Not only is the Quran unique in the way it presents its subjects, it is unique that it is a miracle in itself. By the term „miracle“ we mean the fulfillment of a supernatural or extraordinary event that cannot be copied by humans. It has been documented that the Prophet Muhammad, God’s blessing and peace be upon him, challenged the Arabs to write a Quran-style literary work, but they were unable to do so despite their well-known poetry and eloquence. The Arabs and even all of humanity were asked to reproduce the Quran in three stages:
l. All of the Quran
In the Quran, God commands the Prophet to challenge the creatures to write a book in the format of the Quran:
„Say: ‚If the people and the Jinn united to produce something like this Quran, they would not produce anything like it, even if they stood by each other.“ (Quran 17:88)
Chapter 2
Next did God seemed to make the challenge easier by asking those who denied his divine origin to imitate only ten chapters of the Qur’an:
“Or will they say: ‚He made it up‘? Say: „So bring forth ten equal suras and call on whom you can do except God if you are truthful.“ (Quran 11:13)
3. A chapter
This final challenge was to create even a single sura that can measure up to the shortest surah in the Quran, which consists of only three verses:
“And if you are in doubt about what We have sent down to Our servants, so bring up a sura of the same kind and call upon your witnesses outside of God if you are truthful. ” (Quran 2:23)
These challenges were not just empty words, and no one cared to declare them wrong. Prophet Muhammad’s call to monotheism, the elimination of idolatry in all its forms, and the equality of slaves and their masters threatened the entire socio-economic framework of Meccan society in general, and the position of the ruling tribe of the Quraish, from whom the Prophet Muhammad came, in particular. Mecca, the commercial center of Arabia as well as the spiritual center, desperately tried to prevent the spread of Islam. All the opponents of the Prophet had to do was move and create a single chapter like one that the Prophet and his followers recited to man. A number of Quraish speakers tried to imitate the Quran, but they failed. Then they went on to offer him great riches, the status of the king over her, and the noblest and most beautiful of their wives in return for promising to stop inviting people to Islam. He answered them by reciting the first thirteen verses of Chapter Fussilat until they asked him to stop. [1] Then the Quraish also began to torture their slaves and relatives who had adopted Islam; a futile attempt to move her back to idolatry. They later organized an economic boycott against the Prophet, his followers and members of his tribe, Banu Haaschim, an attempt to starving them until submission. But this plan also failed. Eventually, they planned to kill him by sending armed young men from every Quraish tribe so that all the tribes were equally responsible for the murder and to prevent revenge from the Prophet’s tribe.
However, God now ordered the Prophet and his followers to flee from Mecca and join a new group of converts who had risen from the tribes of a northern city called Yathrib. Islam spread rapidly among the Yathrib tribes, and within a year the majority of the residents were Muslim. The Prophet Muhammad was declared their ruler and their name changed to Medina an-Nabiy (The City of the Prophet), or „Medina“ for short. Over the next eight years, the tribes of Mecca and the surrounding area prepared for a series of unsuccessful struggles against the emerging Muslim state in Medina, which ended with the Muslim conquest of Mecca itself.
All this bloodshed could have been avoided if the Quraish and their allies had been able to write only three lines of poetry or prose, so that it would have been like the shortest chapter in the Quran. From this one can clearly see that the literary style of the Quran, its amazing rhymes and the miracle of its rhythm are inimitable.
It was noted that the inimitability of the Qur’an does not necessarily have to be unique, because even the great English poets like Shakespeare, Chaucer or great poets of any other language have their own style that stands out from their contemporaries. However, if a leading poet of today studied extensively the style of Shakespeare’s writings and wrote a sonnet in Shakespeare’s style in old ink on an old sheet of paper and then claimed to have found a lost poem by Shakespeare, the literary world would make his claim presumably accept even after thorough examination. Because even the greatest poets can be imitated, no matter how unique their style is, just as the greatest painters have been imitated. [In fact, some English scholars suspect that much of what is attributed to Shakespeare actually comes from his contemporary, Christopher Marlowe.] However, the Quran is high above this level because attempts have been made at all times to imitate chapters, but nothing has yet stood up to scrutiny. And, as mentioned before, the incentive to imitate the Quran was greatest at the time of its revelation, when literary artistry was at its peak, than in any other time, and there was no successful attempt.
Footnotes:
[1] Collected by al-Haakim, al-Bayhaqi, Abu Ya’laa and Ibn Hishaam, and by lbraahiem al-‚Aliy in Sahieh as-Sierah an-Nabawiyyah, p.64 declared hasan.
Source: https://www.islamland.com/deu/articles/die-herausforderung-des-quran