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Does the word of God in the noble Qur'an contain
contradictions?
by
Misha'al ibn Abdullah
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Terms the reader needs to know before reading
this article:
Allah:
The supreme God of all creation. He is known as "God the
Father" to the Christians, and as "El" or "Yahweh" to the
Jews. It is important to distinguish that the one referred
to in Islam as "Allah" is not the "Trinity"
which the Church refers to as "God." The Muslim "Allah" is
only the Christian's "God the Father."
Muhammad:
The last messenger of God to all mankind. He was the seal of
the prophets of God, who included prophets Abraham, Noah,
Moses, Jesus, and many others.
Islam:
The last message of God to all mankind. It was sent down
upon prophet Muhammad (pbuh), recorded in broad outlines in
the Qur'an, and described in detail in the Sunnah. Islam is
an Arabic word which means "Submission to God".
Qur'an:
The holy book of the Muslims. It consists of 100% the word
of God and no words of the prophet Muhammad (pbuh), his
companions, or any human being.
Sunnah/Hadeeth:The
title given to the collection of recorded words and actions
of the prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Most of what he said or did
throughout his lifetime is recorded in the Sunnah.
pbuh: Means "Peace Be Upon Him". Used most often
in reference to prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and also in
reference to the many other prophets of Allah, such as Noah,
Moses, Abraham, Jesus, etc.
pbut: Means "Peace Be Upon Them". Same as above,
but used in reference to more than one.
s.a.w./s.a.s.: Same as "pbuh". It is an
abbreviation of the original Arabic words "Salla Allahu
alaihi Wa Sallam", which are translated as "peace be upon
him" in English.
OT: Old Testament. The portion of the Bible
transmitted by the Jews.
NT: New Testament. The portion of the Bible
specific to the Christian faith.
People of the Book: This is the term used by God
in the noble Qur'an to refer to the Jews and Christians. It
is also sometimes translated as "People of the Scripture"
Introduction:
"Say: 'O People of the Scripture! come to common terms
as between us and you: That we worship none but Allah (God);
that we associate no partners with Him; that we erect not,
from among ourselves, Lords other than Allah.' But if they
turn away, say: 'Bear you witness that we have surrendered
unto Allah (We are Muslims).'"
The noble Qur'an, A'al-Umran(3):64
"The lies which well-meaning zeal has heaped round
this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves
only"
Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History, Thomas
Carlyle, p. 57.
"The use of false evidence to attack Islam was all but
universal
"
Islam and the West, Norman Daniel, p. 267.
"I have read in Moslem (sic) writings such deep and
tender expressions of respect and reverence for Jesus that
for the time I almost forgot, I was not reading the words of
a Christian writer. How different, it is sad to say, has
been the way in which Christians have spoken and written of
Muhammad. Let us put it down to its true cause,
ignorance"
Reverend R. Maxwell King
The author of the "Answering
Islam" webpage has chosen to provide us on his page with
a list of what he deems to be contradictions in the word of
God, the noble Qur'an. He has legitimate concerns and I
shall, by the will of Allah (God), provide him in this
article with the answers he has asked
for regarding what he perceives to be contradictions. His
conclusions, as we shall see, are understandable and not to
be held against him since they are not based upon knowledge
he has gained from Muslim scholars or from Muslim
references, rather, they are a result of a personal attempt
by him to, in the most part, simply scan the text of the
noble Qur'an with the help of some of his sympathizers and
try and piece together any narrations which he can claim to
be contradictory. This is understandable since over the last
couple of years he has made a number of public as well as
private requests of Muslims, myself included, that they
provide him with proof that the Bible does not contain 100%
the original message of Jesus (pbuh) or that it has been
tampered with by the Church (as affirmed by God in the
Qur'an). In response to his many requests he has been
presented over these last few years with quotation
after quotation from highly respected trinitarian
references and clergymen who all readily admit that the
Bible has been the object of continuous tampering by the
Church during the "Dark Ages." This has enraged him. Not so
much against the Trinitarian Christians who have admitted
this basic fact and are quoted to him, rather his rage has
been directed against the Muslims who he has asked to prove
this fact and have quoted these clergymen and Christian
scholars. All of these admissions go to support that what
God said in the noble Qur'an regarding this same Church
tampering, is true. As a result of this he has felt it
necessary to seek retribution against Muslims by attempting
to prove that if this is the case with regard to the Bible
then the same must be true in the case of God's words in the
Qur'an. However, since he can not find any highly respected
Muslim scholars and references of the same caliber as those
presented with regard to the Bible, and who support his
desire of contradiction in the Qur'an, therefore, the only
recourse left was for him and some of his sympathizers, all
of whom are not Muslims, to attempt to personally scan the
text of the Qur'an and discover what no Muslim has managed
to find in 1400 years, slowly trying to piece together a
list of "contradictions." As I said, this is human nature
and quite understandable, so it shall not be taken
personally.
It was originally hoped that in simply quoting Christian
clergymen and trinitarian references with regard to the
Church's tampering with the text of the Bible, and
refraining from quoting Muslim scholars in this regard, that
it might be possible to try and remain objective in this
matter and avoid the accusation that this is simply Muslim
propaganda as well as avoiding the resultant ill will and
desire for retribution. However, this sadly does not seem to
be the case. In any case, the point-by-point
response to his claims shall be presented at the end of
this article
The alegations found in the following list were a result
of a joint effort of a number of men including our current
author. One of the major references referred to in this
attempt appears to be the book "Answering
Islam" which is a joint effort by Mr. Norman Geisler and
a man who goes by the pseudonym of "Abdulsaleeb"
("slave of the cross")(1). This was
not a random occurrence since he has in the past sought the
assistance of Mr. "Abdulsaleeb" in other similar situations.
Therefore, it is understandable that he should do so again
now.
When I was first repeatedly
challenged by this author years ago to a debate on any topic
related to the Bible (through multiple messages to my
personal email mailbox) I finally agreed to participate in
this discussion and specified the topic I would like to
discuss. The topic, in brief, was:
"Did Jesus (pbuh) ever explicitly of implicitly say 'I
am a god' or 'I am 'God' or 'worship me' any other words to
that effect?. Further, did anyone at all, anywhere in the
Bible, from cover to cover, ever say that God is triune, a
trinity, three, or three-in-one?"
To this day, every time anyone ever asks me to discuss
this matter the discussion starts with "Yes! Of course!
Jesus said all of this clearly!" The claim then moves on to
"No, he did not say it in so many words, however, he
implied it in many places." Then finally we arrive at
"Well, he does not need to say any of it. It is clear
to anyone who has faith. You just do not have any
faith."
In all cases I would respond to all quoted verses from
the Bible itself or from the words of highly respected
Biblical dictionaries, Catholic encyclopedias, or members of
the Church. I can appreciate that this is a touchy subject
and I can appreciate that it is human nature for the first
knee-jerk reaction to be "kill the messenger." However, I am
indeed only a messenger and my words are not to be accepted
simply because I say so, rather because the Church and
Christian scholars do. I shall be providing a small taste in
the following quotations and all
those who would like to read the details can then get a copy
of the book "What
Did Jesus Really Say?". I wish that if someone were
going to demand that I debate them on any topic that they
would then indeed answer my question and not a
question I never asked. However, it looks like this is
simply not going to happen.
In my original question I drew attention to the fact that
Jesus (pbuh) said in many places in the Bible that it is
his words which the faithful must follow in
order to receive salvation. For example, we read:
John 14:23: "Jesus answered and said unto him, If a
man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love
him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with
him."
Luke 6:46: "And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not
the things which I say?"
I made this issue as clear as I possibly could, over and
over again, every time I asked this question. I repeated it
to the point that I hoped that it would be next to
impossible to misunderstand what I had asked for. I just
have only one
simple rule which I ask all those who challenge me to
debate to abide by: To place Jesus' (pbuh) words
FIRST and then place the words of everyone else in
second place AFTER his words, not the other way
around. Is this such an evil request? Is this what makes me
so totally faithless, perverse, and unable to love Jesus
(peace be upon him)? Strangely, in each case, it is everyone
BUT Jesus (pbuh) himself who is quoted. Why?
Was my question not clear? Have I still not placed enough
emphasis on WHO is to be quoted first? How do I make
it any clearer than this? And despite all of this, we still
can not find these claims anywhere in the Bible.
Why is it important to start with the words of Jesus
(pbuh) first and then place everyone else's words in second
place? Well, let us have a look at a simple example:
If my father's name is Frank, and Joe comes to me and
says "your father, Frank, wants you to give me all your
money and the deed to your house," would it then be
unreasonable for me to ask for proof? In a matter of such
profound importance, if I asked him to produce a signed
document, a cassette tape, or a video tape proving this
statement and verifying that it indeed came from my father,
would this be such an unreasonable request?
If I ask Joe for such proof directly from Frank himself,
would it be acceptable for him to reply "Yes, well, Jim
says so" or "Henry says so" or "Roger says
so"? Am I to understand from Joe that my father
considered the handing over of my house and all of my money
such a trivial matter that there would be no need for him to
hand over to Joe any kind of verification of this command?
Is it acceptable for Joe to tell me: "well, your father
may not have said it in so many words, but he 'hinted' at
it, and I 'gathered' that I should now come and take over
your house and bank account"? If in addition to all
of the above, if I then find that the words of Jim, Henry
and Roger were further such "hints" which were all taken out
of context, should this increase my faith in this claim?
This man is asking that I hand my whole life savings and
my very home over to him and claims that my father wants me
to do this yet he wants me to understand that it is not
necessary for him to produce any proof directly from my
father himself, rather it is only necessary for him to make
the claim and then claim that my father "hinted" that I
should do this, or that he "gathered" that my father wanted
me to do this. Would anyone in their right mind accept such
a statement? Why then when we now are dealing with our
ultimate salvation, a commodity which is more valuable than
any conceivable wealth or property, is it no longer
necessary for Jesus (peace be upon him) himself to teach any
of the fundamental doctrines, rather it is entirely
appropriate to claim that he spent his life "hinting" at
these doctrines not willing to openly
commit himself to them in clear words and statements and
that the only time he was clear and direct was when he was
endorsing what the Qur'an told us he said?
Why is it that when God tells us in the Qur'an that Jesus
(pbuh) never made a given claim, like endorsing the
'trinity' or claiming to be a god (or God, or part of God,
or one of three forms or faces of God), why only now do we
suddenly need to understand that he only 'hints' at it in
the Bible and then leaves it up to us to "gather" that he
wanted us to adopt such beliefs? Why do so many highly
respected Christian scholars and Biblical references confirm
the words of God in the Qur'an by admitting
that the "trinity" doctrine can not be
found anywhere in the Bible?
Everybody and his uncle can claim to be able to receive
direct inspiration from Jesus and be able to tell us what
Jesus "wants," however, does this mean that every single one
of these people really do have a direct hotline to him and
are daily receiving direct inspiration from him? Just
because someone says he said something should I simply have
faith and not bother to read his actual words? Trinitarian
Christians claim that Jesus is
God. Unitarian Christians say that he is not. Muslims
say that he was a very pious and elect messenger of God. In
the first three centuries CE Christians were even
further split on exactly who he was, who his mother was,
who God is, what their relationship to one-another is, how
many gods there are, were all three of them gods?, was only
two or one of them a god?, etc. (see quotations
below). So who is telling the truth? Are all of these people
receiving "inspiration" from Jesus? This is indeed why I
asked that Jesus (pbuh) himself be quoted, just as he
asked us to do in so many places in the Bible. If he makes a
given statement just once then it shall be acceptable for
others to repeat it a thousand times. However, it has to
start with him.
No sooner do I ask this very simple and direct question
than what do I get? Everyone once again reverts to quoting
everyone but Jesus (pbuh)
himself. A catch 22. An unending loop. And
still they can not find it in the Bible. We are only
told that everyone implied it. Everyone says that
Jesus (pbuh) say, no one to be able to show us where.
Others are alleged to have implied it, so
obviously Jesus "must have" said it. Yet they can not
show us where. If someone wants to challenge me to a
debate then I would appreciate it if they would simply
answer this one question clearly and directly while keeping
an open mind and heart. Otherwise please do not demand that
I debate you.
In the end the only alternative for them is to tell us
that Jesus (pbuh) does not need to say it, but he
"implied" it in many places. When we study
the verses where he is claimed to have "implied" it we
find that they are all cases of false and unfaithful
translation by the Church where the words are conveniently
made to say in English what they do not really say in Greek,
while when others in the Bible use the
exact same words Jesus is just quoted to have used,
now the very same words wherein Jesus is claimed to be
"implying" to be God, these very same words are now
translated completely differently when they
come out of the mouths of others. The Church has not told us
to worship these other people so they "translate" these very
same words differently when others say them so that we will
not get "the wrong impression" from their words. In a
similar manner, when a given word is used to describe Jesus
(pbuh) in the Bible it is translated
completely differently than when that exact same word is
used to describe everyone else. This is how Jesus (pbuh) is
made to "imply" divinity. And the loop continues. In order
to exhibit that these claims are not my own but are well
known to the Church, I quoted the Bible and Christian
clergymen in all cases so that I would not be accused of
perverting the meanings of the verses or forcing my own
beliefs upon the words of the Bible.
Strangely, after all of this, the impression is once
again made that any and all refutations are all an outcome
of ignorance and faithlessness of hateful Muslims. They
completely disregard the fact that the whole refutation was
based upon what Christian Bishops, ministers, priests,
Doctors of Divinity, scholars, and Trinitarian Biblical
references admit in this regard. Sadly, it is all just
depicted as ignorant Muslim propaganda. Very highly
respected and revered men of the Church who were so well
acquainted with the Bible, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic,
Syriac and Latin including many other disciplines that they
slowly rose through its ranks to finally be appointed
Christian Roman Catholic Bishops, such people
are simply depicted after their demise as very ignorant
people who did not know what they were talking about and
their level of understanding of Greek, Hebrew, etc. did not
rise to the level of the current speaker. What a truly sad
way to treat one's own scholars and clergymen. They are only
revered and esteemed so long as they say what they are
supposed to. Once they find the truth after many many years
of study, service to the Church, missionary work and
propagation of the faith, and then convert to Islam, now
they are beneath contempt.
Another popular trend is to distance oneself from any
Christian scholars or Bishops, etc. who recognize the
evidence of Church tampering with the Bible. The interesting
response to the increasing number of Christian scholars and
clergymen who are accepting this matter as basic fact is
that those who defend the trinity, such as Mr. Abdulsaleeb,
simply claim that Muslims are unable to appreciate the
higher levels of Biblical criticism that the truly believing
apologists have reached? Look, if your policy is that if
someone being Muslim automatically makes them genetically
ignorant then that is your choice. I prefer not to continue
down this path. However I am hoping that it does not take an
IQ of 1000 to understand the implication when Trinitarian
Christian clergymen and scholars officially declare that the
Bible contains such severe errors that it
is literally riddled with, by the most
conservative estimates, 2000 errors. Am I to understand
that because I am a Muslim, that my Muslim mind is too
ignorant to recognize that this is simply a developed sense
of perfect faith and belief which hopefully we can, a few
centuries from now, crawl out our caves, recognize as true
enlightenment and be saved? These people are indeed to be
commended for standing up for the truth, however, I would
like to hope that my inferior Muslim mind, limited as it may
be, is capable of grasping the implication of their
findings.
These gentlemen go on to object to our using these
Trinitarian Church references and Bishops as references and
inform us that these people in addition to recognizing the
falseness of the trinity doctrine, also do not believe in
issues that Muslims consider to be historical fact and which
God confirmed in the noble Qur'an, such as the virgin birth
of Jesus (pbuh) and his miracles. In other words, Muslims
should not point to these Bishops increasing discovery of
Church tampering and their own attempt to try and recover
the truth since these Bishops have not yet become Muslims
and embraced 100% of the religion of Islam. If they have
only come part way towards Islam and have themselves
admitted that the Church had made very severe and deliberate
changes to the Bible, and they are trying to strip away
these changes in order to uncover the original message of
Jesus (pbuh), then these men should simply be regarded as an
embarrassment to Muslims and Christians alike and should not
be given the time of day. Well, although they may not have
found the whole truth, at least they are trying. At least
they are willing to admit that the Church has intentionally
tampered with the Bible and they shall not sit still and
remain quiet even if it does mean that this shall infuriate
those who have not studied their evidence, nor do they have
any interest in doing so.
The final attempt of such men is to then simply apply to
all Muslims such words as: "Muslims are very fond of
quoting critical scholars conclusions (only those that agree
with Islam) without the slightest realization of the
presuppositions of such scholars that led them to these
conclusions in the first place." Such men completely
side-step all of the quoted
official Church encyclopedias, Biblical dictionaries,
official Church proclamations, and even public admissions of
very highly respected Trinitarian scholars (such as
Tischendorf who could himself not understand how the Church
could make so many thousands of changes to the Bible and
"allow themselves to bring in here and there changes,
which were not simple verbal ones, but materially affected
the meaning" or why they "did not shrink from cutting
out a passage or inserting one.") These quotations are
forgotten, the references brushed aside, and a generic
catch-all answer of "Muslim backwardness and ignorance" is
applied to all cases.
Are we now to understand that, as Muslims, our mental
capacity is so severely limited that we are not able to
realize that these officially sponsored Church encyclopedias
and Biblical references as well as all of these very highly
respected Trinitarian scholars and clergymen all based their
"presuppositions" on corrupt foundations (see
some quotations below)? Who then is left who is not
corrupt or has based his opinions on corrupt foundations?.
If we can not even accept Trinitarian scholars, Bishops,
ministers, Catholic encyclopedias, and Biblical
commentaries, then who can we accept? Are the
"presuppositions" of all of these people questionable?
Mr. "Abdulsaleeb" would like to refer to me as a "king of
language" in an attempt to make it seem like these are my
own. I you Mr. Abdulsafor your exhalation, however, I can in
no way claim credit for what your own Trinitarian scholars
have written and what I am simply reproducing. If you do not
like what they are saying then that is regrettable, and I am
sorry you feel that way. However, this in no way makes the
words my own. This is indeed the very mindset of the Church
in the Dark Ages which drove them to withhold the Bible from
the masses and make it the exclusive property of the Church.
