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Muhammad repeated Surah liv. 44, 45. In this he acted wisely, and very much as any other
general would have done, except that he stated that his message of encouragement and
promise of victory came from God. Cheered by such words, the Muslims fought bravely and
gained a great victory. But this was not in any sense a miracle. Nor can Muhammad's words
of encouragement be justly entitled a prophecy.
We now turn to passages of the second class. Some of these are supposed to predict the
preservation of the Qur'an in completeness and its protection from all injury. The author
of the Izharu'l Haqq, writing on this subject, 1 after quoting Surah xv.
9, "Verily it is We that have sent down the Warning, and verily We are surely
Protectors," says: "That is, from alteration and addition to and subtraction
from what has been handed down in succession . . . by the Reciters of the time. And it has
happened just as it was announced. Accordingly no one among the infidels or the idle or
the Qarmatites
(القرامطة) has been able, up to this time in which we live, to alter any of it,
either one of the letters of its foundations or one of those of its meanings, or one of
its vowel-points." Those of our readers who have perused the Third Chapter of the
Second Part of our present Treatise, and who remember how 'Uthman destroyed all the old
codices of the Qur'an, will be able to estimate the value of this statement. If it is
true, then many of the accepted Traditions
(احاديث) are false, for, as we have seen, they
declare that certain verses of the Qur'an, for example the Verse of Stoning, have been
lost. Hence it is not clear that, if Surah xv. 9 be considered as a prophecy, it has been
fulfilled. This second class of asserted predictions therefore is, like the first class,
of no real value as a proof of the inspiration of the Qur'an and of Muhammad's prophetic
office.
In the Third Class there is only one passage, Surah xxx. 1-4, which in the ordinary
copies of the Qur'an
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runs thus: "The Byzantines have been defeated in the nearest part of the land, and
they shall conquer in a small number of years after their defeat. Unto God belongeth the
matter before and after. And in that day the Believers will rejoice with God's help. He
helpeth whomsoever He willeth, and He is the Glorious, the Gracious." Some Muslims
argue that this is such a great and distinct prophecy that there can be no doubt of
Muhammad's being a prophet. They tell us that the first verse refers to the defeat of the
Byzantines in Syria by the Persians under Khusrau Parviz. We are told that when news of
the victory of the Persians reached Mecca, the Polytheists rejoiced, saying, "The
Muslims and the Christians are the People of the Book, while we and the Persians are
Gentiles and have no Book." Then this passage was revealed, predicting that the
Byzantines would soon defeat the Persians. Abu Bakr laid a bet with Ubai ibn Khalaf that
the prediction would be fulfilled within three years, but, when he learnt from Muhammad
that the word بِضع
used in ver. 3 ("in a small number of years") meant a period of between
3 and 9 years, 1 he altered the terms of the wager. We are told that within
seven years from the Byzantines' defeat they overcame their enemies, and that Abu Bakr
received from the heirs of the deceased Ubai the amount of the bet. Such is the story. Let
us now see what its evidential value is, if we grant that the verses were composed before
the Byzantine successes, and that the reading in the ordinary text of the Qur'an is
correct.
From history we learn that the Persians defeated the Greek (or Byzantine) forces in
Syria in the sixth year before the Hijrah, that is in A.D. 615. As this defeat took place
"in the nearest part of the land" to Mecca, news must have been received there
within a very few days. Al Baizawi in his commentary tells us that the prophecy was
fulfilled when the Byzantines defeated the Persians "on the day of Al Hudaibiyyah."
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