for they have been completely cut off from overhearing this discourse. The heaven is now guarded by shooting stars, as He relates from the jinn: “We probed the heaven and found it filled with mighty guards and blazing comets; we used to sit in vantage-points to listen, but whoever listens now finds a flaming comet lying in wait” (al-Jinn 8–9). We have already noted that this report is mass-transmitted and that the sky was placed under a protection the likes of which people had never known before. They saw with their own eyes what he had told them about: meteors hurled to drive away the devils, who were thereby barred from eavesdropping on the Highest Assembly. What the unbelievers themselves witnessed—the intense, all-embracing volley that overturned the familiar, occasional appearance of shooting stars—was proof that a cause beyond the natural order was at work. At that very moment nothing else on earth had occurred that broke with custom except his claim to Prophethood. Never before had anyone been known to have speech sent down upon him in the manner it descended upon him, for Moses, peace be upon him, received the Torah already inscribed; it was not revealed to him gradually, piecemeal, and recited directly to him.