The great unwashed masses were far to "ignorant" and
"backward" to have any dealings with God's holy word. It was
reserved for higher Biblical criticism and neo-Platonic
philosophy, and all those "enlightened" minds which were
receiving direct inspiration from Jesus to "clarify" the
Bible and "fix" it. They couldn't have all of these "common
people" running around touching the scriptures, reading them
and defiling them with their unwashed hands. They were too
"holy." They could never "comprehend" them. They needed the
Church to "explain" them. Right?
Another problem with such lines of logic is that in many
cases the refutation of a given author's evidence is simply
based upon slander and character assassination. They don't
say, for example, let us take their evidence and study it,
reproducing every one of their arguments
word-for-word and then refuting them
point-by-point and leaving no question unanswered and
no allegation unrefuted, rather, they simply tell everyone
that the author simply does not have enough faith or the
higher degrees of enlightened thought which they themselves
have achieved and wish to bestow upon the masses so that
they too will be able to achieve the perfection of belief
which allows them to simply disregard the vast majority of
the contradictions and variations of text in the Bible, to
soar high above such "petty" concerns in elevated levels of
spiritual ecstasy unfettered by such stone age issues as
whether or not the Church tampered with the Bible and
whether or not the Bible they have in their hands has any
relationship whatsoever to anything the apostles of Jesus
(pbuh) actually wrote. For them these are all trivial
issues. They love Jesus (pbuh) too much to worry themselves
about what he actually said or whether or not the Church has
warped his message. Such matters have no bearing on their
all-encompassing love for Jesus.
Well guess what? Muslims love Jesus (pbuh) too. We regard
him as one of the highest examples of human excellence and
service to the Almighty that a Muslim can ever find or
follow. This is a fundamental pillar of our belief, without
which we would not be Muslims. However, Muslims feel that it
is the obligation of those who love Jesus to not allow those
who would injure him or warp his words to go unchallenged.
Muslims recognize that there is no such thing as
"insignificant" tampering with the words of Jesus or
"unimportant" changes to his preaching.
If I tell you: "I would like to cut a few small pieces
from your body. Not a lot. Just about thirty or forty
pieces." Would you then say: "Fine, as long as they
are not 'big' pieces, or 'important' pieces"? Sadly,
when the Church tampers with the words of Jesus, making
many 'thousands' (see below)
of changes, now it is entirely ok for them to cut away with
abandon. Get out the chain-saws and crank them up, what do
we care?. We love Jesus too much to worry ourselves about
their surgery on him. We are flying around on enlightened
spiritual planes and can't be bothered with such petty
stone-age issues, right?
For example, many such authors mention names of books.
But names of books can do us no good if we can not put the
information found therein to good use in providing physical
and tangible evidence. I too could quote reams and reams of
books. All authored by Christians. Christians who would not
sit still for the Church tampering nor allow themselves to
simply look on with delight as the Church cut away and
tampered with the message of Jesus. For example, I have yet
to see any of the apologists attempt to challenge the
evidence of David Friedrich Strauss in his 800 page book
"The Life of Jesus Critically Examined." A book which was
written in the early eighteen hundreds and which to this day
has yet to find an apologist capable of facing it head on,
point by point, toe-to-toe, rather than the conventional
method of "He has no faith, his foundations are not good,
forget his evidence. Have faith and don't read his
book."
But now we return to the present and the current author's
claims regarding God's words in the noble Qur'an. He has
spent a long time searching the text of the Qur'an looking
for contradictions and has done his utmost to build a
counter case of contradictory verses against the noble
Qur'an in retribution against what these Christian scholars
have said regarding the Bible. His list which shall be
studied a little further down is a
collection of all of the examples he has been able to put
together over the last couple of years and the strongest
case he has been able to build against the word of God, the
noble Qur'an. It shall be dealt with shortly, by the will of
Allah, and we shall have a look at what his efforts have
produced for us. Please note in all that follows that when
Muslims point to contradictory verses in the Bible they
produce their evidence from the writings of
Christian Bishops, Reverends, priests,
Biblical encyclopedias, Biblical dictionaries, Doctors of
Divinity and the like, all of whom readily admit that the
Bible was exposed to continuous tampering from the Church
during the "Dark Ages" when it completely withheld the Bible
from the masses and prevented anyone from reading it. We
will see that he, however, when attempting to do the same
with regard to God's words in the Qur'an also points
to either his own personal conclusions or to those of other
Christians. Let us start with a couple of examples of
the former case. Let us read for example:
A couple quick quotations:
"It is well known that the
primitive Christian Gospel was initially transmitted by word
of mouth and that this oral tradition resulted in variant
reporting of word and deed. It is equally true that when the
Christian record was committed to writing it continued to be
the subject of verbal variation. Involuntary and
intentional, at the hands of scribes and editors"
Peake's Commentary on the Bible, p. 633
So, is Peake's commentary written by "critical scholars"
who based their conclusions upon corrupt foundations? Do
ignorant Muslims not understand the "presuppositions" which
the authors of Peake's commentary based their conclusions
upon? What about some other quotations:
"Yet, as a matter of fact, every book of the New
Testament with the exception of the four great Epistles of
St. Paul is at present more or less the subject of
controversy, and interpolations (inserted verses) are
asserted even in these." Encyclopaedia Brittanica,
12th Ed. Vol. 3, p. 643
After listing many examples of contradictory statements
in the Bible, Dr. Frederic Kenyon says:
"Besides the larger discrepancies, such as these,
there is scarcely a verse in which there is not some
variation of phrase in some copies [of the ancient
manuscripts from which the Bible has been collected]. No
one can say that these additions or omissions or alterations
are matters of mere indifference" Our Bible and
the Ancient Manuscripts, Dr. Frederic Kenyon, Eyre and
Spottiswoode, p. 3
Is the trinitarian apologist, Mr. Kenyon, basing his
comments on corrupt foundations? Do ignorant Muslims simply
not comprehend the complex nuances of his elevated Biblical
criticism? "In any event, none of [the original
manuscripts of the books of the Bible] now survive. What
do survive are copies made over the course of centuries, or
more accurately, copies of the copies of the copies, some
5,366 of them in the Greek language alone, that date from
the second century down to the sixteenth. Strikingly, with
the exception of the smallest fragments, no two of these
copies are exactly ain their particu. No one how many dif,
or variant readings, occur among the surviving witnesses,
but they must number in the hundreds of
thousands." The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture,
Bart Ehrman, pp. 27
"It is highly probable that not one of the Synoptic
Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) was in existence in the
form which we have it, prior to the death of Paul. And were
the documents to be taken in strict order of chronology, the
Pauline Epistles would come before the synoptic
Gospels." History of Christianity in the Light of
Modern Knowledge, Rev. Charles Anderson Scott, p.338
In the latter part of the second century, Dionysius,
Bishop of Corinth says:
"As the brethren desired me to write epistles
(letters), I did so, and these the apostles of the devil
have filled with tares (changes), exchanging some things and
adding others, for whom there is a woe reserved. It is not
therefore, a matter of wonder if some have also attempted to
adulterate the sacred writings of the Lord, since they have
attempted the same in other works that are not to be
compared with these."
Toland observes:
"We know already to what degree imposture and
credulity went hand in hand in the primitive times of the
Christian Church, the last being as ready to receive as the
first was to forge books, this evil grew afterwards not only
greater when the Monks were the sole transcribers and the
sole keepers of all books good or bad, but in process of
time it became almost absolutely impossible to distinguish
history from fable, or truth from error as to the beginning
and original monuments of Christianity. How immediate
successors of the Apostles could so grossly confound the
genuine teaching of their masters with such as were falsely
attributed to them? Or since they were in the dark about
these matters so early how came such as followed them by a
better light? And observing that such Apocryphal books
were often put upon the same footing with the canonical
books by the Fathers, and the first cited as Divine
Scriptures no less than the last, or sometimes, when such as
we reckon divine were disallowed by them. I propose these
two other questions: Why all the books cited genuine by
Clement of Alexander. Origen. Tertullian and the rest of
such writers should not be accounted equally authentic? And
what stress should he laid on the testimony of those Fathers
who not only contradict one another but are also often
inconsistent with themselves in their relations of the very
same facts?"(emphasis added). The Nazarenes, John
Toland, pp. 73 (From: Jesus Prophet of Islam).
One quick example of Church tampering with the
text of the Bible:
Due to a lack of time and space, let us have a quick look
at just one specific example. Those who wish to read more
can refer to the book "What
Did Jesus Really Say?" For example, let us study the
twelve verses of Mark 16:9-20:
"Nonetheless, there are some kinds of textual changes
for which it is difficult to account apart from the
deliberate activity of a transcriber. When a scribe appended
an additional twelve verses to the end of the Gospel of
Mark, this can scarcely be attributed to mere
oversight" The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture,
Bart Ehrman, pp. 27-28
Peake's Commentary on the Bible records;
"It is now generally agreed that 9-20 are not an
original part of Mk. They are not found in the oldest MSS,
and indeed were apparently not in the copies used by Mt. and
Lk. A 10th-cent. Armenian MS ascribes the passage to
Aristion, the presbyter mentioned by Papias (ap.Eus.HE III,
xxxix, 15)."
"Indeed an Armenian translation of St. Mark has quite
recently been discovered, in which the last twelve verses of
St. Mark are ascribed to Ariston, who is otherwise known as
one of the earliest of the Christian Fathers; and it is
quite possible that this tradition is correct" Our
Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, F. Kenyon, Eyre and
Spottiswoode, pp. 7-8
"
The gospel of Mark ends abruptly, at 16.8, and
early attempts to add an ending show that it was felt to be
incomplete. It is possible that the book was never finished
or that it was damaged at an early stage. Yet it may be our
knowledge of the other Gospels that makes us expect this one
to end with appearances of the risen Lord. Certainly, it
ends in an appropriate way for Mark - with fear, human
failure, and the call to discipleship
" The Oxford
Companion to the Bible, Bruce Metzger and Michael Coogan, p.
496
Notice how this is by far not a new trend with the
Church. Indeed, as we can see, the very first Church Fathers
themselves freely allowed themselves to insert whole
passages made up of no less than twelve verses when they
felt like it, allowing the reader to believe that their
words were the words of the apostles of Jesus. In the light
of such Church policies, would it be so hard to imagine them
making smaller "corrections" here and there to the text?
Well, did all of this Church tampering end with the
demise of the first Church Fathers or did their students
learn these techniques from them? As it happens, Victor
Tununensis, a sixth century African Bishop related in his
Chronicle (566 AD) that when Messala was consul at
Costantinople (506 AD), he "censored and corrected"
the Gentile Gospels written by persons considered illiterate
by the Emperor Anastasius. The implication was that they
were altered to conform to sixth century Christianity which
differed from the Christianity of previous centuries (The
Dead Sea Scrolls, the Gospel of Barnabas, and the New
Testament, by M. A. Yusseff, p. 81)
Sir Higgins confirms that this practice did not even end
in the sixth century, rather it continued on into the
eleventh and twelfth:
"It is impossible to deny that the Bendictine Monks of
St. Maur, as far as Latin and Greek language went, were very
learned and talented, as well as numerous body of men. In
Cleland's 'Life of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury', is
the following passage: 'Lanfranc, a Benedictine Monk,
Archbishop of Canterbury, having found the Scriptures much
corrupted by copyists, applied himself to correct
them, as also the writings of the fathers, agreeably
to the orthodox faith, secundum fidem
orthodoxam." History of Christianity in the light
of Modern knowledge, Higgins p.318
In other words, the Bible was re-written in order to
conform to the doctrines of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries and even the writings of the early church fathers
were "corrected" so that the changes would not be
discovered. Sir Higgins goes on to say:
"The same Protestant divine has this remarkable
passage: 'Impartiality exacts from me the confession, that
the orthodox have in some places altered the
Gospels."
Well, how seriously was the text of the Bible affected by
so many centuries of such practices? Is it true that all of
the changes made by the Church are all "unimportant" and
that all Christians should simply "disregard" them all as
having no effect on the message of Jesus (pbuh) or his
apostles? Well, once again, in order that it not be said
that this is simply Muslim propaganda, therefore let us hear
from Dr. Lobegott Friedrich Konstantin Von Tischendorf, one
of history's most adamant conservative Christians and the
man who single-handedly discovered one of the two most
ancient copies of the NT available today. He himself was
driven to admit after his study of these most ancient copies
of the Bible available today that:
"[the New Testament had] in many passages
undergone such serious modification of meaning as to leave
us in painful uncertainty as to what the Apostles had
actually written" Secrets of Mount Sinai, James
Bentley, p. 117
In all, Tischendorf uncovered over 14,800
"corrections" to just one ancient manuscript of the Bible,
the Codex Sinaiticus (one of the two most ancient copies of
the Bible available to Christianity today), by nine
(some say ten) separate "correctors," which had been applied
to this one manuscript over a period from 400AD to about
1200AD. Tischendorf strove in his dealings with his holy
texts themselves to be as honest and sas humanly possible.
Fothis reason hcould not understahow the scribes could have
so continuously and so callously,
"allow themselves to bring in here and there changes,
which were not simple verbal ones, but materially affected
the meaning"
or why they "did not shrink from cutting out a passage
or inserting one."
In the introduction of the New Revised Standard Version
of the Bible by Oxford press we read:
"Occasionally it is evident that the text has suffered
in the transmission and that none of the versions
provides a satisfactory restoration. Here we can only follow
the best judgment of competent scholars as to the
most probable reconstruction of the original
text" (emphasis added)
Are the authors of the RSV Bible "critical scholars"
whose "presuppositions" are above Muslim understanding?
Please note that not a single one of the above quotes came
from a Muslim. Are the words of God in the Qur'an, which
these Christian scholars are slowly confirming, are they
really just an outgrowth of Muslim propaganda and
unsubstantiated lies by Muslims? Why then are the most
knowledgeable among Christian scholars yearly confirming
more and more of the words of God found in the Qur'an? Why?
Are Muslim minds simply genetically inferior? When a
Christian missionary, priest or Bishop converts to Islam do
they automatically lose all ability to reason? Come on, let
us be reasonable.
Even Anglican Bishops confirm this basic truth of
the Qur'an. In the British newspaper the "Daily News"
25/6/84 under the heading "Shock survey of Anglican
Bishops" We read
"More than half of England's Anglican Bishops say that
Christians are not obliged to believe that Jesus Christ was
God, according to a survey published today. The pole of 31
of England's 39 bishops shows that many of them think that
Christ's miracles, the virgin birth and the resurrection
might not have happened exactly as described in the Bible.
Only 11 of the bishops insisted that Christians must regard
Christ as both God and man, while 19 said it was sufficient
to regard Jesus as 'God's supreme agent'"
It is further interesting to note that even the most
adamant defenders of the Trinity do not refute the fact
that the Bible contains many thousands of contradictions or
discrepancies between its verses and versions, which
they refer to as "variant readings," as a result of their
Church's attempts to insert verses validating their
doctrines into the Bible (such as the very famous case of
1 John 5:7 among many others and
which continues to cause them unending embarrassment and has
been removed from all modern Bibles such as the RSV, the
NIV, the ASV, etc.), rather, the most they ever do is to try
and "trivialize" these errors and sweep them under the rug.
For example,
"...the rare parts about which there is still
uncertainty do not affect in any way any doctrine"
Bible Translations, R.L. Sumner
In the book "The Story of the Manuscripts" by Rev. George
E. Merrill, the good Reverend quotes Prof. Arnold as
stating:
"there are not more than
fifteen hundred to two thousand places in which there is any
uncertainty whatever as to the true text.."
As we can see, they do not challenge the fact that the
Bible contains many thousands of errors (a result of Church
tampering during the Dark Ages), rather they only try to
reduce them in number, trivialize them and disregard them.
Thus, we have returned to the "how many 'small' pieces
will you allow me to cut from your body?" question.
The "Trinity":
"O people of the Scripture! commit no excesses in your
religion: nor say of Allah aught but the truth. Christ Jesus
the son of Mary was (no more than) a Messenger of Allah, and
his Word, which he bestowed upon Mary, and a spirit
preceding from him so believe in Allah and his messengers.
Say not "Three" desist It will be better for you for Allah
is one God Glory be to him Far exalted is he above having a
son. To him belong all things in the heavens and the earth.
And enough is Allah as a disposer of affairs."
The noble Qur'an, Al-Nissa(4):171
One of the doctrines which has been exposed to not be
contained in the Bible but which the Church has attempted to
insert into the Bible during the Dark Ages is the doctrine
of the "TRINITY." This simple fact which was exposed
by God in the Qur'an fully 1400 years ago is now beginning
to be recognized even in official Trinitarian references.
For example, let us read the following quotations:
In "The New Catholic Encyclopedia" (Bearing the
Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur, indicating official Church
approval) we get a glimpse of how the concept of the Trinity
was not introduced into Christianity until close to four
hundred years after Jesus (pbuh):
"...It is difficult in the second half of the 20th
century to offer a clear, objective and straightforward
account of the revelation, doctrinal evolution, and
theological elaboration of the Mystery of the trinity.
Trinitarian discussion, Roman Catholic as well as other,
present a somewhat unsteady silhouette. Two things have
happened. There is the recognition on the part of exegetes
and Biblical theologians, including a constantly growing
number of Roman Catholics, that one should not speak of
Trinitarianism in the New Testament without serious
qualification. There is also the closely parallel
recognition on the part of historians of dogma and
systematic theologians that when one does speak of an
unqualified Trinitarianism, one has moved from the period of
Christian origins to, say, the last quadrant of the 4th
century. It was only then that what might be called the
definitive Trinitarian dogma 'One God in three Persons'
became thoroughly assimilated into Christian life and
thought ... it was the product of 3 centuries of
doctrinal development" (emphasis added). The New
Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIV, p. 295.
They admit it!. Jesus' twelve apostles lived and
died never having heard of any "Trinity" ! So did their
children! So did their children's children! They are slowly
facing the facts and accepting the truth of God found in the
Qur'an. The only problem is that they are dragging their
feet and insist on finding it all out by themselves and
independent of God. They do not imagine that perhaps God may
have relieved them of this task and may have fixed the
tampering Himself by sending a new messenger.
If the "Trinity" is the true nature of God, then why did
Jesus (pbuh) leave his closest and dearest followers so
completely and utterly baffled and lost that they never even
realized the "true" nature of God? Why did he leave them
steeped in such black darkness that neither they nor their
children, nor yet their children's children would ever come
to recognize the "true" nature of the One they are to
worship? Do we really want to allege that Jesus was so
thoroughly incompetent in the discharge of his duties that
he left his followers in such utter chaos that it would take
them fully three centuries after his departure to finally
piece together the nature of the One whom they are to
worship? Why did Jesus never, even once, just say "God,
the Holy Ghost and I are three Persons in one Trinity. It is
a mystery. Worship all of us as one and have blind
faith"? Couldn't it possibly be that he didn't say
it nor did he teach it BECAUSE IT ISN'T
TRUE?!
