way the poem moves, accord­ing to its rhyth­mic pat­terns): at-Taw­il, al-Bassit, al-Wafir, al-Kamil, ar-Rajs, al-Khafaf, al-Haz­aj, al-Mut­takarib, al-Mun­sar­ih, al-Muk­tatab, al-Muk­tadarak, al-Madad, al-Muj­tath, al-Ramel, al-Khabab and as-Saria’. So the chal­lenge is to pro­duce in Ara­bic, three lines, that do not fall into one of these six­teen Bihar, that is not rhyming prose, nor like the speech of sooth­say­ers, and not nor­mal speech, that it should con­tain at least a com­pre­hen­si­ble mean­ing and rhetoric, i.e. not gobbledygook.

The team at Islam­ic Aware­ness bril­liant­ly explains the Ara­bic lan­guage and the Arab speech, as follows :

To begin with, the Ara­bic lan­guage and Arab speech are divid­ed into two branch­es. One of them is rhymed poet­ry. It is a speech with metre and rhyme, which means every line of it ends upon a def­i­nite let­ter, which is called the rhyme’. This rhymed poet­ry is again divid­ed into metres or what is called as al-Bihar, lit­er­al­ly mean­ing The Seas’. This is so called because of the way the poet­ry moves accord­ing to the rhyth­mic pat­terns. There are six­teen al-Bihar viz ; at-Taw­il, al-Bassit, al-Wafir, al-Kamil, ar-Rajs, al-Khafaf, al-Haz­aj, al-Mut­takarib, al-Mun­sar­ih, al-Muk­tatab, al-Muk­tadarak, al-Madad, al-Muj­tath, al-Ramel, al-Khabab and as-Saria’. Each one rhymes dif­fer­ent­ly. For metres of Ara­bic poet­ry please see please see Lyal­l’s book Trans­la­tions Of Ancient Ara­bi­an Poet­ry, Chiefly Pre-Islam­ic. He dis­cuss­es al-Kamil, al-Wafir, al-Hajaz, at-Taw­il, al-Bassit, al-Khafaf and al-Madad briefly. The oth­er branch of Ara­bic speech is prose, that is non-met­ri­cal speech. The prose may be a rhymed prose. Rhymed prose con­sists of cola end­ing on the same rhyme through­out, or of sen­tences rhymed in pairs. This is called rhymed prose” or saj. Prose may also be straight prose (mur­sal). In straight prose, the speech goes on and is not divid­ed in cola, but is con­tin­ued straight through with­out any divi­sions, either of rhyme or of any­thing else. Prose is employed in ser­mons and prayers and in speech­es intend­ed to encour­age or fright­en the mass­es. One of the most famous speech­es involv­ing saj is that of Haj­jaj bin Yusuf in his first dep­u­ta­tion in Iraq in post-Islam­ic and Quss bin Sa’i­dah in pre-Islam­ic times.

Indeed, it is clear that :

The Qur’an is not verse, but it is rhyth­mic. The rhythm of some vers­es resem­ble the reg­u­lar­i­ty of saj, and both are rhymed, while some vers­es have a sim­i­lar­i­ty to Rajaz in its vigour and rapid­i­ty. But it was rec­og­nized by Quraysh crit­ics to belong to nei­ther one nor the oth­er cat­e­go­ry.A F L Bee­ston, T M John­stone, R B Ser­jeant and G R Smith (Edi­tors), Ara­bic Lit­er­a­ture To The End Of The Ummayad Peri­od, (Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press : 1983) pp. 34

The Ori­en­tal­ists’ View Of The Qur’an : What Do They Real­ly Say ?

Next, we read that the poster has claimed that :

    Is the Qur’an even an elo­quent book to begin with ? Not every­one thinks so. In fact, most peo­ple of the West­ern world agree with Car­lyle who said this of the Qur’an : It is as toil­some read­ing as I ever under­took, a weari­some, con­fused jum­ble, crude, incon­dite. Noth­ing but a sense of duty could car­ry any Euro­pean through the Koran.” I am in com­plete agree­ment with Car­lyle in this regard. It is only with extreme effort that I can work my way through the Qur’an. It is a poor­ly writ­ten, con­fused, and com­plete­ly bor­ing book.

