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THE
QURAN NEVER GROWS OLDER
The
Quran retains its youth and freshness as
if being revealed anew in every epoch.
Since as an eternal discourse it
addresses all human beings of different
levels in every age, it should have a
never-fading freshness, and indeed it
has.
The
Quran so impresses the succeeding epochs
that each, differing from others in
ideas and potentialities, regards the
Quran as being revealed to itself
particularly and receives its
instructions from it. Although the words
of the human mind and the laws it
produces become old like human beings
themselves and therefore are revised or
changed, the laws and principles which
the Quran decreed are so established and
constant and so compatible with
essential human nature and the
unchanging laws of creation that, except
to show their truth, validity and force
more clearly, the passage of centuries
do not have the least effect on them.
Indeed, this century, including its
people of the Book-the Christians and
Jews-is more confident of itself than
preceding ones, and is most of all in
need of the guiding messages of the
Quran beginning with O people of the
Book, for, since they also mean O people
of schooling and education, those
messages are as if directed toward this
century exclusively. With all its
strength and freshness, the Quran makes
resound throughout the world its loud
call: Say: ‘O people of the Book!
Come now to a word common between us and
you, that we serve none but God, and
that we associate not anything with Him,
and do not some of us take others as
lords, apart from God.’ (3.64).
The
present civilization, which is the
product of the ideas of the whole of
mankind and perhaps also of the jinn,
has adopted an attitude of contending
with the Quran, which individuals and
communities have been unable to dispute
with. It tries to contradict the
miraculousness of the Quran through its
charm and ‘spells’. In order to
prove the miraculousness of the Quran
against this new, terrible opponent, and
affirm its challenge in Say: ‘If
men and jinn banded together to produce
the like of this Quran, they would never
produce its like, not though they backed
one another’ (al-Isra’,
17.88), I will compare the principles
and foundations on which modern
civilization is based in opposing the
Quran, with those of the Quran.
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