The Qur’an is the speech of Allah, the Creator and Originator of the universe and everything within. The miraculous nature of the Qur’an is in its language, because Qur’anic Arabic breaks the natural law of language in terms of its eloquence, beauty, rhetoric, structure, rhythm, rhyme, grammar, clarity and depth which is beyond the ability of the best poets and linguistics.

Allah placed a challenge in the Qur’an that if anyone doubts this book is from Him, then produce one chapter (surah) like it in Arabic:

وَإِن كُنتُم في رَيبٍ مِمّا نَزَّلنا عَلىٰ عَبدِنا فَأتوا بِسورَةٍ مِن مِثلِهِ وَادعوا شُهَداءَكُم مِن دونِ اللَّهِ إِن كُنتُم صادِقينَ

“If you have doubts about what We have sent down to Our slave, produce another chapter equal to it, and call your witnesses, besides Allah, if you are telling the truth.”[1]

No human being has ever met this challenge, and no one ever will.

“Produce One Chapter Like It”: The Miraculous Inimitability of the Qur’ān’s Shortest Chapter

One aspect of Quranic Arabic is in its perfect word choice. The way the words are placed in the verses, and the similarity between them is never incidental, but rather a deliberate choice by Allah.

An example of perfect word choice and sentence structure can be found in Surah Al-Ikhlas, which is the 112^th chapter of the Qur’an, and one of the final ten short surahs which every Muslim in the world is taught from a young age.

Angelika Neuwirth, a Professor of Qur’anic studies at the Free University of Berlin has made a fascinating discovery in Surah Al-Ikhlas by comparing it to the credal declarations of the Jews and Christians found in Deuteronomy 6:4 and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381CE) respectively.

The excerpt from Neuwirth’s book is highly academic in its language and may be difficult for some to follow, so I recommend watching the video produced by the The Muslim Paradigm which is a very good explanation of her findings.

Surah Al-Ikhlas

Allah Most High says,

Arabic	Transliteration	English
قُلْ هُوَ ٱللَّهُ أَحَدٌ	Qul huwal laahu ahad	Say, ‘He is God the One,
ٱللَّهُ ٱلصَّمَدُ	Allah-hus samad	God the eternal.
لَمْ يَلِدْ وَلَمْ يُولَدْ	Lam yalid Wa-lam yoolad	He begot no one nor was He begotten.
وَلَمْ يَكُن لَّهُۥ كُفُوًا أَحَدٌۢ	Wa-lam yakul lahoo kufuwan ahad	No one is comparable to Him.’

Comparison Table

Nicene Creed	Dtn 6:4	Surah Al-Ikhlas
We believe in one God,	Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One (ehad)	Say, ‘He is God the One (ahad),
The Father *Almighty*, Maker of heavens and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.		God the eternal.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, *the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father* before all worlds (aeons), Light of Light, very God of very God, *begotten, not made*,		He begot no one nor was He begotten.
*being of one substance with the Father*.		No one is comparable to Him.’

A Response to the Jewish credo

Angelika Neuwirth says, “It is difficult not to hear the beginning verse, “Say: He is God is one,” as a free translation of the Jewish credo, Shmaʿ Yisraʾel, adonai elohenu adonai eḥad, “Hear Israel: the Lord, our God, is one” (Dtn 6:4). The keyword “one” eḥad, resonates unmistakably in the Arabic text with aḥad, “one.”

This “multivocity” “polyphony,” of two texts in one is achieved through an “ungrammaticality,”[2] a violation of Arabic grammar, which in place of the noun aḥad in rhyme position would require the adjective wāḥid. According to the theory of the researcher of poetics Michael Riffaterre, ungrammaticality denotes a verbal phenomenon that, by standing out from a certain text, makes reference to another text where this form is “normal.” What initially appears as an irregularity shows itself, through knowledge of the “other text,” to be a bridge between two texts that mutually illuminate each other: Riffaterre speaks here of a dual sign, a sign of double significance: “The sign of double significance works through a play on words. . . . It is initially perceived as mere ungrammaticality, until one discovers that there is another text in which the word is ‘grammatical.’ Once this text is identified, the sign of double significance becomes significant in its form, which makes reference to that other code.”

As we have seen, the Jewish text remains hearable through the Qur’anic version. This audible “citation,” hearable across linguistic borders, underlines the new Qur’an-specific turn, which transfers the old credo, a confession-specific text marked by address to Israel, into a universal text to be repeated by all men. To make the Jewish credo universally valid, and thus also acceptable to a non-Jewish hearership, the text is reformulated, but without losing the distinct form in which it already possesses authority.”[3]

Circumstances of revelation

This finding makes sense if we look to the Asbab an-Nuzul (Circumstances of revelation) of Surah Al-Ikhlas. Al-Wāhidī narrates that “a group of Jewish people went to the Prophet ﷺ and said to him: “Describe to us your Lord, for He has revealed His description in the Torah. Tell us: what is He made of? And to which species does He belong? Is He made of gold, copper or silver? Does He eat and drink? Who did He inherit this world from? And to whom will He bequeath it?”[4]

In response to this questioning by the Jews, Allah revealed Surah Al-Ikhlas.

