the Quran actually puts forward a challenge that if this book was from other than God God
challenges human beings to bring or to make something that is comparable to it now this
challenge is often misunderstood by people and they think it's just you know like well okay
so the Quran is beautiful right so the Arabs thought it was nice and it sounded beautiful
but you know Shakespeare is nice as well and we have lots of poets they make nice poems so what
that doesn't mean it's from God which is a fair enough point but that's not what the quran is
saying and whoever says that doesn't understand the context of this challenge and the context
of this challenge is that Arabic in the time of the Prophet Muhammad the Arabic language in the
time of the Prophet Muhammad in that location was something that was clearly defined in respect to
its compartments of speech so there were different types of speech there was poetry there was rhymed
prose there was rhetoric there was normal speech there was another type of speech called sijin
which was a type of is how soothsayers they used to talk in a special type of speech and
whenever someone spoke in Arabic it was big you could define which one of these categories that
person was speaking in poetry itself was divided into sixteen or seventeen B ha so that sixteen
forms of poetry in Arabic as well so what's interesting about the Quran is that it didn't
conform to any of those patterns it was itself a unique pattern it was a new and unique pattern of
speech a unique format so as to speak and this is a very specific challenge of the Quran not
just to produce something eloquent and beautiful but to bring a format of speech of Arabic speech
that is of comparable beauty and impact so this is what left the Arabs of the time by the way
until today unable to respond until today unable to respond the Quran still retains that position
of being a unique form of the language no one has been able to produce something of its eloquence
and its unique format so this is the challenge of the Quran it was particularly poignant because
the Arabs at the time of the Prophet Muhammad were truly masters of their language they were
masters of their language I mean - I want to give you an example and this always sticks in my mind
because this was told to me by an Arab friend of mine he was actually reading a book a book of
poems and this this book of poems was written by a man a poet who had he had an issue with another
tribe and his way of dealing with this issue was writing poetry against them and my friend
was reading this book I remember it till this day and he was reading the book look here and he says
oh my god he killed them oh my god he destroyed them all he finished them you know like he'd make
these excellent so after I said Jamal you didn't listen but one who killed who destroyed who do you
know what's going on here and he said this is a poem this this man would either ma'am the poet's
name he wrote this poem against the truck he said do you know I've got him until this day the tribe
pulls itself by a different name because they don't want people to say oh you're from the tribe
but this is the power of their language this was the power of their language yet the Koran came and
their best poets their best literary geniuses were unable they were literally speechless in fact one
of the greatest poets a one of the greatest poets news slipped my mind right now and I think it was
ad been no wasn't Zeta Panther bit anyway his name sits in my mind he was one of the great recognized
as being one of the greatest poets and he of the Arabic language and he was alive during the
time of the Prophet he actually gave up poetry he said I can't after the Koran icon I can't recite
poetry anymore they asked him recite some poetry said what after the contact there's nothing to
recite so it had a very profound impact and it's something you can study historically you can see
that and you can study it and it until today you can study the Arabic language and you can see this