Hawzah News Agency (Tehran, Iran) - Ayatollah Ali Khamenei added in his speech on May,1992 about Carlyle, Scottish philosopher:
There are people of knowledge and understanding who have acknowledged in their books that they are humble before the Quran; there is a great eloquent Christian poet and author who lived close to our era called Shibli Shumayyi; he might have had materialistic inclinations, I do not remember his traits; but the same poet has a long ballade on Quran and our prophet where he says in one verse that: Although I do not believe in his religion, I cannot deny or talk blasphemously about the strong verses of the Quran. He is a Christian Arab. He does not believe in the Quran and based on what we apparently know, he has not accepted Islam. The same impurities or things that block one’s proper movement towards submission and faith might have blocked him too or he might have secretly submitted and we are not aware of it. Any ways, he says that he cannot deny the Truth of the Quran.
Thus why does he, after 14 centuries since the revelation of the Quran, make such an acknowledgement? Because he is an expert in eloquency, and a wise man and has a command of the issue; thus when he looks at the Quran, he realizes how important this book is. Or the famous British Thomas Carlyle who lived in the 19th and early 20th century has a book about the Quran where he talks about the truth of the Quran in details. Of course he is not an expert on eloquency and probably -like many of us- he did not know much about and may have not understood Quran’s rhetoric and the beauty of its language, but he somehow understood the concepts and notions of the Quran.
His Excelency also announced: He is a non-Muslim or Christian but since he is a man of knowledge and understanding, when he looks at the truths of Quran and the stronghold of the verses of this book, he understands that these truths are not from the limited human mind and are hence undeniable. This is the everlasting miracle of the Quran and the eternality of the miracle of the Quran.
May 06, 1992.