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THE MOHAMMEDAN CONTROVERSY
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consequently be admitted on the testimony of the Prophet of Islam. Under any
circumstances, the assertions of such corruption cannot be regarded as
reflecting on the prophetical claim of Mohammed (as if he had advanced an
intellectual impossibility). And the great injustice and departure from right
which ye commit, is this, that ye do not regard the assertion of a logical
impossibility to be an argument against a claim to prophecy, while you here
hold the assertion of a simple miracle to be so. That is to say, the assertion
of the incarnation and manifestation of God, and of the equality of that which
is produced to that which produces it (doctrines which you hold with regard to
Jesus on the authority of the Bible), is not regarded by you as falsifying the
claim to prophecy; and yet ye hold a statement regarding the corruption of the
Bible, which would not amount even to a common miracle, to be a disproof of
the prophetical rank of the blessed Prophet of Islam. Verily, this is a
marvellous thing (pp. 438-440).
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Pfander had referred to the evidence of the Coran itself as proving that our
Scriptures were not altered prior to Mohammed's appearance, and to the
evidence of ancient manuscripts that they had not been altered since; and here
is an example of the way in which Ali Hassan avoids the conclusion:—
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According to the above interpretation of the passage,1 it might
indeed be held that the prophecies regarding the last of the prophets
were not corrupted until his appearance, else why were the people in
expectation of his coming, and ready to believe upon him? My reply is, that
even supposing this argument to be correct, all that would be proved therefrom,
would be that only those passages containing predictions of Mohammed remained
uncorrupted until his appearing; not by any means, that throughout the whole
Bible no other passage had been corrupted. The Padre's deduction that the entire
Bible remained intact, thus falls to the ground.
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And if any one say that the
passages which contain those predictions (asserted in the Coran to have been
altered after Mohammed's appearing) are still identically the same with the
corresponding places in the ancient manuscripts to which the Padre has
referred; my reply is that the naked claim of the Padre, as to the existence
of manuscripts thirteen or fifteen hundred years old, is not worthy of being
listened to, especially as his stories contradictions and bigotry have
already been fully exposed. That paper and writing should remain so many
ages, and yet be legible, would be miraculous indeed. Some Pope, or other
such personage, in order to cast
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