The Holy Quran with Five Volume Commentary (Vol 3) — Page 46
CH. 10 YŪNUS PT. 11 أمْ يَقُولُونَ افْتَريهُ قُلْ فَأْتُوْا بِسُورَةٍ Do they say, “He has forged. 39 مِثْلِهِ وَادْعُوا مَنِ اسْتَطَعْتُمْ مِنْ دُونِ اللَّهِ إِنْ كُنْتُمْ صَدِقِينَ it?” Say, "Bring then a Sūrah like unto it, and call for help on all you can besides Allah, if you are truthful. '1314 "2:24; 11:14; 17:89; 52:34-35. ordinarily foresees and seeks to meet his immediate needs only. It is God alone Who can give such teachings as are equally useful for all times and all peoples and as are unaffected by changes in time and in the conditions and circumstances of man. The Quran embodies such teachings. 1314. Commentary: the great Notwithstanding excellences of the Quran mentioned in the preceding verse, disbelievers had the hardihood to allege that it was a fabrication of the Holy Prophet. The verse under comment asks, if a book with such excellences as the Quran possesses could be a human fabrication, then why do disbelievers not produce a similar one themselves? Similar challenges have been made in the Quran at different places, in different words. At one place the Quran calls upon disbelievers to produce a book like the whole of the Quran; at another it challenges them to produce ten chapters comparable to the Quranic Surahs; at yet another place it requires them to produce even a single Surah like those of the Quran. This shows that each of the passages containing these challenges deals with the subject from a different standpoint and offers a different challenge. In the verse under comment, for instance, the pronoun "it" in the expression at (like unto it) does not refer to the whole of the Quran but only to the previous verse of the present Surah. As we have seen, the previous verse has advanced five arguments to show that the Quran is the revealed word of God and in the present verse disbelievers are told that if they still persist in looking upon the Quran as the word of man, then let them produce a book which, let alone all the five arguments embodied in the previous verse, should possess only one of them. It is a patent fact, however, that not one of these five arguments about the Divine origin of the Quran is to be found in any work of man. This is a claim which nobody has ever dared to contradict, nor is there a possibility of future contradiction. The challenge stands for all time. The heavens and the earth may pass away, but no man will ever be able to produce a book like the Quran. If the word Surah in this verse be taken to mean a chapter, then the verse would mean that disbelievers are called upon to produce even a chapter comparable with the Quran. But then the challenge will not be so pointed. For, in that case disbelievers would be called upon to bring a full chapter characterized by all the five 1254