A believer, of course, does not need a miracle, but

When we have in our hands a Book that is to be a source of guidance for all people, sent to show us the way by our exalted Lord, who Himself created everything and all of us and continues to create at every moment, the owner of the breath we take, the master of our body, it is hard to square with reason and understanding remaining indifferent to it. This indifference may come perhaps from not believing, perhaps from not knowing, perhaps from having fallen into doubts about it despite knowing...

There is no doubt that God, whose power over everything is beyond doubt, is able, if He wished, to create all people upon a single religion, outlook and temperament. But then we would be angels or something else, not human beings. The trust of being human was offered to the mountains, the rocks, all beings, and only the human being volunteered to take on this burden. He volunteered himself. With all the trials that being human can bring, with all the possibilities that being human brings...

As we reach the secrets of our own creation through science, all we see is perfection and splendor. A perfect design beneath the atom and above it, an order and regularity that work flawlessly. In the cell, in the organ, and in the whole of the organic body that all of these combine to form. Ultimately, in the entire cosmos in which this body is situated, we see the same order and regularity. When we look with the naked eye and with different instruments and techniques of observation, it is impossible that every detail, every connection we witness would not leave us amazed. It is impossible that the signature we see everywhere and in everything would no longer seem familiar.

In the Qur'an too, we see the same signature, whether we listen with a plain ear or look with different perspectives: the signature in speech of the Creator who knows and orders everything down to the finest details. The Qur'an showed its miracle, with an irresistible charm, as the most beautiful speech, to a people as ambitious as possible in poetry and eloquence, and left people powerless.

This inimitability of the Qur'an is something that those who do not know Arabic cannot feel immediately at first. Moreover, it has become a matter that even those who know Arabic, by reading it over and over, make its meaning routine and can no longer feel its miraculous dimension with the same excitement. Yet the Qur'an's claim to be a miracle is a matter that will neither age nor lose its validity.

Today, new studies on the text of the Qur'an bring out features of the text that can be discovered only with new knowledge. The fashionable knowledge and skill of our day is mathematics, and we can witness the Qur'an manifesting its own miracle through mathematics. In that regard, Zaynulmannawi, whom I have mentioned before, for example, lays out consistent connections, which cannot be objected to in any way, between the numbers of words, letters, verses and surahs in the placement of the Qur'an's verses of prostration within the surahs of the Qur'an. He gave his book the title "the prostrating letters" precisely for this reason.

Just think: of the words and letters chosen within verses revealed over a period of 23 years, in the appearance of a dialogical interaction with unfolding events, each takes its place in a text in a perfect proportion and design. Perhaps it may again seem a coincidence to some that, as with the word day (yawm) occurring 365 times, the word month (shahr) 12 times and the word year 19 times, the concepts of man and woman, life and death, angel and devil, this world and the hereafter appear in equal numbers in a text revealed over 23 years in dialogue with events. Whoever sees the magnificent harmony in our creation as coincidence may see that as such too.

Within the sequence of the surahs of the Qur'an there is a dimension that is truly striking; frankly, it was Prof. Sami al-Arian who first drew my attention to it, and at first I met the finding of mathematical connections in the Qur'an with a serious prejudice. But the mathematical relationship he showed was not something I could ignore.

The Qur'an, consisting of 114 surahs, contains 6236 verses. While the surahs whose number of verses is odd form a set of 54, and those whose number is even a set of 60, within the first set those in which both the verse count and the surah order are odd are 27, and those in which the verse count is odd and the order number even are 27, forming a symmetry. We may count this as coincidence, but it is necessary to calculate the probability that it is a coincidence that in the second set those in which both verse count and order number are even are 30, and those in which the verse count is even and the order number odd are also 30.

That such a symmetric balance emerges from an extremely complicated sequence is quite remarkable, for when the verse count of any one surah changes by just one, this balance is broken.

When the same operation is tried on the set of odd-even numbers formed "when we add the verse count and the order number of each surah," a completely different, very astonishing balance appears. From the sum of consecutive numbers, an equal number of odd and even digits is necessarily obtained, but the verse counts of the surahs are not consecutive, and it is not even a one-in-a-million chance, let alone necessary, that from the sum of the two, 57 of the 114 surahs would be odd and 57 even. In a mushaf that was revealed over 23 years and, according to some reports, arranged by ijtihad, for such an order to arise through human planning and editorial work is, in a single word, "impossible."

You can try reading these findings in all their details at www.simetrikkitap.com, together with the oath by "the even and the odd" that occurs in Surah al-Fajr and that no exegete has so far properly explained.

The believing person, of course, has no need of a miracle. People who believe in the Qur'an have no doubts that the Qur'an is the word of God to begin with; they read it as a command, a book of guidance, ordained to them today by God. Perhaps people have a need to see that the message of the Lord, who is capable of a creation of this perfection, is of the same perfection. There is benefit in discovering and presenting certain signature-seal features that will distinguish this book from the words of a great many human beings who attempt to play at divinity over people.

But of course a miracle increases the faith of the believing person. The Qur'an is not a book of divination, prophecy or scientific formulas. The features we have mentioned are, as it were, seals that show, with certainty by sight, its preservation, which the Qur'an itself declares. Otherwise, the point is not to be captivated by the miraculous charm of this book and to set aside what it says.