The Essence of Islam – Volume I — Page 428
428. Essence of Islam-1. If someone should be dissatisfied with both these types of testimony and should take pride in his knowledge and ability, or should believe that some other writer can compose something like the Holy Qur'an, we shall proceed, as we have promised, to set forth a sample of the verities and fine points comprehended in the Surah Fātiḥah. Such a person should put forth some composition of his own as a rival to the external and internal qualities of the Surah Fatihah. [Brāhīn-e-Aḥmadiyya, Rūḥānī Khazā'in, Vol. 1, pp. 394-403, footnote 11]. Like the Holy Qur'ān, the Surah Fātiḥah comprises two types of qualities which are matchless, one external and the other internal. As we have repeatedly set forth, its external quality is that its text is so colourful, bright, fine, delicate, eloquent, sweet and smooth, and its statements and sequence are so beautiful that it is not possible to set forth its meaning in an equal or more eloquent composition. If the writers and poets of the whole world should seek to expound its subject matter on their own in another text, which should be equal to or better than the text of the Surah Fatihah, they would find it impossible to do so, as the Holy Qur'ān has put forward its claim of matchlessness before the whole world over a period of 1,300 years without a response . . . The silence of its opponents over the centuries has furnished the Holy Qur'ān with a degree of proof of matchlessness which is not possessed by the rose, for the thinkers and artisans of the world have never been invited to match anything else in this manner, nor have they been warned that in the case of their inability to do so they would be subjected to diverse types of ruin and destruction . . . . . Now we repeat the inner qualities of the Surah Fātiḥah so