Some people try and make the case that Jesus (pbuh)
taught the disciples the concept of the "trinity" in secret
and that these "secret" teachings were then made public
knowledge many years later. However, in advancing this
unsubstantiated claim these people forget Jesus' explicit
refutal of this claim. He publicly announced:
"Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world; I
ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the
Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing."
John 18:20
If Jesus (pbuh) had only chosen to make just one
such explicit statement to them he could have relieved
Christianity of centuries of bitter disputes, division, and
animosity, and the later "official" Church would not have
needed to make so many thousands of "corrections" and
"clarifications" to the text othe Bible over so many
centuries until this doctrin finally became "clear" to the
reader, nor would it have needed to hold tens upon tens of
councils, spanning many centuries, to define, redefine, and
constantly fine-tune their definitions of the nature of God
in their "official creeds." A job which they found to be of
the utmost importance, yet Jesus (pbuh) himself found no
need to do himself. Perhaps Jesus (pbuh) did not have the
required levels of "Biblical criticism" and neo-Greek
philosophy needed to do the job "right."? Perhaps he did not
have the necessary understanding to realize the importance
of this issue, a matter which the Church "councils" would
later find to be of such dire and crucial importance that
they needed to spend literally many centuries debating,
defining, quarreling over, and condemning other Christian
sects and killing them because they did not convert to these
new "official" definitions of the nature of God.
As Muslims, we do not subscribe to the belief that Jesus
(pbuh) was incompetent in his duties nor that he would
neglect to teach his followers the
most major issue of his religion, the issue of "Who is
God," preferring to leave that up to the Church councils and
their notorious inquisitions. If we do not know who God is
then we know nothing. This is the hand-down most
important issue of any religion. If it was true that God is
a trinity then Jesus (pbuh) would have said so clearly, just
as he did so when he clearly told us that God is ONE (i.e.
Mark 12:29-32, etc.) How many millions of Christians and
non-Christians died in these Inquisitions and Crusades? Just
one single clear statement from Jesus clearly confirming
that God is a trinity, and that he
is "part of" God, could have prevented all of this spilt
blood.
"The horrors of the Crusades and the notorious
Inquisitions are all but a small part of this tragic
tale." For Christ's Sake, Tom Harpur.
If God is a trinity then God Himself would have told us
so clearly, directly, and without beating around the bush,
just as He clearly tells us that He is One in so many places
in the Bible, for example:
"Ye [are] my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my
servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me,
and understand that I [am] he: before me there was
no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I,
[even] I, [am] the LORD; and beside me
[there is] no savior." Isaiah 43:10-11
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God [is] one
LORD:" Deuteronomy 6:4
etc.
"Because the Trinity is such an
important part of later Christian doctrine, it is striking
that the term does not appear in the New Testament.
Likewise, the developed concept of three coequal partners in
the Godhead found in later creedal formulations cannot be
clearly detected within the confines of the canon
(Bible)." The Oxford Companion to the Bible, Bruce
Metzger, pp. 782-783)
Tom Harpur, a former minister and the religion editor of
the Toronto Star, writes in his book "For Christ's
Sake":
"What is most embarrassing for the church is the
difficulty of proving any of these statements of dogma from
the new Testament documents. You simply cannot find the
doctrine of the Trinity set out anywhere in the Bible. St.
Paul has the highest view of Jesus' role and person, but
nowhere does he call him God. Nor does Jesus himself
anywhere explicitly claim to be the second person in the
Trinity, wholly equal to his heavenly Father. As a pious
Jew, he would have been shocked and offended by such an Idea
...(this is) in itself bad enough. But there is worse to
come. This research has lead me to believe that the great
majority of regular churchgoers are, for all practical
purposes, tritheists. That is, they profess to believe in
one God, but in reality they worship three..."
In "The Dictionary of the Bible," bearing the Nihil
Obstat, Imprimatur, and Imprimi Potest (official Church
seals of approval), we read:
"the trinity of God is defined by the Church as the
belief that in God are three persons who subsist in one
nature. That belief as so defined was reached only in the
4th and 5th centuries AD and hence is
not explicitly and formally a biblical belief."
The Dictionary of the Bible, John L. McKenzie, S.J., p.
899
In spite of all of this, the apologists insist on making
it all out to be a result of Muslim ignorance and
misunderstanding. Further, in spite of this, I continue to
find many people who insist on telling everyone that any
claims that the doctrine of the trinity was not arrived at
until at least 400 years after Jesus (pbuh) is all simply
Muslim propaganda and a result of Muslim ignorance and
slander. Even after they are quoted such statements as these
they then turn around and go back to telling all those who
did not read these statements that it is all untrue and
simply Muslim distortion of the facts. Is this how we are to
search for the truth of God? Is this how we open our minds
and hearts to His truth?
"And Jesus answered him, The first of all the
commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is
one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the
first commandment." Mark 12:29-30.
"According to orthodox Christian doctrine, God is one
nature in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No
one of them precedes or created the others or stands above
them in power or dignity. In precise theological terms, they
are one in substance (or essence), coeternal, and coequal.
The doctrine so stated does not appear in Scripture, ... The
orthodox doctrine of the Trinity was hammered out gradually
over a period of three centuries or more...Unsurprisingly,
perhaps, the coeternity and coequality of the divine persons
remained a matter of theological dispute, and so are
frequently discussed in the context of heresy... In 381 the
bishops convened again at Constantinople and set forth the
orthodox doctrine in its final form" A Dictionary
of Biblical Tradition in English Literature, David Lyle
Jeffrey, p. 785
"In the Old Testament, the Unity of God was clearly
affirmed. The Jewish creed, repeated in every synagogue
today, was 'Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord
(Deut. 6:4). This was the faith of the first Christians, so
Paul writes, 'There is one God and Father of all, Who is
above all and through all and in you all" (Eph. 4:6). But
gradually some addition or modification of this creed was
found necessary. Christians were fully persuaded of the
Deity of Jesus Christ and later of the Deity of the Holy
Spirit, and they were compelled to relate these convictions
with their belief in the Unity of God. During many years,
the problem was discussed and many explanations were
attempted. One advanced by Sabellius, that became fairly
popular was that Christ and the Holy Spirit were successive
manifestations of the Supreme Being, but finally, the belief
prevailed that the words Father, Son, Spirit, declared
eternal distinctions in the Godhead. That is, that the
Trinity of Manifestation revealed a Tri-unity of Being. In
other words,' that Christ and the Holy Spirit were coeternal
with the Father. With the exceptions of the Unitarians, this
is the belief of Christendom
today" Christadelphianism, F. J. Wilkin, M.A., D.D,
The Australian Baptist, Victoria.
Amazing! In spite of his belief in the doctrine of the
"trinity," Mr. Wilkin has just himself admitted that the
doctrine should not be sought after in the Bible, nor did
the disciples of Jesus preach it, and that those who
accepted it did not get it from the Bible, rather they
started out with their own preconceived concepts and then
did their best to make the Bible endorse their
preconceptions, and finally, that it was only "adopted" by
the Church after many years of contention and
experimentation, because members were "fully persuaded of
the Deity of Jesus Christ, and later of the Deity of the
Holy Spirit." When Jesus was on earth, Judaism was the only
purely monotheistic religion in the region, having become
surrounded by endwaves of "trinities" from the sunations of
the Ro, Greeks, Babylonians and Egyptians (see chapter
3 of "What
Did Jesus Really Say"). So, why did Jesus (pbuh) choose
to allow the very first generations after him to remain
steeped in ignorance and division, to live and die never
having heard of any "trinity," and only choose to bring
enlightenment to the creed-writers and neo-platonic
philosophers of the fourth century CE?
Why was it that only after the Romans, who themselves
worshipped pagan trinities, celebrated the 25th
of December as the birthday of their supreme god of the sun,
celebrated Easter as the festival of the return of power to
the earth, used the "cross of light" as their official
symbol, and believed in the death and resurrection of their
gods in atonement for their sins, why was it only after
these pagan Romans officially "sponsored and protected" the
church that the Trinitarians finally gained the upper hand
over all of the other Christian sects and suddenly everyone
"recognized" the "true" nature of God as being a trinity
similar to that of the surrounding pagan nations and
"recognized" that all of these other Christian sects needed
to be converted or killed and their gospels destroyed?
"Christianity in the second
and third centuries was in a remarkable state of flux. To be
sure, at no point in its history has the religion
constituted a monolith. But the diverse manifestations of
its first three hundred years -- whether in terms of social
structures, religious practices, or ideologies -- have never
been replicated. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in
the realm of theology. In the second and third centuries
there were, of course, Christians who believed in only one
God; others, however, claimed that there were two Gods; yet
others subscribed to 30, or 365, or more. Some Christians
accepted the Hebrew Scriptures as a revelation of the one
true God, the sacred possession of all believers; others
claimed that the scriptures had been inspired by an evil
deity. Some Christians believed that God had created the
world and was soon going to redeem it; others said that God
neither had created the world nor had ever had any dealings
with it. Some Christians believed that Christ was somehow
both a man and God; others said that he was a man, but not
God; others claimed that he was God but not a man; others
insisted that he was a man who had been temporarily
inhabited by God. Some Christians believed that Christ's
death had brought about the salvation of the world; others
claimed that his death had no bearing on salvation; yet
others alleged that he had never even died. Few of these
variant theologies went uncontested, and the controversies
that ensued impacted the surviving literature on virtually
every level ... The New Testament manuscripts were not
produced impersonally by machines capable of flawless
reproduction. They were copied by hand, by living, breathing
human beings who were deeply rooted in the conditions and
controversies of their day. Did the scribes' polemical
contexts influence the way they transcribed their sacred
Scriptures? The burden of the present study is that they
did, that theological disputes, specifically disputes over
Christology, prompted Christian scribes to alter the words
of Scripture in order to make them more serviceable for the
polemical task. Scribes modified their manuscripts to make
them more patently 'orthodox' and less susceptible to
'abuse' by the opponents of orthodoxy" The Orthodox
Corruption of Scripture, Bart Ehrman, pp. 3-4
"The reign of Constantine marks the epoch of the
transformation of Christianity from a religion into a
political system; and though, in one sense, that system was
degraded into idolatry, in another it had risen into a
development of the old Greek mythology. The maxim holds good
in the social as well as in the mechanical world, that, when
two bodies strike, the form of both is changed. Paganism was
modified by Christianity; Christianity by Paganism. In the
Trinitarian controversy, which first broke out in Egypt --
Egypt, the land of the Trinities -- the chief point in
discussion was to define the position of 'the Son.'"
History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, Prof.
John Draper, pp.52-53
The great luminary of the Church, Saint Augustine
(354-430 C.E.), is quoted to have said "The same thing
which is now called CHRISTIAN RELIGION existed among the
ancients. They have begun to call Christian the true
religion which existed before."
"Our love for what is old, our reverence for what our
fathers used, makes us keep still in the church, and on the
very altar cloths, symbols which would excite the smile of
an Oriental, and lead him to wonder why we send missionaries
to his land, while cherishing his faith in ours" James
Bonwick
The Encyclopedia Britannica states under the heading
"Trinity":
"... in Christian doctrine, the unity of Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit as three persons in one Godhead Neither the
word Trinity nor the explicit doctrine appears in the New
Testament,... The Council of Nicaea in 325 stated the
crucial formula for that doctrine in its confession that the
Son is 'of the same substance [homoousios] as the
Father,' even though it said very little about the Holy
Spirit. Over the next half century, Athanasius defended and
refined the Nicene formula, and, by the end of the 4th
century, under the leadership of Basil of Caesarea, Gregory
of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus (the Cappadocian
Fathers), the doctrine of the Trinity took substantially the
form it has maintained ever since."
The Church forces the
"Trinity" into the Bible:
"Then woe to those who write the Scripture with their
own hands and then say: 'This is from Allah', to traffic
with it for a miserable price. Woe to them for what their
hands do write and for the gain they make thereby"
The noble Qur'an Al-Bakarah(2):79
"Do you covet that they will believe in you when
[in fact] a party of them used to hear the Word of
Allah then they would distort it knowingly after they had
understood it?"
The noble Qur'an Al-Bakarah(2):75
Indeed, the very fact that the "trinity" is not to be
found anywhere throughout the Bible except as a direct
result of deliberate mistranslation of the verses (see
chapter
one of "What
Did Jesus Really Say") finally resulted in the Church
finding it necessary to "fix" the Bible by inserting
fabricated verses which would make this doctrine "clear,"
such as the famous case of the verse of 1
John 5:7 which has now been universally recognized by
the majority of Christian scholars as a false insertion of
the Church and is no longer found in any modern Bible except
for the King James Bible. For the longest time this verse
was considered the main text which everyone referred to in
defense of the trinity. It was on everyone's lips. It was so
"clear." It was so "obvious." How could anyone not see a
trinity in this verse? Then they found out why
it was so clear. It was because the verse was a fabrication
which the Church had inserted into the Bible in the
4th century in order to make their doctrine
"clear" to future generations so that they could simply
demand "blind faith" from them. No ancient manuscript of the
Bible from before that century contains this verse. It took
fully four hundred years after the departure of Jesus (pbuh)
for this verse to "magically" appear in the text of the
"Word of God." For many centuries before that, tens upon
tens of Christian sects were at one-another's throats
accusing each-other of blasphemy, heresy, tampering and
corruption. Each one had their own concept of "who" God was
and "how many" gods there were. Many raging debate were
convened to debate this issue and defend their various
belief from the holy texts themselve. Since the Trinitarian
doctrine could not be found anywhere in the Bible,
therefore, there was no way for the Trinitarians to defend
their "triune god" theory or substantiate their claims of
"heresy" against the Unitarian Christians who remained upon
the original teachings of Jesus (pbuh). Once this verse
magically showed up in the 4th century in the
text of their Bible, and the Roman empire put its
considerable might behind the trinitarian sect, then they
finally had the "big stick" they needed in order to bash all
of these other "heretical sects" over their head and show
them how their "heresy" is so expressly condemned in the
Bible
..finally God Himself said so very clearly
right "here."
"The text about the three heavenly witnesses (I John
5:7 KJV) is not an authentic part of the NT" The
Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. 4, p.711,
Abingdon Press.
"1 John 5:7 in the KJV reads: 'There are three that
bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy
Ghost: and these three are one' but this is an interpolation
of which there is no trace before the late fourth
century." The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible,
Vol. 4, p. 871, Abingdon Press.
"1 John 5:7 in the Textus Receptus (represented in the
KJV) makes it appear that John had arrived at the doctrine
of the trinity in explicit form ('the Father, the Word, and
the Holy Ghost'), but this text is clearly an interpolation
since no genuine Greek manuscript contains it" The
Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, Edited by Allen C. Myers,
p.1020
The great luminary of Western literature, Mr. Edward
Gibbon, explains the reason for the discardal of this verse
from the pages of the Bible with the following words:
"Of all the manuscripts now extant, above four score
in number, some of which are more than 1200 years old, the
orthodox copies of the Vatican, of the Complutensian
editors, of Robert Stephens are becoming invisible; and the
two manuscripts of Dublin and Berlin are unworthy to form an
exception...In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the
Bibles were corrected by LanFrank, Archbishop of Canterbury,
and by Nicholas, a cardinal and librarian of the Roman
church, secundum Ortodoxam fidem. Not withstanding these
corrections, the passage is still wanting in twenty-five
Latin manuscripts, the oldest and fairest; two qualities
seldom united, except in manuscripts....The three witnesses
have been established in our Greek Testaments by the
prudence of Erasmus; the honest bigotry of the Complutensian
editors; the typographical fraud, or error, of Robert
Stephens in the placing of a crotchet and the deliberate
falsehood, or strange misapprehension, of Theodore
Beza." "Decline and fall of the Roman Empire," IV,
Gibbon, p. 418.
Peake's Commentary on the Bible says:
"The famous interpolation after 'three witnesses' is
not printed even in RSVn, and rightly. It cites the heavenly
testimony of the Father, the logos, and the Holy Spirit, but
is never used in the early Trinitarian controversies. No
respectable Greek MS contains it. Appearing first in a late
4th-cent. Latin text, it entered the Vulgate and finally the
NT of Erasmus."
It was only the horrors of the infamous Church
inquisitions which held back Sir Isaac Newton from openly
revealing these facts to all:
"In all the vehement universal and lasting controversy
about the Trinity in Jeromes time and both before and long
enough after it, the text of the 'three in heaven' was never
once thought of. It is now in everybody's mouth and
accounted the main text for the business and would assuredly
have been so too with them, had it been in their books
Let them make good sense of it who are able. For my part I
can make none. If it be said that we are not to determine
what is scripture and what not by our private judgments, I
confess it in places not controverted, but in disputed
places I love to take up with what I can best understand. It
is the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind
in matters of religion ever to be fond of mysteries, and for
that reason to like best what they understand least. Such
men may use the Apostle John as they please, but I have that
honor for him as to believe that he wrote good sense and
therefore take that to be his which is the best" Jesus,
Prophet of Islam, Muhammad Ata' Ur-Rahim, p. 156
In spite of this universal realization, the Church
insists on keeping the wool pulled over the eyes of the
masses of Christendom by refusing to remove it from the last
holdout, their famous "King James" Bible, and this is how
they force words into the mouths of Jesus (pbuh) and his
disciples so that it may become "clear" to us that Jesus is
God and God is a "trinity." Once this contradictory and
illogical doctrine becomes "clear" in the Bible then they
will no longer have to defend it or explain it. They can
simply demand "blind faith" in it and insist that God wants
us to believe it without understanding it. This is why they
can't get rid of it even though it has been exposed as a
fabrication of the 4th century Trinitarian
Church. You see logic dictates that if a verse is a
fabrication then you must remove it from the "word of God."
You must remove it, that is, if your goal is indeed to
spread the word of God and you do not have another agenda.
Many a gullible soul did indeed predict the imminent removal
of this verse once it became so widely recognized to be the
fabrication that it is. Sadly, this would not prove to be
the case.
