The third condition is that the claimant to prophethood invoke the sign itself as a testimony before Allah—mighty and majestic—saying, for example:

“My proof is that Allah, exalted be He, will turn this water into oil, or that when I say to the earth, ‘Quake,’ it will quake.” Should Allah, exalted is He, bring this about, the challenge has been met.

The fourth condition is that the event occur exactly in the form in which the challenger cited it as his miracle. This stipulation is necessary because, were the claimant to say, “The sign of my prophethood and the evidence for my claim is that my hand—or this beast—will speak,” and then his hand or the beast did speak but said, “He is lying; he is no prophet,” the very speech Allah created would testify to the claimant’s falsehood, for what Allah caused to occur did not conform to the claimant’s assertion.

A comparable case is what is related about Musaylimah the Liar—may Allah curse him—who spat into a well so that its water might increase, whereupon the well dried up and all its water disappeared. What Allah, glorified is He, wrought on that occasion counted among the signs exposing the falsity of the one at whose hand it appeared, because it happened in direct opposition to the wish of that pretended prophet.

The fifth condition for a true miracle is that no one else be able to produce the like of what the challenged claimant has produced in the way of counterproduction. If the challenged act, offered as evidence of prophethood, is fulfilled under this condition together with the preceding ones, it is a miracle proving the prophethood of the one at whose hand it appeared. But if Allah, exalted is He, raises up someone who succeeds in matching it and doing what the claimant has done, his claim to prophethood is nullified; the act ceases to be miraculous and no longer indicates his truthfulness.

For this reason the Lord, exalted be He, has said,
“Let them produce a discourse like it, if they are truthful” (Qur’an 52:34),
and He has also said,
“Or do they say, ‘He invented it’? Say: ‘Then bring ten surahs like it—fabricated ones’” (Qur’an 11:13).

It is as though He were saying: If you allege that this Qur’an is Muhammad’s own composition and handiwork—peace and blessings be upon him—then compose ten surahs of a similar style. When all of you together prove incapable of doing so, know that it is neither his composition nor his work.

One might object: “Miracles constrained by these five conditions appear only at the hands of the truthful, yet—according to what you narrate from your Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace—the Antichrist will display at his hands great and momentous signs that are well-known and widely reported.”

We reply: That (true prophet) claims messengership, whereas this one claims lordship, and the difference between the two is as the difference between the sighted and the blind. Moreover, rational proof has established that the sending of some cre-