commands that.’ But he would not make God speak to suit himself. Trembling at the verse,

Who, then does more wrong than one who utters a lie concerning God?(39:32),

he would not overstep his mark to an infinite degree, imitate God, and speak on His behalf.

“Secondly: It is in no way possible for a human being to be successful in doing such a thing on his own, in fact, it is completely impossible. Persons who resemble one another may imitate one another, those of the same kind may take on one another’s forms, those who are close to one another in rank or status may imitate one another and temporarily deceive people, but they cannot do so for ever. For in any event, the falseness and artificiality in their behaviour will show up their imposture to the observant, and their deception will not last. If the one who is attempting to imitate another under false pretences is quite unlike them; for example, if an uneducated man wants to imitate in learning a genius like Ibn Sina, or a shepherd to assume the position of a king, of course, they will not deceive anyone at all, they will only make fools of themselves. Everything they do will proclaim, ‘This is an impostor.’

“Thus, to suppose – God forbid! a hundred thousand times – the Qur’an to be man’s word is utterly impossible, no rational being can accept it as possible, to do so is a delirium like imagining to be possible something that is self-evidently impossible like a firefly being seen by astronomers as a real star for a thousand years; or a fly appearing to observers in the true form of a peacock for a year; or a bogus common private posing as a famous lofty field marshal, taking over his position and remaining in it for a long period without giving away his deception; or like a slandering, unbelieving liar affecting the manner and position of the most truthful, trustworthy, upright believer throughout his life and being completely unruffled before even the most observant while concealing his fraud from them.

“In just the same way, if the Qur’an is supposed to be man’s word, then it has to be supposed, God forbid, that that Perspicuous Book, which is considered to be clearly a most brilliant star, rather, a sun of perfections perpetually scattering the lights of truth in the heavens of the world of Islam, is like a firefly, a spurious sham made up by a counterfeiting human. And those who are closest to it and study it most carefully do not realize this, and consider it to be a perpetual, exalted star and source of truth. Together with this being impossible a hundred times over, even if you went a hundred times further in your diabolical machinations, O Satan, you could not make such an assertion, you could not deceive anyone of sound