3 Preface أَم يَقولونَ افتَراهُ ۚ بَل هُوَ الحَقُّ مِن رَبِّكَ لِتُنذِرَ قَومًا ما أَتاهُم مِن نَذيرٍ مِن قَبلِكَ لَعَلَّهُم يَهتَدونَYusuf AliOr1 do they say, “He has forged it"? Nay, it is the Truth from thy Lord, that thou mayest admonish a people to whom no warner has come before thee: in order that they may receive guidance.2The force of “or” (am in Arabic) is that the only alternative to the acceptance of the Book as a divine revelation is the supposition that it was a forgery by the Prophet. But this supposition is absurd on the face of it because (1) Quraish, his critics, knew him to be an honest and truthful man; (2) he was unlettered, and such a Book would have been beyond his powers as a simple unlettered Arab, unless God inspired it; and (3) there was a definite reason for its coming as it did, because the Arabs had received no Messenger before him and God has sent Messengers to every nation.The Arabs very much needed guidance for themselves, and the advent of a World Prophet through them was what might have been expected in view of the past course of God’s Revelations.