They call it a unique literary form because it doesn’t follow the standard rules of Arabic literature.
I know plenty of English speakers that don’t follow the rules of grammatical structure either, that doesn’t make their work unique or special.
Here’s one particular assertion:
The Qur’an achieves this unique literary form by fusing metrical and non-Metrical speech. This fusion of metrical and non-metrical composition is present throughout the whole of the Qur’an and cannot be found in any Arabic text, past or present.
So he used a unique form of writing that hadn’t been done before. Big whoop. There’s a coherent book that never once uses a word with the letter ‘e’. It is unique. It has never been done before, and I highly doubt it will ever be done again. That doesn’t mean it was inspired by God, it just means that the author was clever.
They also turn around in literally the next paragraph and admit that it is influenced by other forms of Arabic writing:
The Qur’an shares similar features with saj’, specifically in the early Meccan surahs, but it completely transcends many aspects of what defines saj’, hence western scholars describing the Qur’anic form as ‘Quranic saj’. What makes the Quran unique in this context is,
- Greater tendency to mono-rhyme,
- Inexact rhyme,
- Greater range of saj’ phrases
- Higher frequency of rhetorical features.
The only thing that supposedly sets it apart is that it places heightened emphasis on the specific characteristics of that writing style. In modern parlance, focusing on the inherent expectations of a given style, and using those characteristics in a unique way to produce a strong emphasis is a type of meta work, hardly uncommon or unique.
Reading that list, it just sounds like he did was was done before, but he did more of it, so for some reason that’s special…
Let’s see here:
Their reasoning is that in the Qur’an, the use of language is semantically orientated and its literary structure is distinct, whereas in saj’, conformity to style is a primary objective.
Once again, failure to conform to the grammatical norms of your chosen linguistic style can be seen as either a clever manipulation of the pre-existing rule set, or limitation based on lack of knowledge of that rule set. Nothing special about it.
The Qur’an is not poetry because the totality of each surah does not conform to any of the al-Bihar and in many places exhibits inexact and irregular rhyme.
This one’s my favorite. It’s not poetry because it doesn’t sound like a poem XD
All their points boil down to the same thing. It doesn’t follow the conventions of the literary styles it seems most influenced by. There is nothing special about that beyond whatever unique twist he purposefully or accidentally incorporated into his style. The only reason they treat it as special is because they already believe that Mohammad was special. To an outside observer, he just seems like a clever writer who was familiar enough with stylistic conventions to manipulate them. Certainly interesting, but nothing special.
