The Critic’s Trail

As a matter of fact, a great deal of the Quran came in answer to questions.  Someone would ask Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, a question, and the revelation would come with the answer to it.  Certainly, if one is crazy and believes that an angel put words in his ear, then when someone asks him a question, he thinks that the angel will give him the answer.  Because he is crazy, he really thinks that.  He does not tell someone to wait a short while and then run to his friends and ask them, “Does anyone know the answer?”  This type of behavior is characteristic of one who does not believe that he is a prophet.  What the non-Muslims refuse to accept is that you cannot have it both ways.  One can be deluded, or he can be a liar.  He can be either one or neither one, but he certainly cannot be both!  The emphasis is on the fact that they are unquestionably mutually exclusive personality traits.

The following scenario is a good example of the kind of circle that non-Muslims go around in constantly.  If you ask one of them, “What is the origin of the Quran?” He tells you that it originated from the mind of a man who was crazy.  Then you ask him, “If it came from his head, then where did he get the information contained in it?  Certainly the Quran mentions many things with which the Arabs were not familiar.” So in order to explain the fact which you bring him, he changes his position and says, “Well, maybe he was not crazy.  Maybe some foreigner brought him the information.  So he lied and told people that he was a prophet.” At this point then you have to ask him, “If Muhammad was a liar, then where did he get his confidence?  Why did he behave as though he really thought he was a prophet?” Finally backed into a corner, like a cat he quickly lashes out with the first response that comes to his mind.  Forgetting that he has already exhausted that possibility, he claims, “Well, maybe he wasn’t a liar.  He was probably crazy and really thought that he was a prophet.” And thus he begins the futile cycle again.

As has already been mentioned, there is much information contained in the Quran whose source cannot be attributed to anyone other than God.  For example, who told Muhammad about embryology?  When people assemble facts such as these, if they are not willing to attribute their existence to a divine source, they automatically resort to the assumption someone brought Muhammad the information and that he used it to fool the people.

However, this theory can easily be disproved with one simple question: “If Muhammad was a liar, where did he get his confidence?  Why did he tell some people out right to their face what others could never say?” Such confidence depends completely upon being convinced that one has a true divine revelation.

A Revelation - Abu Lahab

Prophet Muhammad had an uncle by the name of Abu Lahab.  This man hated Islam to such an extent that he used to follow the Prophet around in order to discredit him.  If Abu Lahab saw the Prophet speaking to a stranger, he would wait until they parted and then would go to the stranger and ask him, “What did he tell you?  Did he say, ‘Black’?  Well, it’s white.  Did he say ‘morning’?  Well, it’s night.” He faithfully said the exact opposite of whatever he heard Muhammad and the Muslims say.  However, about ten years before Abu Lahab died, a little chapter in the Quran (Surah al-Lahab, 111) was revealed about him.  It distinctly stated that he would go to the fire (i.e., Hell).  In other words, it affirmed that he would never become a Muslim and would therefore be condemned forever.  For ten years all Abu Lahab had to do was say, “I heard that it has been revealed to Muhammad that I will never change - that I will never become a Muslim and will enter the Hellfire.  Well, I want to become Muslim now.  How do you like that?  What do you think of your divine revelation now?” But he never did that.  And yet, that is exactly the kind of behavior one would have expected from him since he always sought to contradict Islam.

In essence, Muhammad said, “You hate me and you want to finish me?  Here, say these words, and I am finished.  Come on, say them!” But Abu Lahab never said them.  Ten years! And in all that time he never accepted Islam or even became sympathetic to the Islamic cause.

How could Muhammad possibly have known for sure that Abu Lahab would fulfill the Quranic revelation if he (i.e., Muhammad) was not truly the messenger of Allah?  How could he possibly have been so confident as to give someone 10 years to discredit his claim of prophethood?  The only answer is that he was Allah’s messenger.

The Flight

Another example of the confidence which Muhammad had in his own prophethood and consequently in the divine protection of himself and his message is when he left Makkah and hid in a cave with Abu Bakr, may God be pleased with him, during their emigration to Madinah.  The two clearly saw people coming to kill them, and Abu Bakr was afraid.  Certainly, if Muhammad was a liar, a forger and one who was trying to fool the people into believing that he was a prophet, one would have expected him to say in such a circumstance to his friend, “Hey, Abu Bakr, see if you can find a back way out of this cave.” Or “Squat down in that corner over there and keep quiet.” Yet, in fact, what he said to Abu Bakr clearly illustrated his confidence.  He told him, “Do not worry, God is with us!” Now, if one knows that he is fooling the people, where does one get this kind of attitude?  In fact, such a frame of mind is not characteristic of a liar or a forger at all.

So, as has been previously mentioned, the non-Muslims go around and around in a circle, searching for a way out - some way to explain the findings in the Quran without attributing them to their proper source.  On one hand, they tell you on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, “The man was a liar,” and on the other hand, on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday they tell you, “He was crazy.” What they refuse to accept is that one cannot have it both ways; yet they need both theories, both excuses to explain the information in the Quran.