The Miracle of Miracles

موضوع: The Miracle of Miracles السبت يونيو 01, 2013 3:24 pm

Say:
If the whole of mankind and jinns were to gather together to produce
the like of this Qur`an, they could not produce the like thereof, even
if they backed up each other with help and support.

What is a miracle?
I think it is necessary that we have a clear picture of what we mean by a miracle. Here are some definitions:-
"An
event that appears so inexplicable by the laws of nature, that it is
held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God." "A person, thing or
event that excites admiring awe." "An act beyond human power, an
impossibility."

It
is logical that greater the impossibility, greater the miracle. For
example, should a person expire before our very eyes and is certified
dead by a qualified medical man, yet later on a mystic or a saint
commands the corpse to 'arise!', and to everybody's astonishment the
person gets up and walks away , we would label that as a miracle. But if
the resurrection of the dead took place after the corpse had been in
the mortuary for three days, then we would acclaim this as a greater
miracle. And if the dead was made to arise from the grave, decades or
centuries after the body had decomposed and rotted away, then in that
case we would label it the greatest miracle of them all!

A Common Trait:
It
has been a common trait of mankind since time immemorial that whenever a
guide from God appeared to redirect their steps into the will and plan
of God; they demanded supernatural proofs from these men of God, instead
of accepting message on its merit.
For example, when Jesus Christ
(pbuh) began to preach to his people - "the children of Israel" - to
mend their ways and to refrain from mere legalistic formalism and imbibe
the true spirit of the laws and commandments of god, his 'people'
demanded miracles from him to prove his bona fides ( his authenticity ,
his genuineness), as recorded in the Christian scriptures:
Then
certain of the scribes and the Pharisees answered, saying master, we
would have a sign ( miracle ) from thee. But he answered and said unto
them, "an evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign (miracle)
and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet
Jonas ( Matthew 12:38-39 holy bible)
Though on the face of it, Jesus
(pbuh) refuses to pamper the Jews here, in actual fact, he did perform
many miracles as we learn from the gospel narratives.
The holy Bible
is full of supernatural events accredited to the prophets from their
Lord. In reality all those 'signs' and 'wonders' and 'miracles' were
acts of God, but since those miracles were worked through his human
agents, we describe them as the miracles of prophets (i.e. Moses or
Jesus (pbuh) by those hands they were performed).

Quirk Continues:
Some
six hundred years after the birth of Jesus (pbuh), Muhammad (pbuh) the
messenger of God was born in Makkah in Arabia. When he proclaimed his
mission at the age of forty, his fellow countrymen, the mushriks of
Makkah made an identical request for miracles, as had the Jews, from
their promised Messiah. Text book style, it was as if the Arabs had
taken a leaf from the Christian records. History has a habit of
repeating itself!
And they say: why are not signs sent down to him from his Lord? (Holy Quran 29:50)

SIGNS! WHAT SIGNS!!
"Miracles
? Cries he, what miracles would you have? Are not you yourselves there?
God made you 'shaped you out of a little clay.' Ye were small once; a
few years ago ye were not at all. Ye have beauty, strength, thoughts,
'ye have compassion on one another.' Old age comes-on you, and gray
hairs; your strength fades into feebleness: ye sink down, and again are
not. 'Ye have compassion on one another': This struck me much: Allah
might have made you having no compassion on one another, how had it been
then! this is a great direct though, a glance at first-hand into the
very fact of things...." "(On heroes hero-worship and the heroic in
history,") by Thomas Carlyle.

"This Struck Me Much"
This,
that "ye have compassion on one another", impressed Thomas Carlyle most
from his perusal of an English translation. I presume, there verse that
motivated this sentiment is:
1. And
among His signs is this, that He created for you mates from among
yourselves, that ye may dwell in tranquility with them. and He has put
love and mercy between your (hearts): verily in that are signs for those
who reflect. (emphasis added) Translation by A Yusuf Ali (Quran 30:21)
2. And
one of His signs it is, that He hath created wives for you of your own
species that ye may dwell with them, and hath put love and tenderness
between you. herein truly are signs for those who reflect (emphasis added) Translation by Rev. J.M. Rodwell (M.A.)
3.
By another sign He gave you wives from among yourselves, that ye might
live in joy with them, and planted love and kindness into your hearts.
surely there are signs in this for thinking men(emphasis added)
Translation by N.J. Dawood.
The first example is from the translation
by Yusuf Ali, a Muslim. The second is by a Christian priest the rev.
Rodwell and the last example is by an Iraqi Jew, N.J. Dawood.
Unfortunately
Thomas Carlyle had no access to any one of these because none of them
had seen the light of day in his time. The only one available to him in
1840 was as he said on page 85 of his book under reference - "We also
can read the Koran; our translation of it, by sale, is known to be a
very fair one."

Taint Is In The Motive:
Carlyle
is very charitable to his fellow countryman. The motives of George
sale, who pioneered an English translation of the Holy Quran, were
suspect. He makes no secret of his antagonism to the holy book of Islam.
In his preface to his translation in 1734 he made it known that it was
his avowed intention to expose the man Mohammad and his forgery. He
records: "who can apprehend any danger from so manifest a forgery?...
The protestants alone are able to attack the Koran with success; and for
them, I trust, providence has reserved the glory of its overthrow."
George Sale, And he set to work with his prejudiced translation. You
will be able to judge how 'fair' and scholarly George sale was from the
very verse which 'struck' (Carlyle) 'much!' Compare it with the three
example already given by a Muslim, a Christian and a Jew: And of his
signs another is, that he had created you , out of yourselves, wives
that ye may cohabit with them, and hath put love and compassion between
you .

