The Criterion
In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
[25:32]
Those who reject Faith say: "Why is not the Qur’an revealed to him all at once? Thus (is it revealed), that We may strengthen thy heart thereby, and We have rehearsed it to thee in slow, well-arranged stages, gradually.


* v.32 : Three reasons are given for the gradual revelation of the Qur-an. (1) "To strengthen thy heart": the tremendous task of winning the Arab nation, and, through them, the whole world, to Islam, required superhuman patience, constancy, and firmness, and these qualities were strengthened by the gradual promulgation of solutions to each difficulty as it arose. (2) "Slow, well-arranged stages": though the stages were gradual, as the occasion demanded from time to time, in the course of twenty-three years, the whole emerged, when completed, as a well-arranged scheme of spiritual instruction, as we have seen in following the arrangement of the Suras. (3) Questions put and answers given: see next note.