Every facet that people have mentioned as evidence of the Qur’an’s inimitability is itself a proof of that inimitability; there is no contradiction among them—each community merely grasped the aspect to which it was alert.

One of the weakest explanations, however, is the claim advanced by some scholastic theologians that the Qur’an is miraculous because God diverted every motive to challenge it, despite those motives being fully present; or that He removed people’s complete ability to match it; or that He stripped them, wholesale, of their customary capacity to produce anything comparable—citing as precedent His words to Zechariah: “Your sign is that you will not speak to people for three nights, though perfectly sound” (Maryam 19:10).

According to this view, God turned the hearts of all nations away from opposing the Qur’an even though every requisite factor for opposition existed. Stated hypothetically: if we suppose that people were able to bring forth something like this discourse, then their unanimous failure to do so, despite the most compelling incentives, would constitute one of the most extraordinary, supernatural signs.

It would be like someone saying, “I shall seize the wealth of every inhabitant of…"