We would argue that the above quote as cit­ed from Car­lyle is not only decep­tive, but tak­en out of its orig­i­nal con­text. Car­lyle indeed said the above, but it was not meant to be a crit­i­cism on the lit­er­ary style of the Ara­bic Qur’an. On the con­trary, Car­lyle was stat­ing his opin­ion about the Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the Qur’an­ic text, specif­i­cal­ly by George Sale. We repro­duce the whole con­text of the quote cit­ed by the poster, which is as follows :

We also can read the Koran ; our Trans­la­tion of it, by Sale, is known to be a very fair one. I must say, it is as toil­some read­ing as I ever under­took. A weari­some con­fused jum­ble, crude, incon­dite ; end­less iter­a­tions, long-wind­ed­ness, entan­gle­ment ; most crude, incon­dite ; – insup­port­able stu­pid­i­ty, in short ! Noth­ing but a sense of duty could car­ry any Euro­pean through the Koran. We read in it, as we might in the State-Paper Office, unread­able mass­es of lum­ber, that per­haps we may get some glimpses of a remark­able man. It is true we have it under dis­ad­van­tages : the Arabs see more method in it than we. Mahome­t’s fol­low­ers found the Koran lying all in frac­tions, as it had been writ­ten down at first pro­mul­ga­tion ; much of it, they say, on shoul­der-blades of mut­ton, flung pell-mell into a chest : and they pub­lished it, with­out any dis­cov­er­able order as to time or oth­er­wise ; – mere­ly try­ing, as would seem, and this not very strict­ly, to put the longest chap­ters first. The real begin­ning of it, in that way, lies almost at the end : for the ear­li­est por­tions were the short­est. Read in its his­tor­i­cal sequence it per­haps would not be so bad. Much of it, too, they say, is rhyth­mic ; a kind of wild chant­i­ng song, in the orig­i­nal. This may be a great point ; much per­haps has been lost in the Trans­la­tion here. Yet with every allowance, one feels it dif­fi­cult to see how any mor­tal ever could con­sid­er this Koran as a Book writ­ten in Heav­en, too good for the Earth ; as a well-writ­ten book, or indeed as a book at all ; and not a bewil­dered rhap­sody ; writ­ten, so far as writ­ing goes, as bad­ly as almost any book ever was ! So much for nation­al dis­crep­an­cies, and the stan­dard of taste.

Yet I should say, it was not unin­tel­li­gi­ble how the Arabs might so love it. When once you get this con­fused coil of a Koran fair­ly off your hands, and have it behind you at a dis­tance, the essen­tial type of it begins to dis­close itself ; and in this there is a mer­it quite oth­er than the lit­er­ary one. If a book come from the heart, it will con­trive to reach oth­er hearts ; all art and author-craft are of small amount to that. One would say the pri­ma­ry char­ac­ter of the Koran is this of its gen­uine­ness, of its being a bona-fide book. Prideaux, I know, and oth­ers have rep­re­sent­ed it as a mere bun­dle of jug­g­leries ; chap­ter after chap­ter got up to excuse and var­nish the author’s suc­ces­sive sins, for­ward his ambi­tions and quack­eries : but real­ly it is time to dis­miss all that. I do not assert Mahome­t’s con­tin­u­al sin­cer­i­ty : who is con­tin­u­al­ly sin­cere ? But I con­fess I can make noth­ing of the crit­ic, in these times, who would accuse him of deceit pre­tense ; of con­scious deceit gen­er­al­ly, or per­haps at all ; – still more, of liv­ing in a mere ele­ment of con­scious deceit, and writ­ing this Koran as a forg­er and jug­gler would have done ! Every can­did eye, I think, will read the Koran far oth­er­wise than so. It is the con­fused fer­ment of a great rude human soul ; rude, untu­tored, that can­not even read ; but fer­vent, earnest, strug­gling vehe­ment­ly to utter itself in words. With a kind of breath­less inten­si­ty he strives to utter him­self ; the thoughts crowd on him pell-mell : for very mul­ti­tude of things to say, he can get noth­ing said. The mean­ing that is in him shapes itself into no form of com­po­si­tion, is stat­ed in no sequence, method, or coher­ence ; – they are not shaped at all, these thoughts of his ; flung out unshaped, as they strug­gle and tum­ble there, in their chaot­ic inar­tic­u­late state. We said stu­pid:” yet nat­ur­al stu­pid­i­ty is by no means the char­ac­ter of Mahome­t’s Book ; it is nat­ur­al uncul­ti­va­tion rather. The man has not stud­ied speak­ing ; in the haste and pres­sure of con­tin­u­al fight­ing, has not time to mature him­self into fit speech. The pant­i­ng breath­less haste and vehe­mence of a man strug­gling in the thick of bat­tle for life and sal­va­tion ; this is the mood he is in ! A head­long haste ; for very mag­ni­tude of mean­ing, he can­not get him­self artic­u­lat­ed into words. The suc­ces­sive utter­ances of a soul in that mood, col­ored by the var­i­ous vicis­si­tudes of three-and-twen­ty years ; now well uttered, now worse : this is the Koran.Thomas Car­lyle, Heroes and Hero Wor­ship, Project Guten­bergs E‑Text

