The tireless and insatiable traveller, who knew the aim of life
in this world and the essence of life to be faith, addressed his own heart and
said: “Let us examine the book known as the Qur’an of Miraculous Exposition,
which is said to be the word and utterance of the Being Whom we are seeking, the
most famous, the most brilliant and wisest book in the world, that issues a
challenge in every age to whoever refuses to submit to it. Let us see what it
says. But first, we must establish that this book is from our Creator,” and he
began to search.
Since the traveller lived in the present age, he looked first at
the Risale-i Nur, flashes from the miraculousness of the Qur’an; he saw its one
hundred and thirty parts to consist of luminous points drawn from that Book of
Discernment, or well-founded explanations of its contents. Even though the
Risale-i Nur is valiantly struggling to diffuse the truths of the Qur’an in all
directions, in this obstinate and atheistic age, no one can defeat it, which
proves that its master, its source, its authority and its sun, is the Qur’an,
heavenly not human speech. Among the hundreds of proofs in the different parts
of the Risale-i Nur, the single proof contained in the Twenty-Fifth Word and the
end of the Nineteenth Letter, establishes forty aspects of the Qur’an’s
miraculousness in such a way that whoever sees it, far from uttering any
criticism or objection, admires its arguments, and utters appreciative praise.
The traveller left it to the Risale-i Nur to prove that the Qur’an is miraculous
and the true Word of God, turning only to a brief indication of a few points
showing its greatness.
First Point: Just as the Qur’an, with all its miracles
and truths indicating its veracity is a miracle of Muhammad (Peace and blessings
be upon him) so too, Muhammad (Peace and blessings be upon him) with all his
miracles, proofs of prophethood and perfections of knowledge, is a miracle of
the Qur’an and a decisive proof of the Qur’an’s being the Word of God.
Second Point: The Qur’an, in this world, brought about
in so luminous, felicitous and truthful a fashion, a revolution in the social
life of man, as well as in the souls, hearts, spirits, and intellects of men, in
their individual, social, and political lives, and having caused this revolution
perpetuated it in such a fashion, that for fourteen centuries at every moment
its six thousand, six hundred and sixty-six verses have been read by the tongues
of more than a hundred million men, training them, refining their souls and
purifying their hearts. To spirits, it has been a means of development and
advancement; to intellects, an orientation and light; to life, it has been life
itself and felicity. Such a book is of a certainty unparalleled; it is a wonder,
a marvel, and a miracle.
Third Point: The Qur’an, from that age down to the
present, has demonstrated such eloquence that it caused the value attached to
the odes known as “Seven Hanging Poems” that were written in gold on the walls
of the Ka‘ba to descend to such a point that the daughter of Labid, when taking
down her father’s poem from the Ka‘ba, said, “Compared with the verses of the
Qur’an, this no longer has any value.”
A bedouin poet heard this verse being recited,
Therefore expound openly what you are commanded,
and immediately prostrated. They asked him: “Have you become a
Muslim?” “No,” he replied, “I was prostrating before the eloquence of this
verse.”
Thousands of scholars and litterateurs, like geniuses of the
science of rhetoric such as ‘Abd al-Qahir Jurjani, Sakkaki, and Zamakhshari,
have unanimously decided that the eloquence of the Qur’an is beyond human
capacity and is unattainable.
The Qur’an has also from that time forward invited to the field
of combat all arrogant and egoistic litterateurs and rhetoricians, and said to
them in a manner calculated to break their arrogance: “Come, produce a single
sura like it, or else accept perdition and humiliation in this world and the
hereafter.” Despite this challenge, the obstinate rhetoricians of that age
abandoned the short path of producing a single sura like the Qur’an, and instead
chose the long path of casting their persons and property into danger. This
proves that the short path cannot be taken.
Millions of Arabic books are in circulation, some written by
friends of the Qur’an in order to resemble and imitate it, others written by its
enemies in order to confront and criticize it. Not one of them has been able to
attain the level of the Qur’an. Should a common man even listen to them, he is
sure to say: “The Qur’an does not resemble these other books, nor is it in the
same class as they. It must be either below them or above them.” No one —no
unbeliever or fool— in the world can say that it is below them. Hence its degree
of eloquence is above all of them. Once a man read the verse,
All that is in the heavens and the earth extols and glorifies
God.
He said: “I cannot see any miraculous eloquence in this verse.”
He was told: “Go back to that age like the traveller, and listen to the verse as
recited there.” Imagining himself to be there before the revelation of the
Qur’an, he saw that all the beings in the world were living in an unstable,
transient world in empty, infinite and unbounded space, in confusion and
darkness, lifeless and without consciousness and purpose. Suddenly he heard this
verse proclaimed by the tongue of the Qur’an and the verse removed a veil from
in front of the universe and illumined the face of the globe; this pre-eternal
speech, this eternal decree, gave instruction to all conscious beings, drawn up
in the ranks of succeeding centuries, in such fashion that the cosmos became
like a vast mosque. All of creation headed by the heavens and the earth, was
engaged in vital remembrance of God and proclamation of His glory, was joyously
and contentedly fulfilling its function.
All of this our traveller observed. Thus tasting the degree of
the eloquence of the Qur’an, and comparing the other verses to it by analogy, he
understood one of the many thousands of wise reasons for the conquest of half
the globe and a fifth of humanity by the eloquent murmuring of the Qur’an, for
the uninterrupted continuance of its respected and magnificent monarchy for
fourteen centuries.
Fourth Point: The Qur’an has demonstrated such a
veracious sweetness that whereas the repetition of even the sweetest thing
induces disgust, it has from earliest times been accepted by everyone and even
become proverbial that repeated recitation of the Qur’an, far from inducing
disgust and weariness in men of sound heart and pure taste, on the contrary
increases its sweetness.
The Qur’an demonstrates, moreover, such a freshness, youth and
originality, that even though it has lived for fourteen centuries and passed
through many hands, it retains its freshness as if it had only just been
revealed. Every century sees the Qur’an enjoying a new youth, as if it were
addressing that century in particular. Similarly, scholars of every branch of
learning, even though they keep the Qur’an constantly at their side in order to
benefit from it, and perpetually follow its method of exposition, see that the
Qur’an maintains the originality of its style and manner of explanation.
Fifth Point: One wing of the Qur’an is in the past, and
one is in the future, and like its root and one wing are the agreed truths of
the former prophets, and it confirms and corroborates them, and they too confirm
it with the tongue of unanimity, so too all the true Sufi paths and ways of
sainthood whose fruits like the saints and purified scholars, who receive life
from the Qur’an, show through their vital spiritual progress that their blessed
tree is living, effulgent, and the means to truth, and who grow and live under
the protection of its second wing, testify that the Qur’an is pure truth and the
assembly of truths and in its comprehensiveness, a matchless wonder.