For example, Mr. Edward Gibbon was one of the first men
to recognize this fabrication and to heroically and
selflessly expose it in front of all. Today, as we have
seen, it has become too widely recognized as the fabrication
that it is, and removed from too many reputable Bibles, for
anyone to say otherwise if he wishes to retain any shred of
his credibility. During his time, Mr. Gibbon was defended in
his findings by his contemporary, the brilliant British
scholar Richard Porson who also proceeded to publish
devastatingly conclusive proof that the verse of 1 John 5:7
was only first inserted by the Church into the Bible in the
end of the 4th century. (Secrets of Mount Sinai,
James Bentley, pp. 30-33). Regarding Porson's most
devastating proof, Mr. Gibbon later said
"His structures are founded in argument, enriched with
learning, and enlivened with wit, and his adversary neither
deserves nor finds any quarter at his hands. The evidence of
the three heavenly witnesses would now be rejected in any
court of justice; but prejudice is blind, authority is deaf,
and our vulgar Bibles will ever be polluted by this spurious
text."
You see Mr. Gibbon was a man ahead of his time. He
recognized the underlying motives and interests of his
contemporaries. These motives and interests had been
cultivated and nurtured for too many centuries to simply
admit the truth, accept defeat, seek God's forgiveness and
remove the interpolation. Not everyone, however, had Mr.
Gibbon's foresight. For example, in commenting on the above
statement, Mr. Bentley responds:
"In fact, they are not. No modern Bible now contains
the interpolation."
Mr. Bentley, however, was mistaken. Indeed, just as Mr.
Gibbon had predicted, the simple fact that the most learned
scholars of Christianity now unanimously recognize this
verse to be a later interpolation of the Church has not
prevented the preservation of this fabricated text in our
modern Bibles. To this day, the Bible in the hands of the
majority of Christians, the "King James" Bible, still
unhesitantly includes this verse as the "inspired" word of
God without so much as a footnote to inform the reader that
all scholars of Christianity of note unanimously recognize
it as a later fabrication.
Prejudices die hard. Religious prejudices die the
hardest.
What does God Almighty have to say to these people and
their tampering fingers? Well we can read His condemnation
of their actions in the noble Qur'an. He says:
"Then woe to those who write the Scripture with their
own hands and then say: 'This is from Allah', to traffic
with it for a miserable price. Woe to them for their hands
do write and for the gain thmake thereby" The noble
Qur'an, Al-Bakarah(2):79
"O People of Scripture! Why do you reject the Signs of
God, when you [yourselves] bear witness [to
their truth]?. O People of the Scripture! Why do you
clothe Truth with falsehood, and conceal the Truth, while
you have knowledge?" The noble Qur'an,
A'al-Umran(3):70-71
"Say: 'O People of the Scripture! Why do you reject
the Signs of God, when God is Himself witness to all you
do?' Say: 'O People of the Book! Why do you obstruct those
who believe from the path of God, Seeking to make it
crooked, while you were yourselves witnesses? But God is not
unaware of what you do'" The noble Qur'an,
A'al-Umran(3):98-99
"[And remember] When Allah (God) took a
covenant from those who were given the Scripture: You shall
make it known and clear to mankind, and you shall not hide
it; but they flung it behind their backs, and purchased with
it a miserable gain! How evil was that which they
purchased!" The noble Qur'an, A'al-Umran(3):187
"Say: 'O people of the Scripture! exceed not in your
religion the bounds [of what is proper], trespassing
beyond the truth, nor follow the vain desires of people who
went astray in times gone by, who misled many, and strayed
[themselves] from the straight path.'" The
noble Qur'an, Al-Maida(5):77
"And when Allah said: O Jesus, son of Mary! Did you
say unto mankind: Take me and my mother(2)
for two gods beside Allah? he said: Be You glorified. It was
not mine to utter that to which I had no right. If I used to
say it, then You knew it. You know what is in my
[innermost] self but I know not what is in Yours.
Truly! You, only You are the Knower of things hidden. I
spoke unto them only that which You commanded me, (saying):
Worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord, and I was a witness
over them while I dwelt among them, and when You took me You
were the Watcher over them, and You are Witness over all
things." The noble Qur'an, Al-Maidah(5):116-118
"And from those who said: "We are Christians," We took
their covenant, but they forgot a good part of the message
which was sent to them. Therefore We have stirred up enmity
and hatred among them till the Day of Resurrection, and
Allah will inform them of what they used to do. O people of
the Scripture! Now has Our messenger (Muhammad) come to you,
explaining to you much of that which you used to hide in the
Scripture, and forgiving much. Indeed, there has come to you
a light from Allah and a plain Scripture. Wherewith Allah
guides him who seeks His good pleasure unto paths of peace.
He brings them out of darkness by His will into light, and
guides them to a straight path. They indeed have disbelieved
who say: Lo! Allah is the Messiah, son of Mary. Say : Who
then has the least power against Allah, if He had willed to
destroy the Messiah son of Mary, and his mother and everyone
on earth? And to Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens
and the earth and all that is between them. He creates what
He will. And Allah is Able to do all things. The Jews and
Christians say: We are sons of Allah and His loved ones.
Say; Why then does He punish you for your sins? No, you are
but mortals of His creating. He forgives whom He will, and
punishes whom He will. And to Allah belongs the dominion of
the heavens and the earth and all that is between them, and
unto Him is the return (of all). O people of the Scripture!
Now has Our messenger (Muhammad) come unto you to make
things plain after a break in (the series of) the
messengers, lest you should say: There came not unto us a
messenger of cheer nor any Warner. Now has a messenger of
cheer and a Warner come unto you. And Allah is Able to do
all things." The noble Qur'an,
Al-Maidah(5):14-19
"The similitude of Jesus before Allah is as that of
Adam, he created him from dust, then said to him: 'Be' and
he was" The noble Qur'an, A'al-Umran(3):59.
"They say: Allah has taken a son. Glorified be He! He
has no needs! His is all that is in the heavens and that is
in the earth. You have no warrant for this, do you say
regarding Allah that which you know not?" The noble
Qur'an, Yunus(10):68
"The Messiah, son of Mary, was only a messenger,
messengers (the like of whom) had passed away before him.
And his mother was a saintly woman. They both used to eat
(earthly) food. See how we make the signs clear for them,
then see how they are deluded!" The noble Qur'an,
Al-Maidah (5):75.
Indeed, Jesus (pbuh) is quoted in the Bible as having
confirmed all of the above:
"And this is life eternal, that they might know
you the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom
you have sent." John 17:3. Notice that Jesus
(pbuh) did not say "Us the only
true God"
He did not say "Me the only
true God"
He only said what Allah Almighty confirmed in the Qur'an
that he said, namely, "YOU the ONLY true
God"
Notice the word "ONLY." If he did not use this word then
we could imply that he had left the door open for someone
else to be God or "part of God" in addition to God Himself.
However, Jesus (pbuh) made sure to close that door and lock
it tight. He did so by using the explicit word "ONLY." How
could he possibly make it any more clear than that? How much
more evidence do we need to accept his words, recognize the
truth, and follow the truth of Allah?
Also:
"Jesus saith unto her, ...I ascend unto my Father, and
your Father; and to my God, and your God." John
20:17
Once again remember the confirmation of Jesus' words as
confirmed by God in the noble Qur'an: "
I (Jesus)
spoke unto them only that which You commanded me, (saying):
Worship Allah, my Lord and your Lord, and I was a witness
over them while I dwelt among them, and when You took me You
were the Watcher over them, and You are Witness over all
things
" The noble Qur'an,
Al-Maidah(5):118
"Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel
from the LORD, and their works are in the dark, and they
say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us? Surely your turning
of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's
clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me
not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He
had no understanding?" Isaiah 29:15-16
Now, if our current authors object to all of this
evidence showing the Bible to have been the object of
continuous and unrelenting tampering by the Church in its
attempts to make such doctrines as the trinity "clear" to
mankind, and if they continue to maintain that this is all
simply Muslim propaganda, if this is still the case, and
they would like to prove their case quite conclusively while
also collecting an easy $2000 in the process, then they are
invited to take the "Easter
challenge" found close to the end of this
article.
As just observed, when the author of this list tries to
find contradictions in God's words in the noble Qur'an he
either uses personal opinions or else Christian
references to do so. It is interesting that the
contradictions in the Bible are recognized by its own
foremost scholars but not seen by him, while the claimed
contradictions in the noble Qur'an appear very clear to him
while he can not produce a single well known or respected
Muslim scholar who endorses his claimed contradictory
verses. The most that he might be able to say in this regard
is that some "Shiite" Imams of Iran think that there might
be more books to the Qur'an, however, whenever you openly
ask any Shiite if he can produce these missing books he very
strenuously stresses that they do not believe that the
Qur'an is missing a single verse, that the claim that they
say this is false and a fabrication, and that anyone who
claims that they say this is a liar
There is a very big difference between:
a) one group who's own scholars and most respected
clergymen say that they have in their hands thousands
of officially recognized physical and tangible
ancient manuscripts of their holy scripture containing
discrepancies between o"numbering in the hundreds of
thousands," andbetween,
b) another group who claimed by others to believe that
are some missing verses in their holy scripture, but which
they themselves claim they never said but are all
propaganda, lies and fabrications against them. (The Shia
have also written some books defending themselves against
this claim, such as "Adam Tahreef Al-Quran.")
Perhaps this is why we find so many learned teachers of
Christianity converting to Islam such as Bishops priests and
ministers (i.e. Bishop
David Benjamin Keldani, Bishop John Jacob, Rev. R. J.
Flowers, Anselm Turmeda, Rev.
Prof. Abraham Filibus, or father Marino, etc.), to say
nothing of more contemporary Christian scholars such as Gary
Miller (who now goes by the name Abdulahad Omar), or father
Norman, the 19th century Christian priest who
went to Turkey to preach Christianity to the 'heathens' and
came back to America in order to convert the Christians to
Islam. On the other hand any claims of conversion from Islam
to Christianity can not point to a single famous or
reputable Muslim teacher who was sought after by Muslims
during his lifetime to teach them Islam and who spent many
years of his life strongly espousing Islam and teaching
others to uphold it. This is to say nothing about Christian
kings who converted to Islam, such as the Anglo-Saxon king
Offa (757-796 CE) who converted from Christianity to Islam,
or Russell
Webb the American Consul in Manila Philippines who
converted to Islam, resigned his job, went to India to learn
more about Islam and came back to the US to teach it, in
addition to many others from Lord
Headley to Schoun, since in spite of their being kings,
Lords, high officials and diplomats, in all fairness, some
of them can not be considered to have previously been
missionary scholars of Christianity and teachers of the
Bible. This is also why world famous athletes,
musicians, or celebrities who convert to Islam too are not
emphasized here (i.e. Mike Tyson, Cat
Stevens, Jemima
Goldsmith etc.)
In our one small mosque in Central New York, we have
close to three thousand Muslims. Of these three thousand I
would estimate that perhaps one thousand were previously
Christians. Of this number quite a few were very active and
energetic members of their local Churches and denominations
and openly abusive of Islam and all Muslims before they
themselves willingly embraced Islam. They studied the Bible,
read many Christian publications, prayed daily, attended the
Church daily, and were even quite active in missionary and
evangelical work. Some were even considered the most active
members of their Churches before their conversion. A recent
U.S. pole on this very issue informs us that there are
120,000 converts to Islam within the USA every year. Most of
them profess to have been previously Christian (to hear
from some of them go to this
site or this
site). A sizable number of these were very active and
devoted Christians strongly involved in very diligent
missionary work. This is to say nothing about converts to
Islam in other countries. The reason why these people, their
numbers and activities are usually not quoted by Muslims is
not because they are regarded as small in number or
unimportant in their persons, neither is it because many of
them did not have extensive schooling in Christian theology
(since many of them did), rather it is because it is felt
that in order to try and remain as objective and unbiased as
humanly possible it is important to restrain ourselves only
to those Christians who combined knowledge, high authority
and respect within their community, in addition to very
active preaching and missionary work in support of
Christianity (or even abuse of Islam) before their
conversion to Islam.
Perhaps this is also why ever so slowly but surely, the
most knowledgeable scholars of Christianity are year by year
slowly finding evidence of Church tampering and as they
slowly strip away the changes they are discovering the exact
message God told them, in the noble Qur'an, that they would
find. Specifically, that Jesus was not God, that God is not
a Trinity, that Muhammad (pbuh) was
expected by both the Jews and Christians as the last
prophet, and that there is no such thing as an "original
sin," an "atonement," or "belief without faith." Rather,
every single human being is responsible for himself alone
and can never be held accountable in any way, shape or form
for what anyone else did or did not do. Further, Islam
emphasizes that God is a very merciful God who can forgive
any sin no matter how tremendous very trivially simply by
willing it. Indeed, Allah delights in forgiving human
transgressions and in expiating the sins of all those who
turn to Him in sincere repentance, however, He first
requires faith to be supplemented by works and that either
one by itself shall never suffice.
As we have seen, it is only those who are extremely
unfamiliar with their Bible who claim that it contains no
contradictions, "variant readings," or evidence of
deliberate Church tampering. The scholars of Christianity
including Trinitarian Bishops, ministers, priests, Doctors
of Divinity, and official Trinitarian Biblical references
all agree that the evidence of tampering is far too
extensive to ignore or to attribute to mere "slips of the
pen," etc. These Christians only differ on how many
thousands of errors are contained in the Bible and how
serious they are, with some of them claiming that there are
only about two thousand errors and that they are all "not
very important," while others insist that they are over one
hundred thousand in number and that a large portion of them
are extremely serious, intentional, and malicious.
Again, although some apologists would like to depict such
statements as being an outgrowth of despicable Muslim
propaganda since they all hate Jesus (peace be upon him) so
very much and are faithless, still, the truth is far
different from their claims. Every single Christian who has
converted to Islam whom I have spoken to has informed me
that he or she only converted because of their faith and
love of Jesus (pbuh) and not in spite of it. Indeed it is
usually the most knowledgeable of Christian scholars who are
the most likely to openly admit these facts. For example, in
1881, the scholars of Christianity got together to study the
King James Bible (based upon the Greek Textus Receptus), the
version of the Bible which the Church has been pushing upon
the masses for roughly four centuries, the version of the
Bible which the Church depicted as being so utterly perfect
and faultless as to literally consider it to be direct from
'the mouth of God,' the version of the Bible which the
Church considered it a heresy to consider anything less than
100% perfect and the undying unfailing word of God, these
same thirty two Trinitarian scholars and fifty cooperating
Christian denominations got together to expose the Church's
"King James Bible," their ultimate achievement, and declare
the following:
"...Yet the King James Vehas GRAVE
DEFECTS.." (From the preface of the RSV 1971)
They go on to caution us that:
"...That these defects are SO MANY AND SO SERIOUS as
to call for revision"
The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible by Oxford
Press has the following to say in its preface:
"Yet the King James Version has serious defects. By
the middle of the nineteenth century, the development of
biblical studies and the discovery of many biblical
manuscripts more ancient than those on which the King James
Version was based made it apparent that these defects were
so many as to call for revision."
Who says so? Who are these people who claim that the
Bible in the hands of the majority of today's Christians
contains "many" "grave defects" which are so "serious" as to
require a complete overhaul of the text? Are they, as our
current authors would have us believe, all people of
questionable 'preconceptions' which backwards Muslims
gleefully quote out of ignorance? Well, we can find the
answer in the very same RSV Bible. In it, the publishers
themselves (Collins) mention on page 10 of their notes:
"This Bible (RSV) is the product of thirty two
scholars assisted by an advisory committee representing
fifty cooperating denominations"
Let us see what is the opinion of Christendom with regard
to these scholars and their work in the revision of the
Bible (revised by them in 1952 and then again in 1971):
"The finest version which has been produced in the
present century" - (Church of England newspaper)
"A completely fresh translation by scholars of the
highest eminence" - (Times literary supplement)
"The well loved characteristics of the authorized
version combined with a new accuracy of translation" - (Life
and Work)
"The most accurate and close rendering of the
original" - (The Times)
In the beginning, when the Gutenburg printing press was
first invented and the masses finally succeeded in forcing
the Bible out of the hands of the Church and out into the
open, those who studied it and found numerous problems in it
simply attempted to 'fix' the errors and tampering in the
KJV (of 1611 C.E.) as they were slowly exposed by the
discovery of more and more ancient copies of the Bible.
However, it was not long before the errors which they
discovered became so many and so serious that any amount of
'fixing' would no longer do. The text needed a complete
overhaul. The whole KJV needed to be tossed out, the ancient
manuscripts needed to be reassessed, and a completely new
version needed to be compiled. This is how such Bibles as
the Revised Standard Version, the New International Version,
the American Standard Version, etc. (based upon the
Westcott-Hort) were born. However, even this effort was
found to be seriously lacking in total honesty of
translation and reproduction of the original and in unbiased
objectivity. For more on this issue please download
the second edition of the book "What
Did Jesus Really Say?". and read chapter 2.1 The
information contained therein is too extensive to reproduce
here.
On the other hand Muslims remain resolute that God's
words in the noble Qur'an, which He sent down in order to
rectify mankind's tampering with the previous Scriptures,
this final Book of God does not contain "only a 1500-2000
errors." It does not contain "only errors which do
not affect in any way any doctrine." Rather, the Qur'an
contains exactly ZERO errors and exactly
ZERO contradictions. God has not left it up to
mankind to preserve the scripture this time. This time He
has preserved it Himself.
In what follows I shall be reproducing the original
author's arguments verbatim without removal of a single
word, or correcting a single spelling error, in order to
ensure that the reader can indeed read both party's points
of view completely and faithfully. Simply removing all of my
comments from this article will result in a complete and
faithful reconstruction of his original article. I shall
further only be placing emphasis on responding to all
questions which he has marked as "unanswered." Although I
have not yet read the complete texts of the questions marked
by him as "answered," still, I am assuming that they have
been dealt with sufficiently so I shall only deal with them
in brief. However I shall try to find the time in the near
future to scan through the provided answers and verify this
assumption. If my assumption proves to be incorrect then I
shall, by the will of Allah, answer those questions in more
detail, updating this file as needed. So let us see what he
has to say:
The list:
Some readers have asked for a condensed overview on the
contradictions to be displayed on one page instead of
distributing it over so many pages. Each contradiction will
be described in a minimum of words and has a link to the
page where the issue is discussed in more detail.
