they then recast the very same charge in florid language, imagining that, once disguised, it would gain currency; so they claimed—and what a hideous, brazen claim it is!—that Muhammad had been “learning from himself.” According to them, he would retire into solitude with nature—the sky, the earth, the sun, the moon, and the stars—pour his innermost being into it, converse with it in his heart, and thus fall prey to sundry illusions. He would afterwards present those fancies to the people, asserting that they were God’s revelation brought by Gabriel, and insisting that such imaginings are the lofty insights habitually produced by men of thought and intellect.

When they observed its (1) splendid effects on Islam and its adherents—its teachings, its reform of nations—and when this mighty light dazzled them, they resorted to that pretentious sophistry whose ultimate purpose was to portray the Prophet ﷺ—indeed to “promote” him—into nothing more than a naturalistic philosopher. One French atheist had first voiced this baseless notion, and a number of modern atheists have merely echoed him. The whole idea rests on denying the existence of the Lord of all worlds and claiming that there is nothing but the workings of blind nature!

People have come to see that this forged assertion is an even greater act of obstinate denial than the slander of the earlier opponents; that the lie concocted centuries later is more manifest in its misguidance, injustice, audacity, and shamelessness than the falsehood of old; that these despicable men—overawed by their own opinions and befuddled by their feeble minds—have had their mendacity exposed by Allah; and that the intellects capable of spawning such upside-down statements, corrupt fantasies, and depraved theories are themselves base intellects and worthless notions whose corruption is plain from their consequences and from their stubborn rejection of the clearest realities. For this reason Allah said: “Say: It has been sent down by the One who knows every secret in the heavens and the earth” (al-Furqan 6). It is the Mighty, All-Powerful Lord—whose knowledge encompasses every secret, who knows His servants’ conditions both present and future—who revealed the Quran for their guidance, making it a beacon and an unmistakable sign by which all who seek the right way may be guided at every time and in every age.