a perpetual, exalted star and source of truth. This is impossible a hundred times over, and even if you were to go a hundred times further in your diabolical machinations, O Satan, you could not make such an assertion, you could not deceive anyone of sound reason! Only sometimes you trick people by making them look from a great distance, thus making the star appear as small as a firefly.
“Thirdly: Also, if the Qur’an is imagined to be man’s word, it necessitates that the hidden reality of a criterion of truth and falsehood that is miraculous in its exposition, and through the testimony of its fruits, results, and effects, is gilded with the most spiritual and life-giving, the most truthful and happiness-bringing, the most comprehensive and exalted qualities in the world of humanity, is, God forbid, the fabrication of a single unaided and unlearned man’s mind, and that the great geniuses and brilliant scholars who observed him closely and studied him meticulously at no time saw any trace of counterfeit or pretence in him and always found him serious, genuine, and sincere.
“This is completely impossible, an idea so nonsensical as to shame the Devil himself, like dreaming up an utterly impossible situation. For it entails supposing a person who throughout his life demonstrated and taught trust, belief, confidence, sincerity, seriousness, and integrity through all his conduct, words, and actions, and raised eminently truthful and sincere followers, and was accepted as possessing the highest, most shining virtues, to be the most untrustworthy, insincere, and unbelieving. For in this question there is no point between the two.
“If, to suppose the impossible, the Qur’an were not the Word of God, it would fall from the divine throne to the ground; it would not remain somewhere between. While being the meeting-point of truths, it would become a source of superstition and myth. And if, God forbid, the one who proclaimed that wonderful decree was not God’s Messenger, it would necessitate his descending from the highest of the high to the lowest of the low, and from the degree of being the source of accomplishments and perfections to the level of being a mine of trickery and intrigue; he could not remain between the two. For one who lies and fabricates in God’s name falls to the very lowest of degrees.
“It is as impossible as permanently seeing a fly as a peacock, and all the time seeing the peacocks’s attributes in the fly. Only someone lacking all intelligence could imagine it to be possible.
“Fourthly: Also, if the Qur’an is imagined to be man’s word, it necessitates fancying that the Qur’an, which is a sacred commander of the community of Muhammad, mankind’s largest and most powerful army, is – God