Difference between Al-Wāhid and Al-Ahad

While Allah’s name al-Wāhid (the One) appears in twenty-two verses of the Qur’ān, the name al-Ahad appears only once in Surah Al-Ikhlas. Muqith Mujtaba Ali says, “There is no Arabic literature which ever uses the word Ahad by itself in a positive way — except for Surah al Ikhlas.”[5] This would seem to confirm the findings of Angelika Neuwirth that the word Ahad was chosen by Allah as a response to the Jewish credo.

It should also be noted that Al-Ahad is an attribute of Allah and also carries additional meanings which fit perfectly with this surah. Muqith Mujtaba Ali says, “The word wāhid is simply the Arabic word for the number ‘one’. As a name of Allah, it refers to His being the one and only true God. It also refers to His being the First, before whom nothing existed. This in turn, communicates that no one deserves to be worshipped besides Allah, and that He has no partner in divinity.

The word ahad, by contrast, conveys an uncountable oneness. It is not one in a series. It cannot be added to or divided into fractions. Its stands for a singular, unique entity. Also, in Arabic grammatical usage, it is the form of the word ‘one’ used to distinguish an individual from others, like in the phrase ‘one of them’ in ‘Only one of them showed up.’

Consequently, the name al-Ahad, it is more exclusive in its meaning than the name al-Wāhid, referring specifically to Allah’s essence, communicating that Allah is absolutely singular in His essence and utterly unique in His attributes. No one is like Him in any way.”[6]

Imam Al-Razi (d.1210) in his tafsir says “that Al-Wāhid and Al-Ahad are not two synonymous names.” He continues, “Al-Azhari (d.980)[7] said: Nothing is described as Al-Ahadīyah except Allah the Most High. It is not said: A man is Ahad nor is a dirham Ahad, as one says: A man is Wāhid, meaning unique in it. Rather, Al-Ahad is an attribute of Allah the Most High, which He has kept to Himself, so nothing shares it with Him. Then they mentioned aspects of the difference between Al-Wāhid and Al-Ahad:

1- that Al-Wāhid is included in Al-Ahad, and Al-Ahad is not included in Al-Wāhid.

2- If you say: “No one (Wāhid) can resist so-and-so,” it is permissible to say: “But two can resist him, unlike one (Al-Ahad).” But if you say: “No one (Ahad) can resist so-and-so,” it is not permissible to say: “But two can resist him.”

3- Al-Wāhid is used to affirm, and Al-Ahad to negate. You say to affirm, “I saw one (Wāhid) man,” and you say to negate, “I did not see anyone (Ahad),” which indicates generality (al-‘umum).[8]

This is the miracle of the Qur’an with its perfect word choice that can produce multiple meanings to multiple realities. It addresses the Jews and their credo and it also addresses a more general concept of Allah’s oneness, singular power and sovereignty.

A Response to the Christian credo

Angelika Neuwirth continues, “Not quite so striking on first glance is the fact that the short sura makes reference to a further credo. The text that was central in Judaism had long been interpreted in Christian theology in terms of a Trinitarian credo. In the Nicene Creed, it takes this form: “We believe in one God, the Father, the all-powerful, who created everything, heaven and earth, all that is sensible and insensible. And in the one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born as the only child from the Father before all time, light out of light, true God out of true God, born, not created, of one essence with the father.”

The Qur’anic verse 112:3, lam yalid wa-lam yūlad, “he did not engender a child, nor was he born,” resonates as an echo of the Nicene Creed “born, not created.” But the verse unmistakably rejects the statement of the Nicene Creed, genēthenta ou poiēthenta, “born, not created.” It is remarkable that it thereby employs a double expression that is no less emphatic than the original, lam yalid wa-lam yūlad, “he did not engender child and was not born,” and thus remains close to the “translated” text in its rhetorically marked form. A negative theology is here established, achieved through a recognizable inversion of a key text that is prominent locally—though among Christians rather than Jews. This negative theology is condensed in verse 4: walam yakun lahu kufuwan aḥad, “and no one is equal to him.”

This verse, which up to now has been read simply as a particularly forceful confession of monotheism, is striking. It introduces kufuwan, “equal,” which occurs only once in the Qur’an, as a reproduction of the important theological concept homoousios, Greek for “equal in nature.” It thus not only inverts the Nicene Creed’s statement of the essential likeness of Christ with the Father, homoousios to patri, but also goes beyond it to epistemically exclude the mere thought that any created being could be equal to God—to say nothing of the essential likeness of a son. This is yet another ambitious rhetorical translation, but one that induces a rigorous reinterpretation of an older text.”[9]