Do they not ponder on the Qur'an? Had it been from other
than Allah, they would surely have found therein much
discrepancy. -- The Qur'an, Sura 4:82
And it just doesn't add up: Sura 4:11-12
and 4:176 state the Qur'anic inheritance law. If a man dies
and leaves three daughters, his two parents and his wife
then they will receive the respective shares of 2/3 for the
3 daughters together, 1/3 for the parents together [both
according to verse 4:11] and 1/8 for the wife
[4:12] which adds up to more than the estate
available.
A second example is, that when a man leaves only his
other, his wife and two sisters, then they receive 1/3
[mother, 4:11], 1/4 [wife, 4:12] and 2/3
[the two sisters, 4:176], which again adds up to
15/12 of the available property.
These verses were revealed by God to Muhammad at a time
when the people of Arabia (and even many of the surrounding
nations, such as the Romans, the Hindus, the Persians, etc.)
gave very little heed to the rights of women. Many of them,
such as the Christian Romans, would continue for many more
centuries debating whether or not women even had souls. It
was not until very recently that Western women actually
achieved the right to inherit at all. A right which was
established for them by God in the Qur'an 1400 years ago.
Even such "modern" rights as pre-nuptial agreements were
firmly established in Islam 1400 years before they showed up
in the West. During that age, women in many of these
surrounding nations were simply property of the men to be
inherited with his other material belongings by his male
heirs. In the Arabian peninsula, this very same attitude was
held and the common law was that the male children receive
the inheritance and the father receives inheritance
conditional upon explicit verbal bequeathal. All others got
nothing. When Islam came, God commanded Muhammad (pbuh) to
return to women their fair share of the inheritance and to
further establish the rights of the other relatives in the
family of the deceased to receive their just share according
to their relationships.
The verses dealing with inheritance are not as our
current author may imagine only these couple of verses.
There are many other verses in different locations
throughout the Qur'an dealing with this issue. They range
over the chapters of Al-Baqarah(2), Al-Nissa(4),
Al-Maidah(5), Al-Anfal(8), etc. This is to say nothing about
the many multiples of that in the Sunnah (Sayings of the
prophet, pbuh). Out of these many verses and sayings of the
prophet has been developed the science of "Al-Fara'id" which
is a very vast issue and which can not be collected in a
single paragraph. Suffice it to say that the question
appears to display a complete unawareness of any aspects of
the discipline of Al-Fara'id, its basis, its subdivisions,
its special cases, the rules of "Awl" and "Usbah," the laws
of "Usool" of the Fara'id, the laws of "Hajb wa Hirman," and
many other issues relating to this matter. This particular
example falls under the laws of "Awl" which regulate the
cases when the inheritor's shares exceed or "overshoot" the
sum of the total inheritance, and in which case the
inheritance is recalculated according to the laws of Awl and
redistributed. In the above cases, the distribution would be
"Parents: 4/27 each, wife:1/9, daughters:16/27" and for the
second case, "Mother:4/15, Wife:3/15, Sisters:8/15." The
books of Fiqh contain specific examples of Awl, such as the
Awl of Umar ibn al-Khattab, however, the interested reader
can study this issue further by referring to any number of
references on Islamic Fiqh.
There are yet other cases when the number of inheritors
and their shares do not sum to a whole 100%, in which case
the laws of "Usbah" come into play in order to distribute
the unclaimed shares which have no corresponding people to
receive them. Then there are the laws of "Hajb wa Hirman,"
which encompass still other special cases of inheritance and
block normally deserving relatives from inheriting in
special extraordinary cases.
Our current author objects to Islamic law and wishes it
to conform to his tastes. Christians officially have only
one reference; the Bible. This is why he and some of his
friends at times try to force this same system on Muslims.
They insist that Islamic law come only from the Qur'an, thus
effectively blotting out roughly one half of Islamic
law.
Islamic law is based upon two references, the Qur'an
(sayings of God) and the Sunnah (sayings and actions of the
prophet). These two are then narrated and interpreted by the
Companions through their consensus and their narrations of
when and how a given verse or Hadeeth was revealed (it's
context) and how the Prophet (pbuh) taught these issues to
them or how he interpreted a given verse or applied it. All
of this information is vital to the interpretation of a
given Islamic law and none of it can be taken in a vacuum of
the rest, based upon personal whims. At times the Qur'an
contains a given law, at others the law is found in the
Hadeeth, and in still other cases the broad outlines of a
given law are presented in the Qur'an and the details are
explained in the Hadeeth. For example, the Qur'an only
commands Muslims to "pray." The details of how to pray are
found in the Hadeeths of the prophet (pbuh) and described by
the companions who saw him teach it and were themselves
taught by him directly. If a non-Muslim does not like this
system and rejects it then this in no way makes it any less
the law of Islam or the command of God. Indeed this system
itself is taught by God in the Qur'an. Examples of God
commanding Muslims to obey the prophet and abide by the laws
of the Sunnah and Hadeeth in interpreting the Qur'an
are:
"He who obeys the messenger has indeed obeyed Allah
..." Al-Nissa(4):80
"And We (God) have sent down unto you (Muhammad) the
Reminder (Qur'an), that you might make clear to mankind that
which was sent down unto them and perchance they might
reflect." Al-Nahil(16):44
"And We (God) have not sent down unto you (Muhammad)
the Book (the Qur'an) except that you might make clear to
them that in which they differ, and [as] a guidance
and a mercy for a folk who believe" Al-Nahil(16):64
"And whatsoever the Messenger gives you take it, and
whatsoever he forbids you, abstain [from it]. And
guard yourselves from Allah, verily Allah is severe in
punishment" Al-Hashr(59):7
"... And if you should differ in anything among
yourselves then refer it to Allah and His messenger if you
believe in Allah and in the Last Day. That is better for you
and best in interpretation" Al-Nissa(4):59
etc.
A messenger of God is not simply a tape recorder that
records everything that is spoken into it an then
regurgitates it without explanation. Far from it. A
messenger of God is a teacher whose job it is to not only
pass out the textbook but to also explain the text itself,
teach it, answer the student's questions regarding it, and
clarify all passages wherein they find difficulty.
Similarly, the command to interpret the Qur'an and the
Hadeeth only as expressly understood by the Companions due
to their companionship of the prophet and their discipleship
directly under his command and watchful eye can be found in
quite a number of hadeeth, such as the hadeeths of "La
tajtami ummati ala dhalal" and "Alaikum bi sunnati wa sunnat
al-Khulafa..." among countless others.
What the "Islam bashers" do is that they take a Biblical
yardstick and attempt to force it upon the Qur'an. For
Christians there is only one divine reference; the Bible. In
Islam there are two; the Qur'an and the Sunnah (or Hadeeth).
The Qur'an can not be interpreted by Muslims based upon
their personal desires. It has to be done in the light of
how the prophet (pbuh) taught it. This is indeed the system
which Allah commands us to follow in the above verses.
Authors of such lists as this, however, prefer to take the
short route of simply reading the Qur'an and then applying
to it the meaning they chose, in spite of what the Prophet
(pbuh) had to say in this regard and in spite of what the
Companions of the Prophet (pbuh) had to say regarding the
contexts of the verses, the times of their revelation, and
the situations associated with each one, and the intended
meanings or interpretations.
How many angels were talking to Mary? When
the Qur'an speaks about the announciation of the birth of
Jesus to the virgin Mary, Sura 3:42,45 speaks about
(several) angels while it is only one in Sura 19:17-21.
Actually, the author's unfamiliarity with the Arabic
language, its grammar and usage, is one of the main reasons
for his objection. Indeed, one of the major problems with
the Bible as it stands today as so graciously demonstrated
by him for us in this example, is that our current Bibles
force us to study ancient Hebrew and Aramaic scriptures
through Greek and Latin glasses as seen by people who are
neither Jews, Greeks, nor Romans. Such practices (as
demonstrated in the book "What
Did Jesus Really Say?"), have seriously handicapped any
attempts to faithfully translate the original author's
intended meanings. This problem, all thanks be to the
Almighty, has been completely avoided in the Qur'an, since
it has remained from the time of its inspiration to the
present day in the same language it was originally revealed
in, the language has remained a living language from that
day to this, and the book itself has always been in the
hands of the people and not "the elite."
The foremost miracle of the Qur'an is in its text. The
text of the Arabic language. You can not translate a miracle
no matter how you may try. The Arabic language can not be
compared to any other language in its intricate complexity,
diversity of form, richness of meaning, brevity of parlance,
beauty of construct and power of delivery. To give an
example of this let us look at the most basic of measures,
that of dictionaries:
A fairly comprehensive and authoritative reference on the
English language would be the "Merriam Webster's Collegiate
Dictionary" tenth edition, in 1500 pages. On the other hand,
a common Arabic dictionary is "Lisan Al-Arab" in 18 volumes,
each averaging about 650 pages, or about 11700 pages in all.
In other words, even if we were to disregard all of the
other aspects of the Arabic language, such as its grammar,
we would still be faced with a language which is about eight
times as complex as the English language. It is not at all
uncommon in the Arabic language to find over one hundred
words that refer to the same entity, each one of them giving
a slightly different detailed description than all of the
others. This has resulted in a language which can translate
complete English sentences into only one Arabic word.
But the Arabic language is not simply a list of words.
Far from it, it is a very complex collection of literary
sciences which have been developed, refined, and fine-tuned
for generations and millennia beyond counting. The end
result of this is a group of literary sciences which
literally have no parallel whatsoever in the English
language, such as the science of "Sarf" or the multifarious
sciences of "Balaghah," among others. Even when the English
language can lay claim to a parallel science to that of the
Arabic language, such as forexample the science of
"grammar," even in this case anyone who has thslightest
understanding of the Arabilanguage finds that even these
equivalentsciences fade nearly into oblivion when faced with
the tremendous complexities and inestimable attention to the
minutest detail in Arabic grammar which can literally
reverse the meanings of a sentence simply by
changing a single squiggle (diacritic) above the last letter
of only one word in that sentence (Imagine being able to
reverse the meaning of an English sentence by removing the
dot over one "i" in that sentence).
William Shakespeare was considered to be one of the
leading masters of English literature known to date.
However, he never had to deal with the Arabic language. Now,
taking into consideration that the Arab nation was one
obsessed with literary perfection and refinement of prose,
it becomes apparent that what we had here was a nation of
literally hundreds of "William Shakespeares." Indeed an
individual's mastery of the Arabic language was considered
one of the primary distinguishing criteria in selecting
tribal leaders. Just as in the wild west people used to have
public shoot-outs at high noon, so too did the ancient Arabs
have public face-downs in literary composition. These public
confrontations could at times be so scathing and destructive
as to totally destroy a given individual or tribe and cause
them to disband in shame and humiliation, erased from the
pages of history (such as happened with the tribe of
"Numair"). The greatest of these literary masters had their
compositions transcribed and hung up on the walls of the
noble Kaaba as a badge of honor and an example for future
generations. These compositions which were regarded the
"best of the best" where given the name of "Al-Muallaqat"
(the hanging poems). These were the people whom God sent
Muhammad (pbuh) to, and these are the people whom prophet
Muhammad (pbuh) repeatedly challenged, over 23 years, to
produce a work similar to the Qur'an, standing alone with no
tribe to support him and no ally to defend him but God
Almighty. In other words he was challenging them in a field
which they were the world's foremost authorities in and the
source of their greatest strength and pride. Indeed all of
God's prophets throughout history have been sent with
miracles in the very fields which that prophet's people
excelled in so that they might fully comprehend the
magnitude of that miracle and have no excuse in
ignorance.
These people whom prophet Muhammad (pbuh) stood alone
against and challenged to face the Qur'an were no timid
sheep. They were men of great pride, misdirected as it may
have been, who would rather go to war and die a slow and
torturous death rather than allow the slightest indignity to
be attached to their names or the most trivial challenge go
unanswered. These were people who would go to war at the
drop of a hat or the slightest disrespectful word. In spite
of all that, when prophet Muhammad (pbuh) brought them the
word of God in the noble Qur'an they suddenly fell silent
and refused to face its challenge. God continued to reduce
the challenge to them, from challenging them to produce a
book like the Qur'an, to challenging them to produce a
single surah (chapter) like it, to finally challenging them
to produce even a few verses like it. And still, no one was
able to face the challenge. On the contrary, those who were
the best versed in these issues were among the first to
convert to Islam and accept God's message. Some of them even
went so far as to completely give up altogether on their
previous literary work and to publicly declare that faced
with the utter perfection and completion of this book that
there was nothing left to say and nothing left to compose.
Perfection had already been achieved (3).
Why did I get into all of this?. Well it is in order to
make it easier to understand some of the reason why the
noble words of God in the Qur'an can never be faithfully
translated into English and why the first thing most
converts to Islam do is to learn Arabic.
For example, as seen in chapter
14 of the book "What
Did Jesus Really Say?," we find that many people when
reading the Qur'an mistakenly understand the plural
references to God through the use of the words "We" and "Us"
to mean that God is "many" or "triune" etc. As seen in that
book, this has indeed been the very reason why some people
of little knowledge of ancient Hebrew even go so far as to
claim that the OT Bible's use of such constructs implies a
similar "plurality" of God in a "Trinity." Our current
author himself at one time defended this belief. However, as
seen in that book, this is far from the true meaning.
Informed Christian scholars and dictionaries readily
recognize the plurals used there as being plurals of respect
reverence and exaltation, not plurals of multiplicity. For
example, one of the quotes presented in that book is quoted
from the Eerdmans Bible Dictionary where we read the
following explanation of the word "Elohiym" (God):
"As a name or designation of the God of Israel, the
term is understood as a plural of majesty or an intensive
plural, indicating the fullness of the supreme (or only) God
... the canonical intent is clearly monotheistic, even where
the accompanying verbs or adjectives are grammatically
plural (e.g. Gen. 20:13, Exod. 22:9 [Mt 8])
Eerdmans Bible Dictionary, edited by Allen C. Myers,
William B. Eerdmans Publishers, p. 331
This is why to this day we find the Queen of England,
French dignitaries, and most Arab leaders referring to
themselves, or referred to by others in the plural sense.
When the Queen of England refers to herself in her official
speeches as "we" does this mean that she too is "a Trinity"?
Sadly, even to this day we still can find people of little
experience in these issues continuing to insist on their
personal forced interpretations of these matters in spite of
what they truly mean and in spite of what those who speak
the language, or their own scholars, say they mean.
A similar case to the above is the one presented by our
current author. The first three verses (Aal-Umran(3):42-45)
do indeed use the word "angels." However, this plural form
of the word is used to describe only one angel,
specifically, angel Gabriel. Such constructs are used in the
Arabic language as a symbol of dignity and respect for that
person. This is a popular Arabic grammatical construct
called "al-majaz al-mursal" which falls under the subheading
of Arabic grammar titled "Balaghah" and which we can not get
into here since it requires a basic knowledge of the Arabic
language and its grammar. Suffice it to say that there are
at least two quick clues to this matter which even
non-Arabic speaking people can appreciate. The first one is
that in the first set of verses, verses 46-48 say: "The
angels said... Mary said... HE replied" meaning that
we are speaking about an angel designated as "he" and not
"they," in the same very verses themselves.
Secondly, a similar construct can be found elsewhere in
the Qur'an which can hopefully clarify this construct to
non-Arabic speakers. For example, in Al-Nahi(16):120 we
read: "Verily Abraham was a nation obedient to Allah and
he was not of the polytheists."
We notice here that prophet Abraham (pbuh) is described
as a "nation." Does this mean that he is literally a few
hundred thousand people? No. This is an Qur'anic term of
exaltation and elevation for Abraham above all humans such
that he is higher in regard and reward with God than an
entire nation of mortals. In the same manner, the status of
the angel Gabriel with God is of a similar stature among the
angels. There are many other similar constructs in the
Arabic language, many of which are applied to angel Gabriel
in more than one location in the Qur'an to set him apart
from all other angels. These examples include special
grammatical constructs as well as special title (such as the
title of "Holy Spirit").
For example, president Clinton is a Washington
politician. No one doubts this fact. However, have you ever
heard someone say: "President Clinton has just concluded a
meeting with senior advisors and other Washington
politicians"? Obviously this is a "contradiction" right? If
we refer to these other men as "Washington politicians" then
we can not then claim that president Clinton too is a
"Washington politician." That would contradict this
statement. He must be something "other than" a Washington
politician, right?
Obviously this is faulty logic. Such constructs are used
even in the English language to "set apart" or "dignify" a
given individual of special importance over a group of his
peers. The fact that President Clinton was mentioned
separately from the other Washington politicians is only
intended to convey a special status for him over and above
"run or the mill" Washington politicians. He is the
"President." He is "special." This and other similar
constructs are used numerous times in the Qur'an in
reference to Angel Gabriel in order to set him apart as a
very special and highly esteemed angel with God. For
example, in Al-Nahil(66):4 we read: "If you both repent
unto God then your hearts have indeed heeded. But if you
assist one-another against him (Muhammad, pbuh) then verily
Allah is his Patron, and Gabriel, and the righteous
believers, and the angels after that shall come to
[his] aid."
And in Al-Baqarah(2):98: "Whosoever is an enemy to
Allah, His angels, His Messengers, Gabriel, Michael (the
angel of the rain), then verily, Allah is an enemy to the
disbelievers."
Here we see angel Michael too set apart with a special
status and mention. Angel Gabriel is an angel. So is angel
Michael. Muslims have no doubt about that. However, Gabriel
is not just any angel. He is a special angel. An angel with
a special purpose, unique titles, high stature with God and
the patron of the prophets. This is how God dignifies and
exalts those who serve Him in truth, integrity, and
sincerity.
Similar to these examples, we find in the Qur'an that not
all prophets are alike. For example, some prophets have been
given distinction over others and are mentioned in isolation
from the rest as a sign of exaltation for them. For example,
God says in the Qur'an in Al-Baqarah(2):253:
"Those messengers! We preferred some of them over
others. Some were those who were spoken to by God, others He
raised by degrees. And unto Jesus the son of Mary We
bestowed the clear proofs and assisted him with the holy
Spirit (Gabriel)..."
And in Al-Israa(17):55:
"And your Lord knows best who are in the heavens and
the earth. And indeed, We have preferred some of the
prophets above others, and to David We gave the
Psalms."
Also, in A'al-Umran(3):84:
"Say: 'We believe in Allah and in that which was sent
down upon us and that which was sent down upon Abraham,
Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and the sons of Jacob, and that which
was given unto Moses, Jesus, and the prophets from their
Lord..."