I
don't think that George sale was a 'a male chauvinist pig' of his day
to describe our mates, wives or spouses as sexual objects. He was only
keeping to his promise, which Carlyle overlooked. The Arabic word which
he (sale) perverted is 'li-tas-kunoo' which means to find peace,
consolation, composure or tranquility; and not 'cohabit' meaning 'to
live together in a sexual relationship when not legally married' (the
reader's digest universal dictionary.)
Every word of the Quranic text
is meticulously chosen, chiseled and placed by the All-Wise himself.
They carry God's 'fingerprint', and are signs of God. And yet, the
spiritually jaundiced....

Ask For A Sign:
What
signs?? They mean some special kinds of signs or miracles such as their
own foolish minds dictate. Everything is possible for God, but God is
not going to humor the follies of men or listen to their false demands.
He has sent his messenger to explain his signs clearly, and to warn them
of the consequences of rejection. Is that not enough? The trend of
their demand is generally as follows:
In specific terms they asked
that he - Muhammad (pbuh) - 'Put a ladder up to heaven an bring down a
book from God in their very sight' - "Then we would believe," they said.
Or "ye see the mountain yonder, turn it into gold' - "then we would
believe." or 'make streams to gush out in the desert' - "then we would
believe."
Now listen to the soft, sweet reasoning of Muhammad(pbuh)
against the unreasonable and skeptical demands of the mushriks - "Do I
say to you, verily I am an angel? Do I say to you, verily in my hands
are the treasures of God? Only, what is revealed to me do I follow."
Listen further to the most dignified reply he is commanded by his Lord
to give the unbelievers.
Say (O Muhammad): 'The signs (miracles) are indeed with Allah: And most certainly I am only a clear warner.!'
In
the following ayah the holy prophet is made to point to the holy Qur`an
itself as an answer to their hypocritical demand for some special kind
of 'sign' of 'miracle' for which their foolish pagan mentality craved.
For indeed all miracles are 'signs'; and it is their disbelief, their
skepticism, their lack of faith which motivates their request for a
sign. They are asked to - 'look at the Qur`an' and again, 'look at the
Qur`an!'
It is not enough for them that
we have sent down to thee (O Muhammad) the book(al-Qur`an) which is
rehearsed to them? Verily, in it (this perspicuous book) is a mercy and
reminder to those who believe. (Qur`an 29:51).

Two Proofs:
As a proof of the divine authorship and the miraculous nature of the Qur`an, two arguments are advanced by the Almighty Himself:
1.
'that we' (God Almighty) have revealed to you (O Muhammad!) 'the book
to you' who art absolutely an unlearned person. An 'ummi' prophet. One
who cannot read or write. One who cannot sign his own name. Let Thomas
Carlyle testify regarding the educational qualifications of Muhammad -
'one other circumstance we must not forget: that he had no school learning; of the thing we call school-learning none at all.'
Moreover
the divine author(God Almighty) himself testifies to the veracity of
Muhammed's(pbuh) claim that he could never have composed the contents of
the holy Qur`an; he could not have been its author:
And thou (O
Muhammad) was not (able) to recite a book before this (book came), nor
art thou (able) to transcribe it with thy right hand:
In that case, indeed, would the talkers of vanities have doubted (Qur`an 29:48).
The
author of the Qur`an is reasoning with us, that had Muhammad(pbuh) been
a learned man, and had he been able to read or write, then in that case
the babblers in the market places might have had some justification to
doubt his claim that the holy Quran is God's word. In the event of
Muhammed(pbuh) being a literate person, the accusation of his enemies
that he had probably copied his book (Qur`an) from the writings of the
Jews and Christians, or that perhaps he had been studying Aristotle and
Plato, or that he must have browsed through the 'Torat,' the 'Zabur' and
the 'Injeel' and had rehashed it all in a beautiful language, might
have carried some weight. Then, 'the talkers of vanities' might have had
a point. But even this flimsy pretence has been denied to the
unbeliever and the cynic: a point hardly big enough to hang a fly upon!
2.
'The book'? Yes, the 'book' itself, carries its own evidence proving
its divine authorship. Study the book from any angel. Scrutinize it. Why
not take up the author's challenge if your doubts are genuine? Do they
not consider the Quran (with care) had it been from other than Allah,
they would surely have found therein much discrepancy.

Consistency:
It
is inconceivable that any human author would remain consistent in this
teachings and his preaching for a period of over two decades. From the
age of forty, when Muhammad (pbuh) received his first call from heaven
to the age sixty-three when he breathed his last, for twenty-three years
the holy prophet practiced and preached Islam. In those twenty-three
years, he passed through the most conflicting vicissitudes of life. Any
man, during the course of such a mission, would be forced by
circumstances to make 'honorable' compromises, and cannot help
contradicting himself. No man can ever write the same always, as the
message of the holy Quran is: consistent with itself, throughout! Or is
it that the unbelievers objections are merely argumentive, refractory,
against their own better light and judgment.? Furthermore, the holy
Quran contains or mentions many matters relating to the nature of the
universe which were unknown to man before but which subsequently through
evolution and discoveries of Science have fully confirmed - a field
where an untutored mind would have most certainly lost in wild and
contradictory speculations!

Self-Evident Proof:

Again
and again when miracles are demanded from the prophet of God by the
cynical and frivolous few, he is made to point to the Quran - message
from high - as 'the miracle.' The miracle or miracles! And men of
wisdom, people with literary and spiritual insight, who were honest
enough to themselves, recognized and accepted al-Quran as a genuine
miracle.
Says the holy Qur`an: Nay here are signs self-evident in the hearts of those endowed with knowledge: And none but the unjust reject our signs. (The Holy Qur`an 29:49).