:sl:
Ive read refutations of the other points but I cant seem to find them, but I think this might be of some help Insha'Allah
The challenge to produce a Sura-like-it, was met by many people across various time frames.
The Poet Al-Haseen Ibn Hamam, who died in the year 611 A.D., mentioned in his poetry the scales by which the deeds of men will be weighed in the day of judgment. The same wording was mentioned in the Qur’an in Surat Al-Araf 7:8,9 . (Labib Mikhail, 121)
The Poet Roba Ibn Al-Ajaj wrote something very similar to Surat Al-Fil . (Islamic Caliphate, 60-71)
Even the controversial Suras like Surah al-Nurayn and Surah al-Walayah which are now considered forgeries. These Suras were created 200-300 years back from the current time. It proves that the challenges to create Sura-Like-It were met and have been produced.
At the current time, there are people who have taken the challenge, in spite of various Islamic scholars demanding the AOL website be closed. It is now being hosted on a different web site. (anti-islamic link) but it is called sura-like-it) The authors have produced and met the challenges.
The biggest question is “Who is going to be a fair judge?” The orthodox Muslims will send out a fatwa for beheading or declare the Sura-Like-It as “rubbish and not worthy of any standard”. That's why Ali Dashti honestly stated that "Neither the Qur'an's eloquence nor its moral and legal precepts are miraculous."
Therefore Eloquence and Authenticity of Qur’an does not prove Muhammad as a True Prophet
The person is ignorant on what the challange itself means. The challange is not simply producing a few verses with the eloquence of the Quran, some of these people's poetry is hilarious. To be compatible with the Quran it has to be:
- Same literery eloquence and perfection
- Has to be of the same weight of the Quran in terms of people that have memorized it for it to be even comparable to the Quran.
- It has to last the same time as the Quran with it being memorized just as much. Something that can never be done.
Here are some quotes of the inimitability of the Quran by known orientalists:
That the best of Arab writers has never succeeded in producing anything equal in merit to the Qur'an itself is not surprising. In the first place, they have agreed before-hand that it is unapproachable, and they have adopted its style as the perfect standard; any deviation from it therefore must of necessity be a defect. Again, with them this style is not spontaneous as with Muhammad and his contemporaries, but is as artificial as though Englishmen should still continue to follow Chaucer as their model, in spite of the changes which their language has undergone. With the Prophet, the style was natural, and the words were those in every-day ordinary life, while with the later Arabic authors the style is imitative and the ancient words are introduced as a literary embellishment. The natural consequence is that their attempts look laboured and unreal by the side of his impromptu and forcible eloquence
E H Palmer (Tr.), The Qur'an, 1900, Part I, Oxford at Clarendon Press, p. lv.
...the Meccans still demanded of him a miracle, and with remarkable boldness and self confidence Mohammad appealed as a supreme confirmation of his mission to the Koran itself. Like all Arabs they were the connoisseurs of language and rhetoric. Well, then if the Koran were his own composition other men could rival it. Let them produce ten verses like it. If they could not (and it is obvious that they could not), then let them accept the Koran as an outstanding evident miracle.
H A R Gibb, Islam - A Historical Survey, 1980, Oxford University Press, p. 28.
Though, to be sure, the question of the literary merit is one not to be judged on a priori grounds but in relation to the genius of Arabic language; and no man in fifteen hundred years has ever played on that deep-toned instrument with such power, such boldness, and such range of emotional effect as Mohammad did.
Ibid., p. 25.
As a literary monument the Koran thus stands by itself, a production unique to the Arabic literature, having neither forerunners nor successors in its own idiom. Muslims of all ages are united in proclaiming the inimitability not only of its contents but also of its style..... and in forcing the High Arabic idiom into the expression of new ranges of thought the Koran develops a bold and strikingly effective rhetorical prose in which all the resources of syntactical modulation are exploited with great freedom and originality.
H A R Gibb, Arabic Literature - An Introduction, 1963, Oxford at Clarendon Press, p. 36.
You can find more on that here:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Qur...acle/ijaz.html
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Miracle/
I think the second link is more than enough to shatter his claims.
One thing you should remember bro, is that these people are just a few ignorant individuals who have no knowledge and greater oreinalists came before them and were refuted by scholors. Islam has always been under attack and will always remain under it while other religions wont be, and that itself is a sign that Islam is the Truth because it only Truth that can be attacked as Islam has. Therefore, dont waste your time with these people, give them Daw'ah, establish the proof against them, and move on. It is better for you to spend time learning the Deen instead of being involved in these pointless debates over the internet because most of these people wont convert after hearing someone on the internet, its only a minority that will, and that minority, you wont find in anti-islamic sites.
:w: