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Miracle
As Muslims, we believe that Quran is the greatest miracle Allah (SWT) sent down on our Prophet (peace and blessing be upon him). Scholars over the last 1400 years have spent their lives in discovering the miracles. Allah (SWT) refers to the Quran as best of content and best of form (Quran 39:23). Sheikh Sohail Hanif in the Quranic Sciences course discusses some of the miracles. The following is one of such example.
051.025 Behold, they entered his presence, and said: “Peace!” He said, “Peace!” (and thought, “These seem) unusual people.”
In this verse, the angels come to Ibrahim (عليه السلام), and they say to him “سلٰماً” and he says to them, “سَلٰمٌ”. Here you’ll notice, سلٰماً is part of a جملة فيليّة, but the verb is hidden. The angels really said “سَلٰماً نُسَلِّمُ”, meaning we are giving you much peace. In other words, “سلٰماً” is the object of the verb نُسَلِّمُ
سَلٰمٌ, in Ibrahim’s (عليه السلام) reply, is a noun sentence (جمله اسميه) . And Ibrahim (عليه السلام) replied, “سَلٰمٌ” (peace)
Verbs are connected to time, and the action occurs during the stated time, while nouns indicate a permanent state. An example of this can be: a person who is riding versus a rider. “A person riding” might mean that he is riding for the first time, or possibly the last. Whereas rider can indicate his profession
So the greeting of Ibrahim (عليه السلام) is greater than the angels’. The angels said “we give you peace” as if it’s temporal, and Ibrahim (as) replied, “I permanently give you peace”. Here Allah is demonstrating a principle –
In another verse, Allah says if you greeted with a greeting, then return with a better greeting. This shows how the Quran works together. Allah (swt) is teaching us a principle in one verse, and in another he shows us how to apply it. He gives us the example of Ibrahim (عليه السلام)
What’s more miraculous is that this example was illustrated with just a damma (ُ ) and a fatha (َ ). The damma hinted towards the جملة اسميه, and the fataha hinted towards جملة فيليّة,. Such the two vowels taught us how to respond to a greeting.
Sister Hafsa, thank you for the insightful information. I enjoyed reading it very much. May Allah bless our beloved teacher Shaykh Sohail and continue to increase him with beneficial knowledge.
Wassalam.
A note to all: In the future, please try and avoid using acronyms for the conventional phrases, ’swt’ or ’saws’. Imam Sakhawi is quite adamant about not doing that in his book, al-Qawl al-Badi’. I personally have a text file that contains those conventional phrases which I cut/paste when I writing.