Among these foretold matters is Allah’s promise to His Prophet, peace be upon him, that He would make his religion prevail over every other faith, as He says:
“He is the One who sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth….” (Qur’an 9:33; 61:9; 48:28)
—and He did exactly that. Whenever Abū Bakr, may Allah be pleased with him, dispatched an army, he would remind the soldiers of this promise so that they would rely on the certainty of victory and be confident of success; ʿUmar used to do the same. Thus the conquests flowed on, east and west, by land and by sea.

Allah the Exalted also says:
“Allah has promised those of you who believe and do righteous deeds that He will surely grant them succession in the land just as He granted it to those before them.” (Qur’an 24:55)

And He says:
“Allah has indeed fulfilled the true vision He showed His Messenger: you will surely enter the Sacred Mosque, if Allah wills, in security.” (Qur’an 48:27)

And He says:
“When Allah promised you that one of the two companies would be yours.” (Qur’an 8:7)

And He says:
“Alif Lām Mīm. The Romans have been defeated in a nearby land, yet after their defeat they will be victorious.” (Qur’an 30:1-3)

All of these are reports of the unseen, knowledge known only to the Lord of all worlds or to one whom He informs. Their fulfillment therefore shows that Allah Most High disclosed them to His Messenger as proof of his truthfulness.

Another facet is the knowledge the Qur’an contains—knowledge that sustains all created beings—concerning the lawful and the unlawful and every other ruling. Another is its profound wisdom, so abundant and exalted that ordinary human custom could never produce it in such quantity and nobility. Yet another is the perfect harmony of everything it comprises, outwardly and inwardly, without contradiction. Allah the Exalted says, “Had it been from other than Allah, they would surely have found much inconsistency within it.” (Qur’an 4:82)

I say: These are the ten aspects our scholars, may Allah have mercy on them, have enumerated. A further, eleventh aspect was proposed by al-Naẓẓām and some of the Qadarites: they claimed that the miracle lies in Allah’s preventing people from countering the Qur’an—what they call aṣ-ṣarfah—at the moment they were challenged to produce its like, and that this deterrence itself, not the Qur’an, is the miracle. They argued that Allah turned their ambitions away from opposing it even while challenging them to bring a single sūrah comparable to it.

This view is unsound, for the unanimous position of the Ummah, prior to the appearance of this dissent, is that the Qur’an itself is the miracle. Were we to say that the prevention and deterrence are the miracle, the Qur’an would no longer be miraculous, contradicting that consensus. It is therefore clear that the Qur’an in and of itself is the miracle: its eloquence and rhetoric are extraordinary, surpassing all customary human ability, for no speech of this caliber has ever existed. Since such discourse was utterly unfamiliar to them, it follows that the prevention and deterrence cannot have been the miracle. Those who espoused the doctrine of aṣ-ṣarfah have themselves differed