What a Muʿjizah Is, and Why Miracles Do Not Help the Arrogant

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

This lecture steps out of the chronological Sīrah to survey the miracles, the مُعْجِزَات (muʿjizāt), of the Prophet ﷺ. The word مُعْجِزَة comes from عَجَزَ, "to be weak, incapable" (the same root as عَجُوز, an old person). A miracle is called a muʿjizah precisely because the rest of mankind is too weak to reproduce it. The scholars define it as a supernatural occurrence, beyond what people are accustomed to, that takes place at the hands of one claiming prophethood in order to prove that claim true.

❧Its purpose and its limits

It is the Sunnah of Allāh that no prophet has ever come without miracles; a miracle is a sign of prophethood. But it is not the only sign, and the claim that a muʿjizah is the sole proof of a prophet is false. If it were, then everyone who believed would have believed because of a miracle, yet Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and ʿUthmān, and the majority of the early converts, and most converts to this day, never witnessed one. The character of the prophets, the truthfulness of their lives, and the content of their message are all proofs alongside the miracle.

❧Miracles do not help the arrogant

The Qurʾān is emphatic that a miracle benefits only two kinds of people: those who already believe, whose īmān it increases, and the sincere and open-minded. For the arrogant, nothing avails. Allāh records the demands of the Quraysh in Sūrah al-Isrāʾ (17:90–93): وَقَالُوا لَنْ نُؤْمِنَ لَكَ حَتَّىٰ تَفْجُرَ لَنَا مِنَ الْأَرْضِ يَنْبُوعًا, "We will never believe until you make rivers gush from the ground," a palace in the sky, until "you bring down a book we can read and touch." The reply given: سُبْحَانَ رَبِّي هَلْ كُنْتُ إِلَّا بَشَرًا رَسُولًا, "I am only a human messenger." In Sūrah al-Ḥijr (15:14–15), even were the heavens opened and they ascended through them in broad daylight, لَقَالُوا إِنَّمَا سُكِّرَتْ أَبْصَارُنَا, "they would say, 'Our eyes have been dazzled; rather we are bewitched.'" And in Sūrah al-Anʿām (6:111): even had the angels descended, the dead spoken, and everything been gathered before them, مَا كَانُوا لِيُؤْمِنُوا, "they would still not believe." In their arrogance (Sūrah al-Furqān 25:21) they demand: لَوْلَا أُنزِلَ عَلَيْنَا الْمَلَائِكَةُ أَوْ نَرَىٰ رَبَّنَا, "Show us the angels, or show us our Lord", and the verdict is لَقَدِ اسْتَكْبَرُوا فِي أَنفُسِهِمْ, "they have grown arrogant within themselves."

❧Why the Quraysh were shown so few

When the Quraysh demanded that a mountain be turned to gold, the Prophet ﷺ asked his Lord, and was told: I will do it, but then they have only belief or destruction, for Allāh does not deal in play (لَهْو) or falsehood (بَاطِل). The Prophet ﷺ chose to trust in giving them more time rather than the one-and-done ultimatum, knowing they would not have believed. So most of his miracles occurred before the believers; only a handful before the Quraysh, a mercy, since too much arrogance in the face of a sign invites Allāh's destruction.

❧How many were there

Whole books were written on this, the Dalāʾil al-Nubuwwah ("Proofs of Prophethood"), most famously that of al-Bayhaqī (d. 438 AH), a scholar of Bayhaq in old Sunnī Persia, now printed in twelve volumes. Al-Bayhaqī counts over a thousand documented supernatural incidents; Ibn Ḥajar cites al-Nawawī for more than 1,200 authentically narrated. And these figures concern only the specific, discrete miracles. Ibn Ḥazm of Córdoba observed that had the Prophet ﷺ been given no miracle other than his own life and character, his Sīrah itself, that alone would have sufficed to prove he was a prophet. Every statement and act of his life is, in that sense, a miracle. What follows are ten illustrative categories, not an exhaustive scheme, but a doorway onto the thousand.