the prophethood of anyone other than him could be proved, their whole appeal to revealed texts would fall apart. As for rational arguments: whenever they try to seize upon one of them, they themselves admit that their case is weak, and that those very arguments support the opposite of their creed more strongly than they support it. God willing, we shall show that they have no decisive proof—neither textual nor rational; on the contrary, every last piece of evidence turns against them.

As for their comparing the Book to a legal document on whose reverse side the acknowledgement of payment is written, that analogy is false and inapplicable. To acknowledge payment is to acknowledge the extinction of the debt; there is no contradiction between the debt’s being originally established and its later disappearance through settlement—and even then the claimant can still lodge his claim. By contrast, when someone says, “I am the Messenger of Allah,” it is impossible to accept him as Allah’s Messenger in part of what he conveys from Allah while rejecting the rest, just as it is impossible to follow some portions of the Book he declares to be revealed from Allah while discarding others.

For if he is truthful in his claim that he is the Messenger of Allah, then he is protected from error in all that he relates from Allah; he cannot be accused of falsehood in any of it, whether intentional or accidental, and it becomes obligatory to follow the Book he has brought from Allah, with no right to reject anything he says has come from Allah. But if he is lying in even a single word of what he attributes to Allah, he belongs among the lying fabricators, and nothing in their religion—or anyone else’s—may be taken as proof merely on account of his report from Allah, nor even on the basis of his own statement, whether or not he claims it to be revelation.

Exactly the same applies to every other person known to have lied in saying, “I am the Messenger of Allah,” such as Musaylimah al-Hanafi, al-Aswad al-`Ansi, Tulayhah al-Asadi, al-Harith al-Dimashqi, Baba the Roman, and the rest of their ilk among the impostors.