Car­lyle admit­ted that his obser­va­tions were lim­it­ed by the Eng­lish trans­la­tion, and is not and indict­ment of the Ara­bic Qur’an. Since no Mus­lim would claim that the trans­la­tions of the Qur’an is the Qur’an itself and cer­tain­ly has no bear­ing on the lit­er­ary elo­quence of the text, we accuse the poster of delib­er­ate­ly mis­quot­ing Car­lyle’s state­ment and, by tak­ing it out of its orig­i­nal con­text, tries to apply it to the Ara­bic instead.

In truth, Car­lyle did have an admi­ra­tion of the Qur’an, despite his com­plain­ing about the con­fu­sion” of its translation.

E. H. Palmer, as ear­ly as 1880, rec­og­nized the unique style of the Qur’an. He writes in the Intro­duc­tion to his trans­la­tion of the Qur’an, that :

…the best of Arab writ­ers has nev­er suc­ceed­ed in pro­duc­ing any­thing equal in mer­it to the Qur’an itself is not sur­pris­ing. In the first place, they have agreed before-hand that it is unap­proach­able, and they have adopt­ed its style as the per­fect stan­dard ; any devi­a­tion from it there­fore must of neces­si­ty be a defect. Again, with them this style is not spon­ta­neous as with Muham­mad and his con­tem­po­raries, but is as arti­fi­cial as though Eng­lish­men should still con­tin­ue to fol­low Chaucer as their mod­el, in spite of the changes which their lan­guage has under­gone. With the Prophet, the style was nat­ur­al, and the words were those in every-day ordi­nary life, while with the lat­er Ara­bic authors the style is imi­ta­tive and the ancient words are intro­duced as a lit­er­ary embell­ish­ment. The nat­ur­al con­se­quence is that their attempts look laboured and unre­al by the side of his impromp­tu and forcible elo­quence.E. H. Palmer (Tr.), The Qur’an, 1900, Part I, Oxford at Claren­don Press, pp. lv.

The famous Ara­bist from Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, H.A.R. Gibb was open upon about the style of the Qur’an. In his words :

…the Mec­ca­ns still demand­ed of him a mir­a­cle, and with remark­able bold­ness and self con­fi­dence Moham­mad appealed as a supreme con­fir­ma­tion of his mis­sion to the Koran itself. Like all Arabs they were the con­nois­seurs of lan­guage and rhetoric. Well, then if the Koran were his own com­po­si­tion oth­er men could rival it. Let them pro­duce ten vers­es like it. If they could not (and it is obvi­ous that they could not), then let them accept the Koran as an out­stand­ing evi­dent mir­a­cle.H. A. R. Gibb, Islam : A His­tor­i­cal Sur­vey, 1980, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, pp. 28.

