Abdal Hakim Murad - The Cambridge Companion to Islamic Theology

Revelation 185
tongue, in the specific sense that the prophet speaks on His behalf.
Between the extremes of possession and incarnation, there is room for a
truly prophetic understanding of revelation, without the person chosen
to receive and transmit the message losing any dimension of his
humanity or becoming any kind of supernatural being. Muh _
ammad is
the perfect man, but even in the highest spiritual station into which he
is introduced by his Lord in order to receive the revelation, he essentially
remains His servant. ‘‘He revealed to His servant (‘abd) thatwhichHe
revealed’’ (53:10). In no way would receiving revelation ever provide a
reason to be associated with God as a partner in His godhead.
The idea of the Prophet speaking in the name of God led early
Muslim theologians into a second debate, this time concerning the
human or divine nature of the revealed speech itself. What was the part
effectively played by the Prophet in the phrasing and wording of the
qur’anic revelation? For fifteen years (833–48) the Abbasid caliph al-
Ma’mun and his successors imposed the dogma of a created and noneternal
Qur’an promoted by Mu‘tazilism. This mih _
na (ordeal) imposed
on the community failed and the vast majority of Muslims have since
proclaimed the uncreated and eternal nature of the Qur’an. As this
doctrine affirmed, the Messenger thus loses all authorship of the Qur’an.
In Islam, the Book is indeed never named after him as, for example, the
Gospels bear the names of the Evangelists. With time, the interpretation
of the qualificative ummı given to the Prophet in the Qur’an (7:157–8)
evolved from its probable original meaning of ‘‘Gentile’’ to ‘‘unlettered’’,
as a further confirmation that he could not possibly have authored it.
Moreover, on the thin scriptural basis of a non-unanimously accepted
way of reading of the last syllable of sura 85, greater importance came to
be given to the idea of a ‘‘Well-Guarded Tablet’’, in which the Qur’an
would have been eternally inscribed and preserved. Finally, from the
ninth century onwards, insistence was laid on the linguistic and stylistic
inimitability, or insuperability (i‘jaz), of the Qur’an already affirmed in
some of its verses (for example in 17:88) as a way to add strength to the
dogma of its exclusively divine nature. For Muslims, the revelation
received by the Prophet is really what it says it is and its written copies
have to be respected as such: ‘‘This is indeed a noble Qur’an, in a book
safeguarded, which none shall touch except the purified, something sent
down from the Lord of the Worlds’’ (56:77–80).
If the Prophet is so important in the eyes of the Muslims, it is due
to his divine election, to his total humility as conveyer of God’s
speech, and to his perfect, paradigmatic implementation of this message,
not because he partakes in its production. In this respect, apart from
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