Does this mean that Moses, Jesus, Abraham, etc. are not
"prophets"? No. This is simply the nature of the language of
the Qur'an and one of the methods used to distinguish them
above the rest.
Getting back to our current example, we find that in both
of the quoted verses angel Gabriel is referred to through
popular Arabic constructs of respect and exaltation. In the
first it is demonstrated in the use of the plural construct,
in the second it is demonstrated in the use of his official
title of "Holy Spirit," where we see that the verse says
that "We (God) sent unto her (Mary) Our Spirit
(Gabriel)..."
Even in English is not too much of a stretch to
understand the intent. If a president has a highly esteemed
ambassador whom he has entrusted with a significant task,
and this president wishes to bestow upon this ambassador and
his message an air of importance, then he would not say "I
have sent some guy...." or "I have sent one of my people..."
since this would reflect badly on that ambassador as someone
who is not even worthy to remember his name or his service.
It would also reflect badly on the message itself since it
would imply that the message was of such little importance
that it was entrusted to someone of such little merit.
Rather, one way to convey an air of dignity and importance
to the messenger as well as the message would be to mention
the man's office, such as to say "I sent my ambassador..."
Another way would be to directly exalt him such as saying "I
sent my most trusted and faithful aid..." And finally, in
Arabic one could use the plural form such as to say "I sent
THEM (him)..."
Actually, I believe that this might even answer another
question I seem to remember being presented a little farther
down as another "contradiction." In any case, we can deal
with that as we reach it, by the will of Allah.
For more on this issue you can read "Safwat Al-Tafaseer,"
by Al-Sabooni, "Rooh Al-Maani fi tafseer Al-Qur'an al-Adheem
wa al-Sab'a al-Mathani," by Abi Al-Fadhil Al-Aloosi, "Aldur
Al-Manthoor fi Al-Tafseer bilmathoor" by Abdulrahman
Al-Suyooti, or "Tafseer Al-Manar" by Muhammad Rasheed Ridha,
among others.
Now, the author also draws attention in his commentary
that some Muslims have pointed to the various accounts of
"how many angels" were present at the alleged resurrection
of Jesus (pbuh) in the various narrations of the four
Gospels of the Bible. He attempts to reduce the tens upon
tens of discrepancies which Christian scholars have
discovered in this story to only one and then to quickly
explain it away by giving his example of one who meets the
President and Vice President and only says: "I met the
President." Rather than getting into the further
details of the many additional
problems with only this one story, I shall simply leave
it up to him to resolve this issue quite thoroughly by
claiming the $2000 "Easter
Challenge" prize and posting the check on his
"Answering Islam" web page. Since the issue of the
resurrection in so critical to trinitarian Christianity (I
Corinthians 15:14-15) but at the same time directly flies in
the face of everything God has said in the noble Qur'an,
therefore, his complete harmonization of these narrations,
and his claiming of this prize, shall indeed constitute a
substantial step forward towards exonerating the Church from
all claims that they fabricated this story as part of their
continuous campaign of tampering with the text of the
Bible.
Further numerical discrepancies: Does
Allah's day equal to 1,000 human years (Sura 22:47, 32:5) or
50,000 human years (Sura 70:4)? ---
Now here we once again find a case containing multiple
errors. First of all, what does "Yawm" in Arabic mean. Well,
in English it is translated as "day," however, the Arabic
word "Yawm" is more comprehensive than that. "Yawm" is used
in Arabic to signify either "day" or "span of time." Now
although the English language does not have a directly
equivalent parallel to this Arabic word, still, even in
English it is possible to see an example of such a
construct. For example, if one of us were to go sit down
with our grandfather and he were to tell us about how the
world has changed since he was a little boy he might start
with the words: "In my day..."
So, if someone's grandfather were to say "In my day we
didn't have running water, rather we had to go down to the
stream and fill a bucket" does this mean that there was
a SPECIFIC day in his life when he did this and then
he didn't do it any more? Should we then ask him
"Grandpa, which 'day' was that? Was it the
15th of January 1927, or the 4th of
August 1908, etc.?"
Similarly, in the English language people use the word
"age" to mean "period of history." For example, they might
say: "the Stone Age" or "the Computer Age."
However, at times we find people saying: "I waited for
you for ages and you did not show up so I left." Does
this mean that that person wait for the "Stone Age" to come
to an end before leaving, or does it mean that he until the
"Bronze Age" ended before getup and leaving? Obviously his
words are cont, right? It is impossible for him to say
"Bronze Age" and then to say "I waited for ages," right?
In each one of these cases we see that the words "age"
and "day" were given a meaning appropriate to their context,
so in order to be fair we should allow the same flexibility
in meaning which we use freely in the English language with
their equivalents in the Arabic language.
Now that we see the usage of the words "day" and "age"
and how even in the English language they can be used to
mean "span of time," now we need to study the verses
presented and notice how they too each refer in each case to
different contexts and situations. Let us look at each
individual context in isolation:
The first one, Al-Hajj(22):47 describes the polytheist's
taunting of Muhammad (pbuh) and their demand that he hurry
up and bring the torment of hellfire if he is truthful. The
verse goes on to describe God's patience in the face of such
arrogance and goading and how a "day" with our Lord is like
a thousand years with us. In other words, God does not need
to be in a hurry to take them in their sins "right now,"
rather he gives the transgressor more and more rope and more
and more chances to repent not needing to follow the human
desire of "get revenge NOW or he might get away." For
our Lord to wait for a thousand years is like our waiting
for one day. He knows that no one shall escape Him no matter
how they may delude themselves.
The second verse, Al-Sajdah(32):5 speaks about the decree
of our Lord descending to earth and our deeds being raised
up to Him through all of the many light-years of distance
across the heavens in a period, or distance, which in our
estimation is equal to one thousand years, but which takes
less than the blink of an eye.
The third and final verse, Al-Maarij(70):4 speaks about
the Day of Judgment (as seen in Musnad Ahmed 5642, in the
saying of the prophet narrated by ibn Omar) and describes it
as "a day the span of which is fifty thousand years." This
is part of the torment of the evil and sinful people of
earth. They are taken on that day to a long and drawn-out
judgment which is in and of itself a horrendous punishment.
However, as narrated in Musnad Ahmed (3/75), the prophet
(pbuh) informed the believers that that day shall be made
lighter upon the believers than a single prayer which they
used to pray in this life.
As we can see, the contexts and topics in each one are
different. Three different contexts, three different spans
of time. Thus, just as in English is it entirely acceptable
to refer in one case to 24 hours as a "day" and in another
case to refer to many years as a "day," and just as in
English it is possible to refer in one case to many
centuries as an "age" and in another case to one or two
hours as "ages," all depending on the context, similarly,
this same flexibility should not be refused the Qur'an
simply because the author does not like Muslims.
Now, if the objection is not due to the flexibility of
the words "day" and "age" themselves, rather, it is against
God having a different criteria and yard stick for "how
long" a day should be then we need to realize that the Bible
itself quite explicitly endorses the words of God in the
Qur'an in this regard. For example, in 2 Peter 3:8 we
read:
"But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that
one day [is] with the Lord as a thousand years, and
a thousand years as one day."
So do the verses still contradict one-another?
How many gardens are there in paradise? ONE [as
stated in 39:73, 41:30, 57:21, 79:41] or MANY
[18:31, 22:23, 35:33, 78:32]?
This one is really reaching. For example, in the Bible we
read in Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the
HEAVEN and the earth."
While in Genesis 2:1 the Bible says: "Thus the HEAVENS
and the earth were finished, and all the host of
them."
Similar examples in the Bible are unending. They would
take at least five pages to list. So if this is a
contradiction in the Qur'an then the same person who makes
this claim will have to also claim that this is a
contradiction in the Bible as well. The gardens of paradise
are many, and different levels, however, this does not mean
that at times they could not be referred to as a single
entity rather than by the constituent parts.
As a general rule, he who believes and does good deeds
will enter paradise. The specific level of paradise he will
enter depends on his faith and deeds. Similarly, he who
disbelieves and does evil deeds will enter a level of
hellfire appropriate to his actions. Regular believers will
not be equal to prophets such as Moses, Jesus, or Muhammad
etc. in reward, and regular disbelievers will not be equal
to Pharaoh in punishment. This can be seen in many places
throughout the Qur'an or the Hadeeth (sayings of the
prophet, pbuh).
For example, in Al-Anaam(6):132 we read about how mankind
shall be rewarded in levels or ranks according to their
faith and deeds. Similarly, in A'al-Umran(3):162-163 we read
about how mankind receive reward in different "levels." We
also find the same concept in Al-Nissa(4):95-96. In
Al-Nahil(16):88 we read about how retribution and punishment
shall also be many levels, and so forth throughout the
Qur'an.
"Whosoever desires the quick reward of this world, We
[readily] hasten unto him what We will for whom we
desire, then We have appointed for him Hell. He shall dwell
therein disgraced and rejected. And whosoever desires the
hereafter and strives for it with its just due while he
believes, for those their striving shall be thanked and
rewarded. To each, those as well as those, We bestow from
the bounty of Your Lord. And the bounties of your Lord can
never be forbidden. See how We preferred some of them over
others (in this life), and verily, the Hereafter will be
greater in degrees and greater in preference. Set not up
with Allah any other gods lest you sit reproved and forsaken
[in Hellfire]" The noble Qur'an,
Al-Israa(17):18-22
Is all of this "contradictory"? No, it is simply the
nature of the language. For example, in English words such
as "land" can either mean pieces of land owned by
individuals or else it can refer to a much larger "land"
which contains these smaller "lands" such as saying "In the
land of Egypt many people own their personal pieces of farm
land." The word "land" is used twice in this sentence, in
each case it conveys a different meaning. This does not make
them "contradictory."
So, do the verses really "contradict" one-another?
--- According to Sura 56:7 there will be THREE distinct
groups of people at the Last Judgment, but 90:18-19, 99:6-8,
etc. mention only TWO groups.
This one too is an interesting interpretation. The verse
of Al-Waqia(56):7 states than on the day of judgment there
shall be three groups, they are: (1)Those who receive their
books of deeds in their right hands (the people of
paradise), (2)those who receive their books in their left
hands (the people of hellfire), and (3)those who excelled in
the cause of their Lord and raced all others to His good
will. Most other verses of the Qur'an only classify mankind
on the day of Judgment as being "people of the right" and
"people of the left." Is this really a contradiction?
This is similar to saying: "In 1995, 200 people
graduated from our local high school. 20 did not graduate,
and 13 people were on the honor role."
Is it a contradiction to claim that these 13 people who
were on the honor role were ALSO "graduates"? Does
their being outstanding students mean that they can no
longer be called "graduates"? The verses simply conveys
distinction and honor upon those who set a higher standard
for the rest of mankind and bestows upon them their well
deserved recognition.
In Acts 9:27 we read: "But Barnabas took him (Paul),
and brought [him] to the apostles..."
According to the above logic, it would now be a
contradiction to say that Barnabas was an apostle of Jesus
since the verse clearly mentions three distinct parties,
Barnabas, Paul, and the apostles.Right?
Do the verses really contradict one another? One wonders
why such "contradiction" are clear only to such authors
while no Muslim have managed to discover them in over 1400
years?
--- There are conflicting views on who takes the souls at
death: THE Angel of Death [32:11], THE angels
(plural) [47:27] but also "It is Allah that takes
the souls (of men) at death." [39:42]
(Note: This is the first of two
places where he attempts to drive a wedge between the will
of God and the will of his agents, the angels. In these two
places he does not allow the angels to simply be the tools
of God's will, rather, they are forced to be independent of
God in their actions so that he can generate a
"contradiction." However, at the end of this list he
switches tracks making a complete 180 degree about face. In
that one he needs to accept this basic fact in order to
attempt to generate a third "contradiction.")
It is beginning to look like all of these claimed
contradictions are going to follow the same general theme.
Once again we find here an objection to verses which
describe stages or degrees of participation. This issue is
resolved quite completely in the long sermon of the prophet
Muhammad (pbuh) wherein he gave the details of how mankind
die and then are taken to judgment. That
hadeeth can be found for example in the collections of
hadeeth by Ahmad Ibn Hanbal, Abu Dawud, or Ibn Majah, who
narrate upon the authority of Al-Bara' ibn 'Aazib the sermon
of the prophet (pbuh) which, to make a long story short,
tells us about how when a person appointed time of death
arrives, God sends the Angel of Death with two other angels
to take his soul. The Angel of Death will extract the soul
and then hand it over to the other two angels who will,
within the blink of an eye, wrap it in a shroud and
embalment. They then ascend with it up into the sky then
returned it to earth in its grave in time to hear the
footsteps of those who buried him as they are leaving. The
soul will then be taken to trial and asked four questions
and based upon the answers a window either to heaven or to
hell will be opened upon it in the grave and it will be left
there to wait for the Day of Judgment. In this manner it is
God who initiates the command, the Angel of Death who
fulfills the first part of the process of death, and the
other two angels who fulfill the second part.
Once again, to use "everyday" terms, if a man's car falls
into a river and the chief of police arrives with some
police officers, divers and paramedics, and if the chief
coordinates the effort by issuing the necessary commands
while the divers pull out the driver of the car and then
hand him over to the paramedics in order to perform CPR, who
then actually "SAVED" the driver? Can we say that the
chief had nothing to do with the rescue operation? Can we
say that they divers are not responsible for saving the man?
Can we say that the paramedics had nothing to do with saving
the man's life? They may differ in the "degree of
participation," however, this does not mean that only one of
them did indeed "SAVE" the man.
If all three of these groups then receive "medals of
valor" for their actions then is this a "contradiction"?
Does only one of them really DESERVE the medal while
the other two don't?
According to this logic, if a crime kingpin were to send
a hitman to kill someone then it would be unjust to say that
they "both" killed the man or to attempt to prosecute
both of them since it is "obvious" that only one of
them could possibly be responsible for killing the man.
Right?
If a man strikes another man over the head with a lead
pipe and kills him, then according to the author of this
list I could not say both "the man was killed by a fatal
blow to the head" and "the man was killed by an
intruder," Since, for him, either the lead pipe did it
or the killer did it, but not both. That would be a
contradiction.
The angels can not disobey God, differ with Him in will,
or do evil. One good summary of the relationship of the
angels to God in their wills in found in the following
Hadeeth Qudsi:
"If Allah has loved a servant [of His] He
calls Gabriel (pbuh) and says: I love So-and-so, therefore
love him. He (the Prophet pbuh) said: So Gabriel loves him.
Then he (Gabriel) calls out in heaven, saying: Allah loves
So-and-so, therefore love him. And the inhabitants of heaven
love him. He (the Prophet pbuh) said: Then acceptance is
established for him on earth. And if Allah has abhorred a
servant [of His], He calls Gabriel and says: I abhor
So-and-so, therefore abhor him. So Gabriel abhors him. Then
Gabriel calls out to the inhabitants of heaven: Allah abhors
So-and-so, therefore abhor him. He (the Prophet pbuh) said:
So they abhor him, and abhorrence is established for him on
earth."
Further, once prophet Muhammad (pbuh) asked Gabriel why
he did not come more often to visit him. God responded in
the Qur'an on behalf of all angels with the following verse
with neatly sums up the relationship of the will and actions
of the angels with regard to the will of God:
"And we (angels) descend not except by the command of
your Lord. To Him belongs what is before us and what is
behind us and [all] that is in-between that. And
your Lord is never forgetful." Mariam(19):64
Numerous other verses or Hadeeth may be found in this
regard for those who which to research this issue further.
It is clear from the above that the angels are submissive to
God in both will and deed, living only to serve Him and
carry out His commands. In Islam there is no such thing as
"fallen" angels who disobey God. All angels obey God
faithfully and fully in spite of themselves.
So, do the verses really contain a
contradiction?
Angels have 2, 3, or 4 pairs of
wings [35:1]. But Gabriel had 600 wings. [Sahih
Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 54, Number 455]
One wonders with regard to such examples if the author
actually even bothered to read the verse itself? The verse
clearly states that God gives the angels two, three, and
four wings, and that He then increases his creation over
and above that as He wills. The verse says:
"Praise be unto Allah, the Originator of the Heavens
and the earth. Who made the angels messengers with wings,
two or three or four. He increases in creation what He
wills. Verily Allah is able to do all things."
Fatir(35):1
For some reason the author of this list chose to not read
the rest of the verse. I wonder why?
Once again, are his examples really
contradictions?
* Six or eight days of creation? Sura
7:54, 10:3, 11:7, and 25:59 clearly state that God created
"the heavens and the earth" in six days. But in 41:9-12 the
detailed description of the creation procedure adds up to
eight days.
They were six. The verses of 41:9-12 speak of overlapping
actions in spans of four and two days each. The adverbs are
the keys to understanding this. The verses of 11 and 12 use
the adverbs "thummah" and "fa" which imply consecutiveness
of action. Neither of these two, however, are used in verse
10 (the only one which mentions four days) which instead
uses the adverb "wa" implying parallel, or "overlapping"
actions. In other words, the grammar tells us that the four
days mentioned in 10 are a continuation of the two mentioned
in verse 9. The four days of "measuring the earth's
sustenance" refers to the two days of the creation of the
earth in addition to the two days of the "spreading out of
the earth's features" (see next question).
For example, the world renown track and fielder Carl
Lewis might say "I am now 32 years old. I started
elementary school when I was 6, then I spent 12 years
studying for my high-school diploma and I spent 24 years
training to be the world's best long-jumper. Then I settled
down and have spent the last two years taking care of my
family." Does this mean that he was 18 years old when he
started training for the long jump? Did he continue till he
was 42 years old? If we add 6 + 12 + 24 + 2 we get 44. How
then can he be "32 years old" now?. To understand this we
need to notice that he did not say that he started
training when he was eighteen. He did not say "then"
I trained for 24 years. We now realize that he started
training at the same time he started elementary school, when
he was 6. He went to school and trained for track and field
at the same time. After he graduated from high-school he
continued to train for 12 more years. They were
"overlapping" actions.
Now, if someone wishes to claim that Carl Lewis'
statement is contradictory since he says that he is 32 years
old but "the detailed description of the breakdown of the
years" works out to 44 years, and that this is a
"contradiction," then that is their choice.
* Heavens or Earth? Which was created
first? First earth and then heaven [2:29], heaven
and after that earth [79:27-30].
