Third Point

THIRD POINT

Miracles are for proving claims to prophethood and for convincing those who deny those claims, they are not for compelling people to believe. Therefore, miracles have to be manifested to those who hear claims to prophethood to the extent that they will persuade them. Just as it would be contrary to the All-Wise and Glorious One’s wisdom to display them all over the world or in so self-evident a manner that all would be compelled to believe, so would it also be contrary to the mystery of human accountability. For accountability requires “opening the door to the reason and not removing the power of choice.” If the All-Wise Creator had left the moon split for one or two hours in order to show it to the whole world as the philosophers wished, and it had been recorded in all the general histories, then it would have been like all other occurrences in the heavens and would not have been an evidence to Muhammad’s (UWBP) claim to prophethood nor been special to his messengership. Or else it would have been such a self-evident miracle that it would have negated the power of choice, a part of man’s reason, compelling it to accept it; willy-nilly, it would have had to assent to his prophethood. Someone with the coal-like spirit of Abu Jahl would have remained at the same level as someone with the diamond-like spirit of Abu Bakr the Veracious; the mystery of human accountability would have been lost. It was due to this mystery that, being both instantaneous, and at nighttime, and at a time of sleep, and its being concealed by time-differences, mist, and cloud and other obstacles, it was not shown to the whole world and did not pass into the histories.

Fourth Point

FOURTH POINT

Since this event occurred instantaneously at night while everyone was sleeping, of course it was not seen all over the world. Even if some people had seen it, they would not have believed their eyes. And even if it had made them believe, because there were only single reports, such a significant event would not have become a permanent source for future histories.

In some books it is written that after the moon split into two halves, it fell to earth, but veracious scholars have rejected such additions, saying that they were perhaps added by dissemblers with the intention of discrediting this evident miracle. [^25]

[^25]:See, ‘Ali al-Qārī, al-Asrār al-Marfū‘a, 398; al-Madanī, Taḥzīr al-Muslimīn, i, 163.

And, for example, just as that time in England and Spain, which were then enveloped in mists of ignorance, would have been just after sunset, in