ISLAM THE BASICS

MIRACLE OF THE QURAN
 
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The Quran
 
   This day [the day of the Prophet's 'Farewell Address' on
   which the last verse of the Quran was revealed] have I
   made perfect for you your religion, and have completed
   My favour towards you, and am satisfied with Islam for
   you as your religion. -- V:3
 
   Do not dispute with the people of the Book [Jews,
   Christians, Sabeans], unless it be in a way that is
   better, save with such of them as do wrong; and say: We
   believe in that which has been revealed unto us, and
   revealed unto you; our God and your God is One, and unto
   Him we surrender. -- XXIX:46
 
Roger du Pasquier, Unveiling Islam
 
  The central miracle of Islam was, and remains the Quranic
  revelation. To this day no one has put forward a defensible
  explanation of how an unlettered caravan merchant of the early
  seventh century might have been able, by his own devices, to
  produce a text of such inimitable beauty, of such capacity to stir
  emotion, and which contained knowledge and wisdom which stood so
  far above ideas current among mankind at that time. The studies
  carried out in the West which try to determine the 'sources used
  by Muhammad', or to bring to light the psychological phenomenon
  which enabled him to draw inspiration from his 'subconcious', have
  demonstrated only one thing; the anti- Muslim prejudice of their
  authors. -- p. 53
 
   We reveal to you as We revealed to Noah, and the
   prophets after him, and as We inspired Abraham and
   Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes, and Jesus,
   Job and Jonah, Aaron and Solomon, and as we imparted the
   Psalms unto David.
 
   Messengers We have mentioned unto you before, and
   Messengers We have not mentioned to you. And God spoke
   unto Moses directly. (iv:163-64)
 
  Thus, by the revealed word of the Quran, is the mission of
  Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, situated within the framework of
  the universal revelation. He came to remind men, always inclined
  to forget or distort it, of the eternal message of the divine
  Truth which had not changed since the Creation -- for that which
  changes cannot be Truth -- a message which God had from time to
  time reaffirmed in a way which permitted all people in every age
  and nation, without exception, to know of it.
 
  But with Muhammad, the Seal of the Prophets (xxxiii:40), the cycle
  of revelation came to an end. And sure enough, no major religion
  has been founded since his death, and no personality comparable to
  his has appeared in the annals of mankind. -- p. 33 to 34
 
Karen Armstrong, Muhammad: A Biography Of The Prophet
 
  The Quran came to Muhammad line by line, verse by verse, chapter
  by chapter. Sometimes the messages dealt with a particular
  situation in Mecca or Medina. In the Quran, God seems to answer
  some of Muhammad's critics; He explains the deeper significance of
  a battle or of a conflict within the Muslim community. As each new
  message was revealed to Muhammad (who, like many Arabs of the
  Hijaz, was said to be illiterate) he recited it aloud, the Muslims
  learned it by heart and those who could wrote it down. The Arabs
  found the Quran quite astonishing; it was unlike any other
  literature they had encountered before. Some, as we shall see,
  were converted immediately, believing that divine inspiration
  alone could account for this extraordinary language. Those who
  refused to convert were bewildered and did not know what to make
  of this disturbing revelation. Muslims still find the Quran
  profoundly moving. They say that when they listen to it they feel
  enveloped in a divine dimension of sound. . .
 
  Western people find this difficult to understand. We have seen
  that even the likes of Gibbon and Carlyle, who were reasonably
  sympathetic to Islam, were baffled by the Quran. . .
 
  In the case of the Quran there is also the problem of translation.
  The most beautiful lines of Shakespeare frequently sound banal in
  another language because little of the poetry can be conveyed in a
  foreign idiom; and Arabic is a language that is especially
  difficult to translate. . . Even Arabs who speak English fluently
  have said that when they read the Quran in an English translation,
  they feel that they are reading an entirely different book. -- p.
  48 to 49