From: irfan@APOLLO.ECE.WISC.EDU (Irfan Alan)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan
Subject: THE QUR'AN and THE BIBLE, Muslim-Christian Dialogue No 1, Part 4
Date: 22 Jul 92 23:47:01 GMT


BISMILLAHIRRAHMANIRRAHIYM  
VEINMIN $EY-IN ILLA YUSEBBIHU BIHAMDIHI 
ESSELAMU ALEYKUM VERAHMETULLAH-I VE BEREKATU


June 91, Muslim-Christian Dialogue No:1, Part 4
-----------------------------------------------------------

With these eight alternatives, the Qur'an has challenged and
silenced men and jinn, not for twenty-three years, but for more
than fourteen centuries.  Nonetheless, those unbelievers did 
not have recourse to the easiest way, that is, open debate, but
chose from the very beginning the most dreadful way, to wage
war, putting in danger their lives and properties and their
households.  Thus, dispute must certainly have been impossible. 
Otherwise, no man of wisdom, especially those intelligent men of
the Quraish-Arabia, would have resorted to this most difficult
way.  If any literary man among them had been able to produce
the like of  a sura of the Qur'an, they would be saved without
trouble.  Yes, dispute by words of truth was impossible, and
they had to resort to destroy by the iron-sword of rejection
against the diamond sword of Quran The Most Wise.

"The sword indeed:" says the great thinker Thomas Carlyle in
1840 and continues:	"The sword indeed: but where will you get
your sword?  Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in
a minority of one.  In one man's head alone, there it dwells as
yet.  One man alone of the whole world believes it; there is one
man against all men.  That he take a sword, and try to propagate
with that, will do little for him.  You must first get your
sword!"  Like Mr. Carlyle there are many that we could have
quoted...

Lets elaborate a little on the eloquence aspect.  There are very
strong reinforcements among the verses of Qur'an such that the
verses are supporting to each other, as the bricks of a dome
supporting each other against any shaking.  In Qur'an there are
big symmetry, mutual response, and mutual assistance such that
as ayats are not foreign to each other, they help each other in
clearness and respond each other with reinforcement.  Despite
the fact that it came down part by part at different times, its
strong harmony and unique purpose suggests as if it descended in
one instant.  All parts of Qur'an has a share in purpose from
the whole Qur'an.  Therefore whoever captures one sura of it
will have access to the essentials of the whole Qur'an.

Especially four concepts are engraved -as if holographically in
all verses of Qur'an- : Tawheed (the Oneness of Allah), Risalet
(the Prothethood and the Declaration of Religion), Hashr and
Adalet (Resurrection and Justice), and Ibadah (Worshipping
Allah).  Once these four fundamentals are established in one's
heart and deeds the task and goal of life is accomplished.

Let me give you an example, out of many, as to how do the small
parts of a sentence look to one another, and how each reinforces
the aim of the whole:  In Surat Ikhlas (The Purity of faith),
which in English translation reads:

"Say:   He is Allah, The One and The Only;  Allah, the Eternal,
Absolute;

He begets not, Nor is He begotten;  And there is none Like unto
Him." (Q.112)

In this chapter there are six sentences.Three of them are in the
positive, three are in the negative.  It proves the six aspects
of the Oneness of Allah, and at the same time it refutes six
ways of associating partners with Allah.  Each sentence acts as
the proof to the other sentences and at the same time becomes
the implication and result of them.  For example, one can read: 
Say, He is Allah; because He is One, because He is the Eternal,
Absolute, because He begets not, because He is not begotten,
because there is none like unto Him".  Or in another way one
reads:  

Say, there is none like unto Him, because He is not begotten,
because He begets not, because He is the Eternal, Absolute,
because He is One, because He is Allah.  Yet in another way:

He is Allah; so He is One, so He is the Eternal, Absolute; so He
begets not; so He is not Begotten; so there is none like to unto
Him.  One may continue in the same way. To summarize: .....
-----------------------------------------------------------------

To be continued In$a Allah.
Your Br. Irfan in Islam.