The Qur’an An Abiding Wonder
The Qur’an —The Prophet’s Miracle
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laugh to indicate his ridicule of such belief. He
thought that Muslims could only hold this belief in
blind faith. It could not be based on any sound,
objective reasoning. Thinking that his blow had
really gone home, Finkle was visibly pleased with
himself. Seeing his attitude, Gilani too started
laughing. ‘Before issuing any pronouncement on
the style of the Qur’an,’ he said, ‘we should first
have a look and see if we can produce anything
comparable to it. Only when we have tried our
hand, shall we be able to say conclusively whether
humans can produce anything comparable to the
Qur’an or not.’ Gilani then invited Finkle to join
him in putting a Qur’anic idea into Arabic words.
The idea he chose was: Hell is extremely vast.
Finkle agreed, and both men sat down with pen and
paper. Between them, they produced about twenty
Arabic sentences. ‘Hell is extremely vast,’ ‘Hell is
vaster than you can imagine,’ ‘Man’s intellect
cannot fathom the vastness of Hell, ‘ and many
examples of this nature, were some of the sentences
they produced. They tried until they could think of
no other sentence to express this idea. Gilani looked
at Finkle triumphantly. ‘Now that we have done
our best, we shall be able to see how the Qur’an
