RELIGION AND SOCIETY

Religion and Society ~ 410 ~ claim, it challenges anyone who wills to produce a book of similar quality. “And if ye are in doubt concerning that which We reveal unto Our slave (Muhammad), then produce a chapter of the like thereof, and call your witnesses beside God if ye are truthful” (2:23). “Say: Verily, though mankind and the Jinn (a race of spirits) should assemble to produce the like of this Quran, they could not produce the like thereof though they were helpers one of another” (17:88). Over the last 1300 years there have appeared on the scene innumerable enemies of the Quran and Islam who could easily have prepared a book like the Quran in Arabic in answer to this challenge, and indeed, some of them did attempt to do so. But history shows that from the time of Musaliema (d.633) and Ibn Muqaffa (724-761) to the Crusades (1095-1271) no one, including Christian Orientalist has succeeded in such an attempt. More astonishing is the fact that the legal principles laid down by the Quran so many centuries ago have retained their veracity till today. It has of course happened that