And in some oth­er place, talk­ing about the Prophet(P) and the Qur’an, he states that :

Though, to be sure, the ques­tion of the lit­er­ary mer­it is one not to be judged on a pri­ori grounds but in rela­tion to the genius of Ara­bic lan­guage ; and no man in fif­teen hun­dred years has ever played on that deep-toned instru­ment with such pow­er, such bold­ness, and such range of emo­tion­al effect as Moham­mad did.ibid., pp. 25..

As a lit­er­ary mon­u­ment the Koran thus stands by itself, a pro­duc­tion unique to the Ara­bic lit­er­a­ture, hav­ing nei­ther fore­run­ners nor suc­ces­sors in its own idiom. Mus­lims of all ages are unit­ed in pro­claim­ing the inim­itabil­i­ty not only of its con­tents but also of its style.…. and in forc­ing the High Ara­bic idiom into the expres­sion of new ranges of thought the Koran devel­ops a bold and strik­ing­ly effec­tive rhetor­i­cal prose in which all the resources of syn­tac­ti­cal mod­u­la­tion are exploit­ed with great free­dom and orig­i­nal­i­ty.H A R Gibb, Ara­bic Lit­er­a­ture : An Intro­duc­tion, 1963, Oxford at Claren­don Press, pp. 36.

On the influ­ence of the Qur’an on Ara­bic lit­er­a­ture, Gibb says that :

The influ­ence of the Koran on the devel­op­ment of Ara­bic Lit­er­a­ture has been incal­cu­la­ble, and exert­ed in many direc­tions. Its ideas, its lan­guage, its rhymes per­vade all sub­se­quent lit­er­ary works in greater or less­er mea­sure. Its spe­cif­ic lin­guis­tic fea­tures were not emu­lat­ed, either in the chancery prose of the next cen­tu­ry or in the lat­er prose writ­ings, but it was at least part­ly due to the flex­i­bil­i­ty impart­ed by the Koran to the High Ara­bic idiom that the for­mer could be so rapid­ly devel­oped and adjust­ed to the new needs of the impe­r­i­al gov­ern­ment and an expand­ing soci­ety.ibid., pp. 37

As the Qur’an itself says :

And if ye are in doubt as to what We have revealed from time to time to Our ser­vant, then pro­duce a Sura 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.“Qur’an, 2:23 – 24

The above quotes cit­ed eas­i­ly speak for them­selves. Thus, with­in the Ara­bic lit­er­a­ture — either poet­ry or prose — there is noth­ing com­pa­ra­ble to the Qur’an. Mus­lims through­out the cen­turies are unan­i­mous upon its elo­quence and inimitability.

Sub­jec­tive Judge­ment” And The Bible

Our poster also claims that :

    To use com­mon Amer­i­can lan­guage, it is just a very bad read”. If Mus­lim apol­o­gists want to prove the divine inspi­ra­tion of the Qur’an, they would be wise to stay away from the elo­quence” test. The Qur’an fails that test mis­er­ably. Now, some may argue that the elo­quence of the Qur’an is pure­ly a sub­jec­tive judge­ment. That’s a valid point.

The valid point” can eas­i­ly be dis­proved by ask­ing the ques­tion : if the lan­guage of the Qur’an was pure­ly a sub­jec­tive point, why were the pagan Arabs will­ing to accuse the Prophet(P) of being pos­sessed, or mak­ing mag­ic or of being a sooth­say­er, instead ? Any­one who reads the argu­ments of the pagan Arabs against the Prophet(P) could eas­i­ly see that they had to resort to ad hominem, argu­ment against the man. They were clear­ly unable to explain the lan­guage of the Qur’an accord­ing to the rhymed speech­es they were famil­iar with. And these were the same peo­ple who labelled oth­er non-Arabs as ajam”, as had been stat­ed ear­li­er. The argu­ment for the mir­a­cle of the elo­quence of the Qur’an is cer­tain­ly not sub­jec­tive”, and nei­ther do the pagan Arabs think so. Had it been an utter­ly sub­jec­tive cri­te­ri­on” as insin­u­at­ed, they would have used the charge against the Qur’an already, and that would have been the end of the matter.

