Arabic → English transcript

Turning Moses’s staff into a living snake is a miraculous matter,

but how was it turned into a snake? Can anyone explain it to us?

How was it turned into a snake?

In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful, I say

People’s talk has become widespread about rhetorical inimitability because

of His saying, the Exalted:“ Then bring ten surahs like it, fabricated”[ Hud: 13],

and people have spoken about scientific inimitability,

and people have spoken about juristic inimitability,

and people have spoken about historical inimitability in its narratives,

and people have spoken, and I liked that as- Suyuti,

when he gathered the statements of the scholars

about inimitability and the aspects of inimitability, and that they are

very many, then

he said,“ And the Qur’an is inimitable by all of this,” and this is true.

What I see, after I have striven in this field over this great span of life,

is that the Qur’an is inimitable in everything it contains:

in its sound, its language, its eloquence, its reports, its rulings,

its promises, and its threats,

its structure and its composition, and everything in it,

to the point that when I

was unable to explain the true nature of its inimitability…

we say it is inimitable in its eloquence,

because its eloquence is above all eloquence,

and inimitable in its jurisprudence,

because its jurisprudence is above all jurisprudence, and inimitable in its reports,

because its report is above every report.

We are here describing half of the miracle… but what is the essence

of rhetorical inimitability? What is the essence of juridical inimitability?

So when this puzzled me, and I saw

that the miracles of the prophets

are transmitted as miracles,

yet they were not explained, because a miracle is not explained, because a miracle

is something that breaks the norm,

and as long as it breaks the norm,

we will not be able to explain it,

I settled for saying to the students of knowledge:“ And they ask you about the

inimitability, so say,‘ The inimitability is from the command of my Lord.’

God is greater… Beautiful… May God

be pleased with you.” Then I feared that

I might have been hasty in this phrase,

for at the end of Surah Ash- Shura:“ And thus We have

revealed to you a Spirit from Our command.

You did not know what the Book was”[ Ash- Shura:

52], so Almighty God called the Quran a Spirit,

and I said,“ And they ask you about the inimitability…”

I took it from:“ And they ask you about the Spirit.

Say,‘ The Spirit is from the command of my Lord’” [ Al- Isra: 85],

and the Quran is a Spirit,

and the Spirit is from the command of my Lord.

We simply submit to its inimitability,

and we converse about its inimitability. But when you… turned Moses’s

staff A serpent is something miraculous, but how did it become a serpent?

Can anyone explain to us how it became a serpent? It is from the command of my Lord.

You said: The staff of Moses is something miraculous,

and the Qur’an is something miraculous,

and you stopped there,

and no one thought

to search for the thing by which

the staff of Moses was a serpent moving swiftly.

No one thought of that because this is from the command of my Lord,

and so is the Qur’an. Our shaykh,

does that mean we agree with Ibn Hazm,

that the Qur’an is miraculous because it is simply the speech of God?

I have read this statement of Ibn Hazm,

but there is

an aspect in it that could be accepted, yet not all scholars accepted it,

I mean, for example, that it is because it is the speech of God!

And what do you say about:“ And they said,‘ We will never believe

in you until you cause a spring to gush forth for us from the earth,

or you have a garden of date palms and grapes,

and cause rivers to gush forth abundantly in its midst,

or cause the sky to fall upon us in fragments,

as you claimed…’”[ Al- Isra: 90– 92]. Whose words are these? The words of Quraysh.

And are they miraculous or not miraculous?

Miraculous. Do we recite them in prayer or do we not?

So how is that?

What amazed me is that Quraysh did not say to him,“ This is our speech,

and you are defeating us with it.”

They did not say to him,“ This is very beautiful… a wonderful turn of phrase.”

They did not say that to him,

even though God said:

and the verses came

one after another,

attributing the speech to them:“ And they said…” Where are you, O Quraysh?

Why did you not say to the Messenger of God,“ You are defeating us with

our own words, this is the command of my Lord…” this is the command

of my Lord…

Our Lord’s narration of the words of our master Musa and the words of our

master Nuh, and the words of our master Ibrahim, and of all the prophets

is a narration, because they did not speak this Arabic, rather they spoke

another language, and the Qur’an made their meanings clear.

So here its being the speech of God

is clear, because God

translated the words of Musa and the words of Ibrahim… and so on.

But now bring Quraysh, who were with him… “ And they said,‘ We will never believe

you’”— I wonder, did Quraysh say this in these exact words? It must be so,

because God said,“ They said,” and God, exalted is He,

is the truest of the truthful. Where are you, O Quraysh?

Why did you not object to Muhammad, peace be upon him?!

The answer:“ From the command of my Lord… from the command of my Lord…”

May Allah reward you with goodness,

be pleased with you, and honor you