so they say, “their tongue, their heart, and their back.” At other times they employ the dual, as in his line(1):
Their two backs are like the backs of two shields.

The Quran, however, was revealed in the language of the Arabs, not in the tongue of non-Arabs, of the ṭamāṭim(2) and Nabataeans who corrupted the religion, tampered with the texts, violated their sanctity, and left them exposed to the fanciful interpretations of the ignorant and the fabrications of impostors. Since it is part of Arab usage to place the plural where the dual would otherwise appear—so as not to combine two dual forms in a single word, with no possibility of confusion—then it is even more permissible to substitute the plural for the dual when the word governed by the annexation is itself plural.

This is borne out by the fact that you can scarcely find in their speech expressions such as ʿaynanā (our two eyes) or yadaynā (our two hands). Nor is any listener perplexed when someone says, “We see you with our eyes,” or “We seize you with our hands,” and the like. No person on earth would infer from such statements a multitude of eyes in one face or a host of hands on a single body. Has the one who claims that this is the Quran’s outward meaning really given the Quran its due regard?!