The Weight of Evidence
Allah laid down a challenge in the Quran 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!"[Noble Quran 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, whose poem, when
recited at Uhaz, caused the Arabs to prostrate before him in admiration. When
this same Labaid began to hear the verses of Quran, he embraced Islam, and
gave up poetry altogether. When he was once asked to recite some poetry he
said: "What! After the Quran?" Indeed, many of the Arabs entered into Islam
just from hearing the Quran, 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 Quran for man to produce its like is not, as some suppose,
merely like the uniqueness of Shakespeare, Shelly, Keats or Homer. The Quran
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 Quran's form did not
fit into any of these categories. It was this that made the Quran 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 behavior, 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. Tufail 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 from what the 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 Muhammed, 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 Muhammed is the Messenger of Allah.
This is how I entered Islam. Even the leaders of Quraish were unable to resist
hearing the Quran."
The Sirah (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 Quran - 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
Muhammed's preaching, suggested to make some proposals to Muhammed 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 Walid; 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 Quran that Umar ibn Al-Khattab, who was on his way
to kill the Prophet, discovered his sister and her husband reciting the Quran.
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 unrivalled 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 Quran? It is as at-Tabari wrote in the introduction to his Tafsir
(commentary on the Quran): "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
favor. 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 Quran. 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 Quran 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 favor 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 Quran, 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 Quran, 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 Lahab'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 Safa' 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 Sufyan about the
Prophet (peace be upon him): "If he does not lie about men, then he would not
lie about Allah!"
To be continued, insha'Allah...Important note to learn and online quran recitation
Doing Quran recitation is the religious duty of every Muslim. In saheed Sunnah, it is encouraged to do the recitation of Quran in a melodious voice by the holy Quran reciter by making the voice more melodious and interesting. Reading quran online and Making it melodious does not mean that it should be made more in singing tone but once should at least recite and read quranic Arabic in a good tone so that he/she himself feels good while listening to it and others also feel good while listening to it. and plz do spread the true knowledge as much as you and Allah knows best listen quran online of the top online quran reciter with English and Urdu translation
No comments:
Post a Comment