The earth was created first, as mentioned in the first
verse of Al-Baqarah(2):29. The first verse uses the word
"Khalaqa" (created). The second set of verses only say that
God "Daha" (spread out and gave features) the earth after
the creation of the heavens, not that he "Khalaqa" (created)
it. Please verify my claims by referring to any convenient
dictionary, such as "Lisan Al-Arab." In other words, God
created the earth, created the heavens, and then gave the
earth its features and spread them out. This is explained in
sufficient detail by the Companion of the Prophet Ibn Abbas
who's words in this regard have been recorded in Sahih
Al-Bukhari. The very verses themselves even explain it for
those who would like to read the very next verse. The verses
say "And the earth He "daha" after that; He extracted
from its water and its fodder, and the mountains He planted
firmly..." Thus, it is quite clear from the verses
themselves what is meant by this word. It simply means "to
spread out and give features, such as streams, mountains,
plants, etc."
It is very possible that what is meant by "spreading out
and giving features" in this verse is the well known
"continental drift" theory. In the early 20th
century a German meteorologist by the name of A. L. Wegener,
after studying numerous scientific indications suggested
that the continents had started out as a single unified
continent millions of years ago when the earth was first
formed. These continents then split apart, and like a giant
jigsaw puzzle they moved apart to form the continents we
know today as Europe, Asia, Australia, the Americas, etc.
This splitting of the continents is postulated to have begun
in the Mesozoic Era and is continuing in the present
era.
Originally, a huge primeval supercontinent that Wegener
called Pangea (Greek, "all land") had rifted and the pieces
had separated to form the present continents. According to
Wegener, South America and Africa began to separate about
100 million years ago, during the Cretaceous Period, as did
North America and Europe, thereby creating the Atlantic
Ocean. The Indian Ocean began to open up during the Jurassic
Period. The principal movement, however, occurred during the
Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, when the Indian
subcontinent moved north and collided with Asia, and
Australia became separated from Antarctica, driving into the
Indonesian Archipelago. The westward drift of the American
continents generated the compressive forces that produced
the western Cordilleran mountain ranges, and the northward
drift of India crumpled a large area, thus forming the
Himalaya mountain range. Similarly, the Alpine mountain
ranges were the result of north-south compression between
Africa and Europe.
Wegener supported his hypothesis by producing evidence
from various fields. Wegener did not base his theory simply
on the celebrated "jigsaw fit" of the Atlantic continents,
rather, much more convincing were the numerous indications
evident in the geographic distribution of distinctive types
of fossils. The conventional "stabilist" interpretation
rejected continental drift and favored transoceanic land
bridges that had sunk, such as the fabled Atlantis. Wegener
showed, however, that this interpretation was geophysically
implausible. Other evidence supporting Wegener's hypothesis
came from a comparison of the rocks on both sides of the
Atlantic, which seems to indicate that the continents had
been closely connected in the past, as well as from a study
of ancient climatic zones and a series of late Paleozoic
sedimentary deposits known as tillites.
Although Wegener's hypothesis originally received a
generally hostile reception, recently, new geophysical
evidence tends to support the hypothesis of drifting
continents. Convection cells, plate tectonics, and seafloor
spreading are three new sciences which have recently
combined to support the continental drift theory.
It is interesting to note that in the Qur'an God ties the
"spreading out" (Daha) of the earth with the formation and
"planting" of the mountains. An issue which Wegener has
confirmed and considers to be an integral part of this
theory as seen above. It is also interesting that this
matter is only just beginning to receive wide-spread
acceptance in the scientific community in this century. One
wonders, if prophet Muhammad (pbuh) did not receive his
message from God, then where did he get the theory that the
earth was "spread out" long after its creation and that this
spreading out is related to the creation of the mountains
among other issues?
Further, it is also strange that in spite of the fact
that the Abdullah Yusuf Ali, the Marmaduke Pickthall, and
the Hilali and Khan translations of the meanings of the
Qur'an all translate the second verse as "spread out" or
"extended," still, in order to generate a "contradiction"
the author of this list managed to change this word to
"create" in order that it might support his allegations. A
strange way to 'prove' one's case.
* Calling together or ripping apart? In
the process of creation heaven and earth were first apart
and are called to come together [4:11], while 21:31
states that they were originally one piece and then ripped
apart.
This is another strange one. First of all, I am assuming
that you mean [41:11] not [4:11]. The verse
of Fussilat(41):11 says that God commanded the heavens and
the earth to submit to Him. The command to "come" unto God
in this verse is equivalent to such verses as:
Al-Saffat(37):83-84: "And verily, among those who
followed his (Noah's) path was Abraham. When he came to his
Lord with a pure heart. When he said to his father
..."
So how exactly did Abraham "come" to his Lord? Did he
physically come to Him? This is equivalent to many similar
verses in the Bible. For example:
Luke 17:4 "And if he trespass against thee seven times
in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee,
saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him."
What is meant here by "turning to God"? Does the man turn
"left" or does he turn "right"? Which direction should he
face from now on? Should he spend the rest of his days
facing North or South? Is this what the verse means?
Similarly, in Ezekiel 14:6 we read: "Therefore say
unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Repent,
and turn [yourselves] from your idols; and turn away
your faces from all your abominations."
So which direction should mankind "face" in order to have
"turned away their faces" from their "abominations"?
In which direction do their "abominations" reside? Are they
in the South and we should face North?
(Also read Jeremiah 3:21-22, etc.)
God created the heavens and the earth and then commanded
them while they were still in a simple gaseous form ("when
it was smoke") to submit to His will either voluntarily or
involuntarily so that He would fashion them as He wished.
How did He command them and how did they answer? That is
beyond our understanding. Indeed we are told in the Qur'an
in Al-Isra(17):44: "The seven heavens and the earth and
all that is therein glorify Him, and there is not a thing
but glorifies His praise, yet you understand not their
glorification. Truly, He is Ever-Forbearing,
Oft-Forgiving"
Now, after the heavens and the earth were first created
as a "smoke," and after He commanded them to submit to his
will, and after they submitted to His will, now we are told
that God extracted from that smoke the features of the
heavens and the earth which we today. Actually, this is
indeed one of the scientific miracles of the Qur'an, as it
describe issues which are known by astronomers today as
being fact. Today, through the development of twentieth
centradio telescopes, mankind has actually photographed this
process in action and recognize that planets are created
from the condensation of spiraling celestial "mists."
It is further interesting to observe the precise term use
by God in his description of this phenomenon. He did not say
"mist" as current scientific terminology would have it, and
which implies a spray of cool water, rather He described it
as a "smoke," which implies a hot gas with airborne
particles. This is exactly what scientists have been
photographing for a couple of decades now, specifically, a
tremendously hot cauldron of spiraling celestial gasses and
other suspended matter which condense at the center of the
spiral into a molten core which then cools down to form a
star, and from them, planets. This planet, after many
centuries of cooling down may then develop an atmosphere and
other detailed features such as streams and valleys,
etc.
The Spiral Galaxy M100 courtesy of the Hubble Space
Telescope
M100 again. The distance to the swirling grand design
spiral M100 is causing quite a stir among astronomers. Many
believe that the Hubble Space Telescope's recent distance
measurement to this galaxy accurately calibrates the
"Hubble's constant."
Further, as stated in the noble Qur'an,
Al-Anbia(21):30:"Do not the disbelievers see that the
heavens and the earth were fused then We ripped them
asunder, and We created from water every living thing, do
they not believe?"
This once again appears to conform exactly to current
scientific understanding. As seen in much more detail in
chapter
13 of "What
Did Jesus Really Say?," currently, as discovered by the
renown 20th century physicist Stephen Hawking,
the universe is not static rather it is expanding. The rate
of expansion of the universe is measured by a constant
termed "the Hubble constant." This is part of the evidence
that has led them to conclude that the most likely origin of
the universe was in a condensed state of matter which then
"expanded" or "exploded," forming our current "expanding
universe." This is known as the "big bang" theory. And this
indeed appears to be what the verse is saying. It appears to
claim that the heavens and the earth were once a single mass
then were "ripped asunder," The exact root words used in the
Qur'an are the words "ra-ta-qa" and "fa-ta-qa," or "the
heavens and the earth were 'ra-ta-qa' then we 'fa-ta-qa'
them"
"Ra-ta-qa" is an Arabic word which has the general
meaning of "to fuse, to sew, to mend, to patch up, to
repair." ("Lisan Al-Arab," by Ibn Mandoor, Vol. 10, Dar
Al-Fikr, p. 114, and also "A Dictionary of Modern Written
Arabic," Hans Wehr, Librairie du Liban, p. 325)
Similarly, "fa-ta-qa" has the general meaning of "To rip,
to undo sewing, to unstitch, to tear apart, to rend, to rip
open." ("Lisan Al-Arab," by Ibn Mandoor, Vol. 10, Dar
Al-Fikr, p. 296, and also "A Dictionary of Modern Written
Arabic," Hans Wehr, Librairie du Liban, p. 695)
Amazing how science tends to support the words of God in
the Qur'an so strongly wouldn't you agree? Isn't it
interesting that although no one knew these facts until the
discovery of radio telescopes in 1937 CE, and it is
impossible to see these things with the naked eye, still,
God has told us about them in the noble Qur'an over 1400
years ago?
Since Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) was an Arab
from the middle of the desert, and since neither he nor any
of his countrymen new the first thing about radio telescopes
or planetary development, or space travel, and the
neighboring Greeks were still philosophizing in theories
which would only be exposed as erroneous by nineteenth and
twentieth century scholars, still, in spite of this he has
managed to prove us with such a detailed and accurate
description of these matters. Did the "Martians" come down
and take Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) on a tour in their space
ship?
"And those who have been given knowledge know that
that which has been revealed to you from your Lord is the
Truth"
The noble Qur'an, Saba(34):6
"Do they not consider the Qur'an (with care) or are
there locks upon their hearts?"
The noble Qur'an, Muhammad(47):24
For more on the issue of
extremely high-profile Christian Western scientists readily
admitting that the Qur'an must be the work of God, please
read the following question and answer.
For a more in-depth analysis of these matters including
video tapes containing interviews with over ten of the
worlds leading non-Muslim pioneering Western scholars, all
of whom affirm the accuracy of the scientific statements of
the Qur'an, contact the following address and ask for the
video tape titled "It is the Truth" from:
The Islamic Academy for Scientific Research. 8150 West
111 Street Palos Hills, IL 60465 U.S.A. Phone: (708)
974-9151
OR:
ICNA Sound Vision 843 W. Van Buren, suite 411 Chicago,
IL. 60607 Phone: (800) 432-4262
OR:
The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) P.O. Box 38
Plainfield, Indiana, 46168 U.S.A. Phone: (317) 839-8157
OR:
The Islamic Society of Central New York 925 Comstock
Avenue Syracuse, NY 13210 Phone: (315) 471-3645.
* What was man created from? A
blood clot [96:1-2], water [21:30, 24:45,
25:54], "sounding" (i.e. burned) clay [15:26],
dust [3:59, 30:20, 35:11], nothing [19:67]
and this is then denied in 52:35, earth [11:61], a
drop of thickened fluid [16:4, 75:37]
I wonder, if three bakers were to come visit the author
of this list and one were to say: "Bread is made from
flour," the next were to say "bread is made from dough" and
the third were to say: "Bread is made from wheat," if he
would consider this a "contradiction" too?
If two physicists now came along and one said "bread is
made from atoms" and the other said "bread is made from
molecules," would this be an even further
"contradiction"?
The blood of all living creatures is composed of 55
percent plasma, which in turn is composed of more than 90
percent water. As opposed to 1400 centuries ago when the
Qur'an was first revealed by God, today it is a well known
fact that the major "ingredient" in the human body is water
(a matter emphasized ONLY in the Qur'an and not in
the Bible). It is further very well known that mankind is
made from "dust" (when you place his body in the grave and
leave it for a number of years, and the water evaporates,
what form does his body revert to? Further, what is "clay"?
Is it not a special form of water and dust? It is equally
obvious that if God created everything then there must have
been a time when everything we see was "nothing," including
humans.
However, our current author severely dislikes all Muslims
and is bent on discovering "contradictions." The irony of
the matter is that although he has no formal knowledge of
these matters but manages to brand all of these statements
to be "contradictory," in spite of that, when truly
objective and unbiased Christian scholars who
are world renown specialist in this field are
presented with the very same verses and many more, and spend
over three years studying them in detail, we
find these world renown Christian scholars so totally amazed
at their accuracy in matters which were only scientifically
proven in the last twenty years that they found no recourse
but to admit that it must have come from God and even to go
so far as to suggest the total replacement of current
scientific terminology with that used by God in the Qur'an.
But they are saying this with regard to the Muslim
Qur'an and not their own Christian Bible. Who are so of
these men? Among them are Prof. Keith
Moore, Prof. E. Marshall Johnson,
Prof. Joe Leigh Simpson, Prof.
T.V.N. Persaud, Dr. Maurice
Bucaille, and Dr. Tejatet Tejasen
to name but a few. Let us learn a little more about these
men and then hear what they have to say in this regard:
Dr. Keith L. Moore is a Professor of
Anatomy and Cell Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto,
Canada. He is a world renowned scientist and a distinguished
researcher in the fields of anatomy and embryology, he has
published more than 150 research articles, chapters and
books in this field. He is the author of several medical
textbooks, such as the widely used and acclaimed "The
Developing Human: Clinically oriented Embryology" (now
in its fifth edition, translated into eight different
languages, and the standard textbook on this science in many
countries), "Before We Are Born" and "Clinically
Oriented Anatomy." He has also recently co-authored
"Qur'an and Modern Science, Correlation Studies." Dr.
Moore is the recipient of numerous awards and honors,
including, in 1984, the J.C.B. Grant Award, which is the
highest honor granted by the Canadian Association of
Anatomists. He has served in many academic and
administrative positions, including the President of the
Canadian Association of Anatomists, 1968-1970. Let us see
what Dr. Moore's opinion is on the scientific statements
regarding embryology to be found in the Qur'an:
Dr. Moore was contacted by a Muslim scholar by the name
of Abdul-Majeed Azzindani. He was asked to participate in a
three-year study of around twenty-five verses of the Qur'an
and the Sunnah (sayings of Muhammad, pbuh) which speak about
embryology, and to determine the degree of their
correspondence to modern scientific discoveries. Dr. Moore's
conclusion regarding this matter was:
Fig. 12 The human fetus in various stages of development,
at six, eight and 14 weeks
"For the past three years, I have worked with the
Embryology Committee of King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah,
Saudi Arabia, helping them to interpret the many statements
in the Qur'an and the Sunnah referring to human reproduction
and prenatal development. At first I was astonished by the
accuracy of the statements that were recorded in the seventh
century AD, before the science of embryology was
established. Although I was aware of the glorious history of
Muslim scientists in the 10th century AD, and of some of
their contributions to Medicine, I new nothing about the
religious facts and beliefs contained in the Qur'an and
Sunnah. It is important for Islamic and other students to
understand the meaning of these Qur'anic statements about
human development, based on current scientific knowledge.
The interpretations of the "verses" in the Qur'an and the
Sunnah, translated by Shaikh Azzindani, are to the best of
my knowledge accurate."
From the forward of "The Developing Human: Clinically
oriented Embryology," third edition, by Dr. Keith L.
Moore.
The author of this list and his friend Dr. Campbell have
done their best to try and claim that the Qur'an contains
scientifically incorrect information and to attempt to
convince the reader that they know what they are talking
about and should be considered authorities in this matter.
They attempt to convince the reader that Al-Alaq(96):2 which
mentions that one of the microscopic stages of development
of the human embryo is in the form of "Alaq," a clinging
leech-like entity (4), is
wrong.
Now it may indeed be possible that all of these world
renown Christian scientists who are defending the Qur'an are
all mistaken and that only the author of this list and his
friend, Dr. Campbell, are able to see the truth. However, I
shall leave it up to them to first convince these scholars
of what is or is not "clearly" or "obviously" scientifically
incorrect. With regard to this specific verse, it is
suggested to them both to please read page 56 of the third
edition of "The Developing Human" with its accompanying
pictures and then to please contact Prof. Moore (or any of
the other award winning, world renown, Christian Professors
of embryology we shall be hearing from soon) and explain to
him how they would like to show him how he is propagating
such clearly incorrect and scientifically unsound
information in his textbooks in his defense of the Islamic
terminology and staging.
The reader is encouraged to study Fig. 4-3 of page 56 of
Prof. Moore's textbook which contains a microscopic
representation of the human embryo in the stages from 15-21
days and notice the unmistakable physical similarity it
bears with common leeches. Further, the reader is encouraged
to note that this similarity is not only in appearance,
rather it is also a similarity of function. Just as leeches
attach themselves to a host organism and feed off of the
blood supply of that host, so too does the human embryo
mimic this exact same action. Were it not for the fact that
the human embryo is many orders of magnitude smaller than a
real leech and imperceptible by the naked eye, then both
entities would be all but indistinguishable.
Top, a common leech or "bloodsucker." Below, a 24 day-old
human embryo.
Note the leech-like appearance of the human embryo at
this stage in both physical appearance as well as in
function (The human embryo, however, is many orders of
magnitude smaller than the leech and can not be seen by the
naked eye).
The Qur'an and the Sunnah of the prophet Muhammad (pbuh)
provide a very detailed description of the microscopic
development of the human embryo from a mere sperm drop up to
the stage of a completely formed human being. It is well
known that microscopes were not developed until the
sixteenth century AD, and even at that were very crude in
design. Zacharias Janssen is credited with having invented
the compound microscope in about 1590. With it, remarkable
scientific discoveries were made in the 17th and 18th
centuries. The Dutch naturalist Anthony van Leeuwenhoek
produced lenses powerful enough to prove that many tiny
creatures are not spontaneously generated but come from
eggs.
Before this period, theories on human reproduction ran
rampant. Some scientist believed that the menstrual blood
itself developed into the fetus. Later on, a new theory was
developed wherein the sperm drop was popularly believed to
contain a completely developed miniature human (homunculus)
which later grew to the size of a baby. The science of
embryology as we know it today did not discover many of the
detailed aspects of human development which are taken for
granted today until only about twenty years ago, or
1972 to be precise.
Now we must ask the question: where did prophet Muhammad
(pbuh) get such detailed knowledge of the microscopic
development of the human embryo in the 6th century AD
without a microscope, technical training, or a laboratory of
any kind? The only logical conclusion is that it came from
exactly where he claimed it did. From the one who created
mankind, God Almighty!
