and spiritually, has given it an order and regularity and imposed a discipline on it that are such as to conquer both this world and the next, and has instructed the minds, trained the hearts, conquered the spirits, purified the consciences, and employed and utilized the limbs and members of individuals according to the degree of each. To imagine it to be a counterfeit necessitates accepting a hundredfold impossibility.
“This impossibility entails the further complete impossibility of supposing that one who, through his deliberate conduct throughout his life taught humankind Almighty God’s laws, and through his honest behaviour instructed it in the principles of truth, and through his sincere and reasonable words showed and established the straight way of moderation and happiness, and as all his life testifies, felt great fear of divine punishment and knew God better than anyone else and made Him known, [^10] and in splendid fashion has for one thousand three hundred and fifty years commanded a fifth of humankind and half the globe, and through his qualities of renown is in truth the means of pride of humanity, indeed, of the universe, God forbid a hundred thousand times, neither feared God, nor knew Him, nor held back from lying, nor had any self-respect. Because in this matter there is no point between the two. For if, to suppose the impossible, the Qur’an is not the Word of God, if it falls from the divine throne to the ground, it cannot remain somewhere in between the two. Indeed, it then has to be accepted to be the property of the very worst of liars. As for this, O Satan, even if you were a hundred times more satanic, you could not deceive any mind that was not unsound, nor persuade any heart that was not corrupted.”
[^10]:See, Bukhārī, Adab, 72; I‘tiṣām, 5; Muslim, Faḍā’il, 127, 128; Musnad, vi, 45, 181.
The Devil retorted: “How should I not deceive them? I have deceived most of humankind and their foremost thinkers into denying the Qur’an and Muhammad.”
I replied: “Firstly: When seen from a great distance, the greatest thing appears the same as the smallest. A star may even appear as a candle.
“Secondly: Also, when seen both as secondary and superficially, something which is completely impossible may appear to be possible.
“One time an old man as watching the sky in order to see the new moon of Ramadan when a white hair fell on his eye. Imagining it to be the moon, he announced: ‘I have seen the new moon.’ Now, it is impossible that the white hair should have been the moon, but because his intention was to look for just the moon and the hair was by the way and secondary, he paid it no attention and thought that impossibility was possible.