Surah Ha-Mim as-Sajdah, Footnote 54

This is another instance of the same stubbornness with which the Prophet (peace be upon him) was being confronted. The disbelievers would say: Muhammad (peace be upon him) is an Arab, and Arabic is his native tongue, so if he presents the Qur’an in Arabic, how can it be believed that he did not compose this discourse himself, but that God revealed it to him? His discourse could only be accepted as revealed by God if he suddenly began delivering eloquent speech in some language he did not know—Persian, or Byzantine Greek, or the like. In response, God says that now the Qur’an has been sent in their own language so that they can understand it, yet they still object, asking why this discourse was revealed in Arabic, through an Arab, for the Arabs. But had it been sent in some other language, these very same people would then have objected: “This too is strange—a messenger has been sent from among the Arab nation to the Arabs, yet the discourse revealed to him is in a language that neither the messenger nor his people understand.”