Now we move on to the next top­ic : what about the Bible ? How is its lan­guage com­pared to the Qur’an ? Com­par­ing the styl­is­tic per­fec­tion of the Qur’an ver­sus styl­is­tic imper­fec­tion of the Bible, von Grunebaum states that

In con­trast to the styl­is­tic per­fec­tion of the Kur’an with the styl­is­tic imper­fec­tions of the old­er Scrip­tures the Mus­lim the­olo­gian found him­self unknow­ing­ly and on pure­ly pos­tu­la­tive grounds in agree­ment with long line of Chris­t­ian thinkers whose out­look on the Bib­li­cal text is best summed up in Niet­zsche’s brash dic­tum that the Holy Ghost wrote bad Greek.B Lewis, V L Menage, Ch. Pel­lat & J Schacht (Edi­tors), Ency­clo­pe­dia Of Islam (New Edi­tion), 1971, Vol­ume III, E J Brill (Lei­den) & Luzac & Co. (Lon­don), pp. 1020 (Under I’d­jaz)

Futher, he elab­o­rates the posi­tion of West­ern the­olo­gians on the can­on­iza­tion process and com­po­si­tion of the Bible, as follows :

The knowl­edge of the West­ern the­olo­gian that the Bib­li­cal books were redact­ed by dif­fer­ent writ­ers and that they were, in many cas­es, acces­si­ble to him only in (inspired) trans­la­tion facil­i­tat­ed admis­sion of for­mal imper­fec­tions in Scrip­ture and there with less­ened the com­pul­sive insis­tence on its styl­is­tic author­i­ty. Chris­t­ian teach­ing, leav­ing the inspired writer, under the guid­ance of the Holy Spir­it, free in mat­ters of style, has pro­vid­ed no moti­va­tion to seek an exact cor­re­la­tion between the revealed text on the one hand and gram­mar and rhetoric on the oth­er. It there­by relieved the the­olo­gian and the crit­ic from search­ing for a har­mo­ny between two styl­is­tic worlds, which at best would yield an ahis­toric con­cept of lit­er­ary per­fec­tion and at worst would pre­vent any­thing resem­bling tex­tu­al and sub­stan­tive crit­i­cism of Rev­e­la­tion.… In Chris­tian­i­ty, besides, the apol­o­gy for the low” style of the Bible is mere­ly a part of edu­ca­tion­al prob­lem — what to do with sec­u­lar eru­di­tion with­in Chris­tian­i­ty ; where­as in Islam, the cen­tral posi­tion of the Kur’an, as the focal point and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of gram­mat­i­cal and lit­er­ary stud­ies, was the­o­ret­i­cal­ly at least, nev­er con­test­ed with­in the believ­ing com­mu­ni­ty. ibid.

That pret­ty much sums up the Bible, its styl­is­tic per­fec­tion (or the lack of it!) and the posi­tion of West­ern theologians.

Con­clu­sions

It is clear that far from being an utter­ly sub­jec­tive cri­te­ri­on”, the lan­guage of the Qur’an sur­pass­es any known Ara­bic poet­ry in regards to its elo­quence. And this is even tes­ti­fied to by the Ori­en­tal­ists cit­ed above. If any­one were to argue against the evi­dence by sim­ply mak­ing excus­es or dis­miss­ing it as a sub­jec­tive” cri­te­ri­on, it will be obvi­ous that the accuser, in the light of the evi­dences pre­sent­ed above, would only reflect their opin­ion” of not only deep igno­rance regard­ing the sub­ject mat­ter, but also prej­u­dice. As the poster who made the alle­ga­tions apt­ly says :

    My opin­ion of the Qur’an, is after all, only my opinion.

which, we may add, does not count for much. And that sums up the mat­ter quite well ! Response To Claims Made Against The Eloquence of the Qur'an 1

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