The argument from miracles in Islam

Islam's distinctive answer to the argument from miracles is to put almost all the weight on a single miracle: the Qur'an. The Qur'an itself (17:90–93) records Muhammad being challenged to perform miracles for skeptics and being told, in effect, to refuse — because the Qur'an is sufficient. The doctrine of i'jaz al-Qur'an (inimitability) treats the text as a standing miracle: its linguistic perfection is held to be beyond human capacity and therefore evidence of divine origin. This is a structurally different claim from the Christian appeal to the resurrection — it is not a historical event but a living document that can be inspected today.

There is also a secondary tradition of prophetic miracles transmitted in the hadith literature: the splitting of the moon, the weeping palm trunk, the multiplication of food. But classical Muslim scholars — al-Baqillani, al-Jurjani, Ibn Taymiyya — have consistently ranked these below the Qur'anic miracle in evidential weight. Ahmad Deedat in the twentieth century and Hamza Tzortzis more recently have built on this by emphasizing scientific prefigurations in the Qur'an (embryology, expansion of the universe) as further miracles, though this line is controversial even within orthodox Muslim scholarship.

Shi'a tradition adds another strand: the miracles of the Imams. The twelve Imams of Twelver Shi'ism are credited with various supernatural abilities and instances of foreknowledge, and these function in Shi'a devotional life somewhat the way Catholic saints' miracles function. Skeptical analysis applies the same Humean critique here as elsewhere: testimony cannot establish violations of natural law, and the rich miracle traditions of every major religion cancel each other out epistemically. The Muslim response on the Qur'anic miracle specifically is that the ongoing challenge — produce a surah like it — is uniquely verifiable in a way historical miracles are not; critics reply that 'inimitability' is vague enough to be unfalsifiable.