since you have now understood your impotence in eight degrees, you should be certain eight times over that the Qur’an is a miracle. So either believe in it, or be silent and go to Hell!” So see the way the Qur’an forces them to accept the argument in this category of silencing in argument, which is within that of making understood, and say: “There is no manner of exposition better than that of the Qur’an!” Indeed, no need remains for further exposition after that of the Qur’an.

Here is a second example:

Exhort then [O Prophet], for by your Sustainer’s grace you are neither a soothsayer nor a madman ∗ Or do they say: A poet! – let us wait and see what time will do! ∗ Say: Wait then, I too shall wait with you. ∗ Is it that their faculties of understanding urge them to this, or are they but a people transgressing all bounds. ∗ Or do they say: He fabricated this [Message]? Nay, they do not believe. ∗ Let them then produce a recital like unto it – if they speak the truth. ∗ Or were they created of nothing, or were they themselves the creators? ∗ Or did they create the heavens and the earth? Nay, they have no firm belief. ∗ Or are the treasuries of your Sustainer with them, or are they the managers [of affairs]? ∗ Or have they a ladder by which they can [climb up to heaven and] listen [to its secrets]? Then let [such a] listener of theirs produce a manifest proof. ∗ Or has He only daughters and you have sons? ∗ Or is it that you ask for a reward, so that they are burdened with a load of debt? ∗ Or that the Unseen is in their hands, and they write it down? ∗ Or do they intend a plot [against you]? But those who defy God are themselves involved in a plot! ∗ Or have they a god other than God? Exalted is God far above the things they associate with them.(52:29-43)

Here we shall explain only one of the thousands of truths of these verses as a further example of the category of silencing in argument. It is as follows: with the word, “Or... Or...”, it silences every group of the people of misguidance with a rhetorical question expressing surprise and stops up all the sources of their doubts. It leaves no satanic chink through which doubts might enter and conceal themselves; it closes them all. It leaves no veil of misguidance under which they might creep and lurk; it rends all of them. It leaves not one of their lies; it crushes them. In each sentence it either demolishes the essence of the blasphemous ideas of one group with a short phrase, or since the falsity is obvious, it exposes it by silence, or since it is refuted in detail in other verses, it here alludes to it briefly. For example, the first sentence alludes to the verse: