RE: Time to embrace Islam!
November 30, 2019 at 8:57 pm
(This post was last modified: November 30, 2019 at 8:58 pm by R00tKiT.)
(November 30, 2019 at 2:37 pm)Grandizer Wrote: So says Islamic tradition. Do we have historical evidence to back this up?
According to Catholic tradition, Mary was perpetually a virgin and assumed into heaven upon her death. Doesn't make it true.
Even so, all this shows is that Muhammad was exceptionally good with Arabic words. So even in your description of the tradition you speak of, you don't bring up anything blatantly miraculous.
Everything reliable islamic tradition says is based on Isnad which, roughly speaking, determines the degree of confidence we can have about some particular statement Muhammad said, and we do that by looking at the chain of known historical figures who reported the subject and how truthful they are etc.
It's a complicated subject, and actually an entire field of study in Islamic theology given its importance. It's enough to know that it was acclaimed even by orientalist scholars:
If Muhammad's challenge is successful, there is no way around warranting a supernatural entity. How else can one explain uttering extraordinarily good literature dealing with all aspects of life and challenging all the future generations to come up with anything remotely comparable.
Also, his claim was by and large falsifiable, as any contemporary could've noticed an internal inconsistency or come up with his own version of a holy book, but none of that was reported despite the Qur'an itself reporting all the famous objections made by Meccan pagans to Muhammad's message.
This might seem like empty words to anyone who doesn't understand Arabic. But I think it's enough for a nonnative speaker to know that Arabic grammar itself was built in large parts around the literary themes of this holy book.