and found peace and would have relieved the people as well, yet they remain in misguidance.

Whoever hears it and then claims that it is the speech of human beings has disbelieved. Allah has denounced, reproached, and threatened such a person with Saqar, saying, “I will cast him into Saqar” (al-Muddaththir 74:26).

Whoever hears the speech of Allah and asserts that it is human speech has committed disbelief, for he has rejected the speech of Allah. If Allah had no speech to send down to His servants, on what basis could the proof be established against them? Their very aim in making this claim is to demolish the divine laws. For if there were no word of Allah in the universe—neither in the Torah, nor the Gospel, nor the Qur’an—then no proof from Allah would have been set up against humanity. That is among the gravest kinds of disbelief and the most flagrant misguidance.

Allah has condemned those who voice this claim, turning the Qur’an into human speech, just as al-Walid ibn al-Mughira al-Makhzumi did. He was one of the leading and most eminent unbelievers of Mecca, nicknamed “the Blossom of Mecca” because of his prestige. When he heard the Qur’an from the Messenger ﷺ, he was captivated by it and realized that it was not human speech. He praised the Qur’an, saying, “It is neither poetry nor sorcery. I know the different types of poetry, I know the forms of magic, I know soothsaying and the like—but the Qur’an is none of these.” His fellow disbelievers then rebuked and censured him, for what he had said amounted to acknowledging the Messenger ﷺ as a true emissary. Seeing this, he—Allah protect us—turned aside and declared, “This is nothing but the word of a mortal” (al-Muddaththir 74:25). So Allah revealed