Question: I would appreciate if you could have a look at a particular Non-Muslim website and comment on it. The URL is as follows: http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/town/park/geq96.
    Answer: I have gone through the ‘background’ part of the ‘SuraLikeIt-UK’ site. I believe that those running the site need to be congratulated on the balanced way they have adopted to approach the issue. I strongly believe that a meaningful dialogue between the people belonging to different faiths is the only correct way of approaching religious differences. Even if in the process some one uses language that is provocative, it should be ignored. Nobody is going to be impressed by it. However, to protest against a decent, academic response from well-meaning Christians is not understandable at all. It can only be construed by an unbiased observer to be a tacit admission of our inability to come up with a good response. I strongly feel that if some Muslims cannot face responses from the non-Muslims on Islamic issues, they should stop preaching their faith to others because that to me amounts to practising double standards. This only means that we want to convert others to Islam but we don’t want others to question your faith!?
    A last word on the question that initiated the debate. The challenge to the non-believers that if they didn’t believe the Qur’an to be the word of God, then they should bring forth a surah like a Qur’anic Surah, was addressed to the immediate addressees of the Prophet Muhammad (sws). They were the ones who knew that the Prophet (sws) was completely unlettered; they were the ones whose religious structure was being seriously threatened by the teachings of the Qur’an; they were the ones who were fully conversant with the classical Arabic in which the Qur’anic verses were revealed. The Qur’an challenged them that if they wanted to halt the threatening advance of Islam, they could simply diffuse the ‘magic’ of the Qur’an by bringing forth something similar and the effect of the Book would be gone. The Qur’an, however, says that if they are not able to do so, and insists by openly challenging that they will not be able to do so, then the disbelievers should fear the fire of Hell that is going to engulf those who are still insisting on denying its divine origins and on their polytheistic ways.