Evaluating Testimonial Arguments for Qur’anic Inimitability

Muslims historically believe that the Qur’an is the signature miracle of Islam, and many also argue that this literary miracle is superior in being open to continual verification. However, the belief of most Muslims in the miraculous, inimitable nature of the Qur’an rests on testimony, rather than on personal verification. Such arguments are also essential for Muslim attempts to communicate the miracle to others, particularly given that most of the world’s population does not speak Arabic. This article critically evaluates two prominent testimonial arguments for the Qur’anic miracle, the first by Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjānī (d. 1078) and the second by Hamza Andreas Tzortzis (b. 1980). It is argued that although testimonial arguments for religious belief are in principle possible, in this case both arguments suffer from significant empirical and philosophical problems. Through employing modern social epistemology and evaluating the empirical credibility of their premises, this study highlights both the social nature of belief in the Qur’an’s miraculous nature and the problems involved in trying to make this traditional Muslim doctrine credible to outsiders.