The Holy Qur’aan is the foundation stone of Islamic society and its constitution. The ideal society is one governed by its principles.
IT CONTAINS passages of great beauty. Many non-Muslims have waxed lyrical in praise of the Holy Qur’aan’s style, yet they refuse to accept Islam.
We reproduce here an example of such praise. To a certain extent we have retained the grand sounding words used in an attempt to convey the feeling with which they write about the Noble Qur’aan:
THE CENTRAL MESSAGE of the Holy Qur’aan is to believe in the One God alone. Millions have memorized it, and if, for some reason, all printed copies should vanish, the exact text can be faithfully reproduced from oral tradition.
ENDINGS OF LINKED verses often rhyme, but the verses do not fit the metrical schemes of Arabic poetry, and are not poetry. Nor are they prose.
The depth and range of allusion, both in sound and sense, cannot be reproduced in translation, but can be appreciated even by those unfamiliar with Arabic by listening to a recording of a Qur’aan recitation.
THE STYLE OF THE Holy Qur’aan is so striking and so different from other literary works that it is characterized as inimitable.
Numerous attempts at trying to imitate it were all doomed to failure over a vast space of over 14 centuries.
AN ESSENTIAL DIFFERENCE between the Holy Qur’aan and the present-day Christian and Jewish scriptures is that the latter are accompanied by extensive footnotes listing large number of variations in reading.
The text of the Holy Qur’aan has no such scholarly apparatus as it does not differ in any respect from the text fixed by Caliph Uthmaan (radhiallahu anhu) from the Companions of the Prophet (sallallahu alaihi wa sallam), who learned the verses by heart as they were revealed.
[Paul Lunde, Islam A Brief History]