Prof. Moore has since given numerous lectures on the
topic of embryology in the Qur'an. He is quoted in one of
these lectures as saying:
"It is clear to me that these statements must have
come to Muhammad from God, or Allah, because most of this
knowledge was not discovered until many centuries later.
This proves to me that Muhammad must have been a messenger
of God, or Allah." (As mentioned before, tone Christians
refer to as "God the Father" is known in Islam as
"Allah.")
Prof. Moore was so impresse with the Qur'anic
classification of the stages of development of the human
embryo, the suggested the adoption of the Qur'anic system in
place of the system currently in use by scientists today.
Prof. Moore said:
"Because the staging of the human embryo is complex
owing to the continuous process of change during
development. It is therefore suggested that a new system of
classification could be developed using the terms mentioned
in the Qur'an and the Sunnah. The proposed system is simple,
comprehensive, and conforms with present embryological
knowledge."
When Dr. Moore first presented his findings in Toronto it
caused quite a stir throughout Canada. It was on the front
pages of some of the newspapers across Canada. One newspaper
reporter asked Professor Moore,
"Don't you think That maybe the Arabs might have known
about these things - the description of the embryo, its
appearance and how it changes and grows? Maybe there were
not scientists, but maybe they did some crude dissections on
their own - carved up people and examined these
things."
Professor Moore immediately pointed out to him, however,
that he had missed a very important point. All of the slides
of the embryo that Dr. Moore had based his study upon had
come from pictures taken through a microscope. He
said,
"It does not matter if someone had tried to discover
embryology fourteen centuries ago, they could not have seen
it!." Dr. Moore taunted, "Maybe fourteen centuries
ago someone secretly had a microscope and did this research,
making no mistakes anywhere. Then he somehow taught Muhammad
and convinced him to put this information in his book. Then
he destroyed his equipment and kept it a secret forever?. Do
you believe that? You really should not unless you bring
some proof because it is such a ridiculous theory."
When he was asked "How do you explain this information
in the Qur'an?" Dr. Moore's reply was, "It could only
have been divinely revealed."
Prof. Keith Moore is not the only scholar who has been
presented with such verses of the Qur'an. Many other
scholars from all over the world have been presented with
similar statements from the Qur'an in their field of
expertise. Only a few of these people are:
1) Dr. E. Marshall Johnson, Professor
and Chairman of the Department of Anatomy and Developmental
Biology, and the Director of the Daniel Baugh Institute,
Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, USA. Author of
over 200 publications. Former President of the Teratology
Society among other accomplishments. After studying the
verses of the Qur'an he came to the following
conclusion:
"The Qur'an describes not only the development of
external form but emphasizes also the internal stages - the
stages inside the embryo of its creation and development,
emphasizing major events recognized by contemporary
science... If I was to transpose myself into that era,
knowing what I do today and describing things, I could not
describe the things that were described... I see no evidence
to refute the concept that this individual Muhammad had to
be developing this information from some place... so I see
nothing in conflict with the concept that divine
intervention was involved..."
2) Dr. Joe Leigh Simpson. Professor
and Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
at Baylor Collage of Medicine, Houston, Texas. He is the
President of the American Fertility Society, and has served
in many other professional, national, and international
organizations. He has received numerous awards including
Association of Professors of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Public Recognition Award in 1992. He has published more than
400 chapters and articles in journals and books. He
says:
"... these Hadeeths (sayings of Muhammad) could not
have been obtained on the basis of the scientific knowledge
that was available at the time of the writer'... It follows
that not only is there no conflict between genetics and
religion (Islam) but in fact religion (Islam) may guide
science by adding revelation to some of the traditional
scientific approaches... There exist statements in the
Qur'an shown centuries later to be valid which support
knowledge in the Qur'an having been derived from
God."
3) Dr. T.V.N. Persaud. Professor and
Head of the Department of Anatomy, Professor of Pediatrics
and Child Health, and Associate Professor of Obstetrics,
Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences, University of
Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is the author and
editor of 25 books, has contributed 31 chapters to
publications, and has published over 180 scientific papers.
In 1991 he received the most distinguished award presented
in the field of anatomy in Canada, the J.C.B. Grant Award
from the Canadian Association of Anatomists. He says:
"Muhammad was a very ordinary man, he couldn't read,
didn't know how to write, in fact he was an illiterate...
were talking about 1400 years ago, you have some illiterate
person making profound statements that are amazingly
accurate, of a scientific nature... I personally can't see
how this could be mere chance, there are too many accuracies
and like Dr. Moore, I have no difficulty in my mind
reconciling that this is a divine inspiration or revelation
which lead him to these statements."
4) After a study which lasted ten
years, the famous French physician Dr.
Maurice Bucaille addressed the
French Academy of Medicine in 1976 and expressed the
complete agreement of the Qur'an and established findings of
modern science. He presented his study on the existence in
the Qur'an of certain statements concerning physiology and
reproduction. His reason for doing that was that
"our knowledge of these disciplines is such, that it
is impossible to explain how a text produced at the time of
the Qur'an could have contained ideas that have only been
discovered in modern times."
Based upon his extensive study of these issues over many
years, Dr. Bucaille later converted to Islam.
5) Dr. Tejatet Tejasen, Head of the
Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine, University of
Chiang Mai, Thailand. After his study on the Qur'an passages
dealing with embryology:
"From my studies and what I have learnt at this
conference I believe that everything that has been recorded
in the Qur'an 1400 years ago must be true. That can be
proved the scientific way."
6) Dr. Arther J. Alison. head of the Department of
Electronical and Electronics Engineering in a British
University after researching the field of Parapsychology and
spiritual treatment of man in the light of the Qur'an and
current scientific knowledge was so completely amazed at the
scientific accuracy of the statements he found in the Qur'an
in this regard that he converted to Islam and is now named
Abdullah Alison. He urges all Western scientists to get
acquainted with Islam which "addresses both intellect and
sentiments at the same time." Dr. Alison worked for six
years as the chairman of the British Parapsychology and
Spiritual Studies Society. This position, led him to deeply
study different religions and philosophies, including Islam.
Dr. Alison placed special emphasis in his study on the
relationship between death and sleep, and the conformance of
scientific data to the claims he later found in the Qur'an
were the reason for his final conversion. Dr. Alison
exclaimed "my joy knew no bounds as the results of my study
were so convincing and, thus I discovered Islam." he added.
He regretted that the West is totally ignorant about the
scientific approach of Islam. "During our discussion at this
conference (in Cairo), we have arrived at conclusive
evidence that Islam does not contradict science, and plan to
do further research on parapsychology in the light of the
Qur'an."
The list is constantly growing. Others such non-Muslim
scientists include:
7) Dr. Gerald C. Goeringer. Professor and Coordinator of
Medical Embryology in the Department of Cell Biology in the
Georgetown University school of Medicine. Washington, D.C.
He has published numerous articles dealing mainly with the
study of teratogenesis.
8) Dr. Alfred Kroner, Professof Geology, Germany.
9) Dr. Yoshiodi Kozan, Director of the observatory of
Tokyo, Japan.
10) Dr. William Hay, Professor of Oceanography,
University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado.
11) Dr. PePalmer, Professor of Geology, University of
Colorado, Boulder, Colorado.
12) Dr. Sayawida, Professor of Marine Geology, Japan.
13) Dr. Armstrong, Professor of Astronomy, University of
Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas.
14) Dr. Draga Persaud Rauw, Professor of Marine Geology,
King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
15) Dr. Schroeder, Professor of Oceanography,
Germany.
The response of these scholars when presented with verses
of the Qur'an in their field of specialization, varied. One
thing however was always constant. They all confirmed the
accuracy of the scientific statements made in the Qur'an,
and they all could not explain how Muhammad (pbuh) could
have known with such accuracy the scientific claims to be
found in the Qur'an so many centuries before mankind
discovered them to be scientific truths.
So how have the apologists and the "Islam bashers"
responded to such statements from so many leading world
renown non-Muslim scientists? Well, to take one example, the
very best that the authors of "Answering Islam" have managed
to come up with is such revelations as: "...even if the
Qur'an were proven to be scientifically accurate, it would
not thereby make it divinely authoritative. All it would
prove is that the Quran made no scientific
blunders
" (p. 200)
Ahh, so here we have world renown Christian and other
non-Muslim scholars publicly admitting that the words of God
in the noble Qur'an are completely scientifically accurate
in matters which were not found to be scientifically true
until many centuries later. They go on to declare that this
degree of accuracy is of such an unprecedented degree as to
have been literally impossible to achieved by the people of
that age even if they were the most learned specialists in
these fields, since the very tools necessary of these
discoveries would not be invented for many more centuries.
They then go on to tell us that these descriptions are far
too numerous and too detailed to have been arrived at by
mere chance or stabs in the dark, especially by an
unlettered Arab sheep-herder who was making these comments
almost as secondary remarks in a book which was never meant
to be taken as a scientific textbook. And finally, these
scientists even go so far as to suggest the total
replacement of current scientific terminology with the
superior terminology provided by God in the Qur'an. After
all of this the response is "
all it would prove is
that the Qur'an made no scientific blunders."
Problem solved. I suppose that by the same token these
authors will then assert that the fact that Jesus (pbuh)
raised the dead and cured diseases which to this day remain
incurable, that in their words "even if this is true" then
this does not prove that Jesus (pbuh) was sent by God, but
it only proves that "Jesus made no errors in his medical
prescriptions"?
Allah Almighty tells us in the Qur'an:
"Allah did not create (all) that except in truth. He
details the signs for people of knowledge." The
noble Qur'an, Yunus(10):5
"And those who were given knowledge see that which was
sent down upon you by your Lord is the truth and guides to
the path of the 'Exalted' (in Might) the 'worthy of all
praise'." The noble Qur'an, Saba(34):6.
"Had We sent down this Qur'an upon a mountain, you
would surely have seen it humbling itself and rending
asunder for fear of Allah. Such are the parables We put
forth for mankind that they may reflect." The
noble Qur'an, Al-Hashr(59):21
"Verily! this Qur'an guides to that which is most
upright, and gives glad tidings to the believers who work
deeds of righteousness that theirs will be a great
reward" The noble Qur'an, Al-Isra(17):9
"And We have indeed simplified [the comprehension
of] this Qur'an for remembrance, so is there any that
will remember and be admonished?" The noble
Qur'an, Al-Qamar(54):17
So do the examples presented in this list really contain
"contradictions" or could there possibly be some other
reason why matters described by God in the Muslim's Qur'an
are recognized by world renown Christian specialists to be
of such unparalleled accuracy as to leave them at a loss for
words and only able to attribute it to God, these very same
verses appear to the author of this list to be "obvious"
contradictions and "clearly" scientifically incorrect?
* Will there be inquiry in Paradise?
"neither will they question one another" [23:101]
but nevertheless they will be "engaging in mutual inquiry"
[52:25], "and they will ... question one another"
[37:27].
23:101 is speaking about the Day of Judgment when the
trumpet is blown for the second time and the judgment is
just getting under way. At this time, while they are being
judged by their Lord, they do not speak to one-another but
shall be totally mesmerized and humbled before Him, awaiting
His judgment. On the other hand 52:25 is speaking about the
actions of those who have entered into paradise after
the Day of Judgment and after the judgment has been
rendered in their favor. Similarly, 37:27 is speaking about
the dwellers of the Hellfire who after the judgment
has been completed and they are sentenced to Hellfire, as
they are being herded and shoved towards it they are stopped
and then rebuked. This is when they ask one-another. Once
the judgment is over.
But these are very basic and fundamental concepts in
Islam. These are concepts which Muslims learn in grade
school. Anyone who knows the first thing about Islam knows
that humanity passes through three stages; life on earth,
Judgment Day, and life in the Hereafter. One wonders why the
author of this list is so openly disregarding them and
trying to merge them into only two stages? Is the discovery
of contradictions that important to him, or could it be that
he really has no knowledge about even such basic and
fundamental concepts of Islam as this?
* Are angels protectors? "NO protector
besides Allah" [2:107, 29:22]. But in Sura 41:31 the
angels themselves say: "We are your protectors in this life
and the Hereafter." And also in other suras is their role
described as guarding [13:11, 50:17-18] and
protecting [82:10].
(Note: This is the second of
two places where he attempts to drive a wedge between the
will of God and the will of his agents, the angels. In these
two places he does not allow the angels to simply be the
tools of God's will, rather, they are forced to be
independent of God in their actions so that he can generate
a "contradiction." However, at the end of this list he
switches tracks making a complete 180 degree about face. In
that one he needs to accept this basic fact in order to
attempt to generate a third "contradiction.")
As seen in the above question of "who is responsible for
death," God is ultimately responsible for all decrees,
however, He sometimes performs His decrees directly through
a direct command, such as to create something simply by
commanding it to "BE!." At other times He uses his creation
as tools to carry out His decrees, such as using the angels
to guard those whom He chooses. This can be seen for example
in Al-Anaam(6):61 where we are told that God protects
mankind by sending "hafadhah," (or "protecting angels").
They can not undertake any action except through His will
and command. This is similar to saying that the head of the
secret service has sent five "agents" to protect the
president. The head of the secret service might say "I am
responsible for protecting the president." The agent's too
will say "we are responsible for protecting the president."
Yes, the agents are responsible for protecting the
president, however, this is only true because the head of
the secret service assigned this job to them. If he wished
he could find a different way to protect the president, such
as with an armored car, or even assign different agents to
him. As seen in the reply to the author's first
attempt in this regard, the Qur'an says the following
regarding the will and actions the angels: "And we
(angels) descend not except by the command of your Lord. To
Him belongs what is before us what is behind us and
[all] that is in-between that. And your Lord is
never forgetful." Mariam(19):64. For more on this issue
please read my comments on his first attempt in this
regard.
* Is everything devoutly obedient to
Allah? That is the claim in 30:26, but dozens of verses
speak of the proud disobedience of Satan [7:11,
15:28-31, 17:61, 20:116, 38:71-74, 18:50] as well of
many different human beings who reject His commands and His
revelations.
The word used in 30:26 is "Qanitoon," meaning subservient
or "under the mercy of." This can be verified very easily by
reading any number of references such as the 18 volume
encyclopedia of Arabic language, "Lisan Al-Arab," Vol. 2, p.
73. The verse does not use the word "aabidoon" or
"mo'minoon" meaning "worshipful, believing, or devout." The
difference is that 30:26 only claims that all of God's
creation are under His mercy unable to escape Him, and
ultimately shall be brought to judgment. No one can chose to
rise above the need for God's continuing sustenance, to
refuse to be taken to judgment, or to decree for themselves
a matter which God does not allow to happen. This is similar
to saying that someone who lives in a given country is
"subservient and under the mercy of" their law, however, he
may not necessarily do so willingly or approvingly. If I say
"everyone is under God's mercy unable to escape," does this
contradict the claim that "not everyone believes that
they are under His mercy nor do they all worship Him"?
* Does Allah forgive shirk? This is the
worst sin and Allah can't really decide if he will ever
forgive it or not. No [4:48, 116], Yes [4:153,
25:68-71]. And Abraham committed this sin of polytheism
as he takes moon, sun, stars to be his Lord
[6:76-78] and still Muslims believe that all
prophets are without any sin.
Abraham's actions were a stage play for the benefit of
his people, the worshippers of planets, in order to get them
to thinking about what they were worshipping and realize the
fallacy of their actions. This is made clear from the
proceeding two verses of 74-75 which clearly state that not
only was prophet Abraham (pbuh) already worshipping God and
reproaching his father for worshipping his people's
planet-idols, but God had already shown Abraham (pbuh) such
signs in heaven and in earth as to establish his faith with
certainty. Only after confirming these two facts do the
verses of 76 onwards begin to describe how he used his
wisdom to think up this ruse in order to draw his people
towards the same truth which he had been guided to. And yes,
Muslims do insist that all the prophets are unerring in
their preachings.
How confident would you be with a prophet who told you
"God want's you to give away all of your belongings" and
then after you have done so comes a little later on and says
"oops, I made a mistake. That was not really necessary" What
if he said: "God commands that you go to war," then after
many of them die in battle he says "Oops, God did not really
want that," etc. God does not make mistakes, and He protects
His messengers from delivering incorrect messages or ever
erring in their preaching or belief.
As for shirk, or polytheism, God does not forgive it
if a person dies upon it, however, He may or
may not, at His discretion, forgive all other sins which a
person dies upon. Nevertheless, even polytheism is forgiven
those who repent before their death. This is explained in
sufficient detail below and in the various hadeeths of the
prophet such as the one narrated by Anas in the Musnad of
Al-Hafid Abu-Bakr, or the one narrated by Abu-Tharr in
Musnad Ahmad, or the one by Jabir in the musnad of Al-Hafid
abu-Yala, or the one narrated by ibn Abbas by way of
Al-Tabari, etc. all of which explain that the boundary
condition, or requirement for shirk to be forgiven is for
the person to repent before death, otherwise even
though he may be forgiven all other sins which he did not
repent from before his death, still, his polytheism shall
not be forgiven him if he died upon it. This is also
held out by the very examples presented by the author of
this list.
For example he presents the example of the Jews who
worshipped the calf but were forgiven their polytheism in
4:153. But why was their polytheism forgiven them? The
reason for this, as stated above, is that they had already
repented from this sin before their death and had not died
upon it, as seen for example in Al-Aaraf(7):149.
Actually, Al-Furqan(25):68-71 itself expressly spells out
this boundary condition in no uncertain terms. He has
managed to read in these verses the promise of God that He
shall forgive this sin, however, he has not chosen to read
the condition which Allah has presented for forgiveness of
this sin. This condition is so critical that it is repeated
twice in these verses. Once in verse 70 and then in
verse 71 it is repeated again in detail and spelled out
quite clearly. Indeed, ibn Juraij narrated upon the
authority of the Companion ibn Abbas that these very verses
were revealed by God with regard to a tribe of men who had
spent their lives in idol worship and adultery. When they
asked prophet Muhammad (pbuh) whether it was possible for
them to repent after their lifetime of polytheism, this is
when God revealed to them these verses, from 68 onwards,
informing them that repentance before death can even erase
polytheism. After mentioning polytheism as a sin worthy of
hellfire the verses then go on to say: "..and he (the
sinner) will abide therein (hellfire) disgraced, EXCEPT
those who repent, believe (in Islam), and did righteous
deeds, for those Allah will change their sins to good deeds,
and Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful. And whosoever
repents and does good deeds, then verily, he repents towards
Allah with a sincere repentance."
God also says in this regard in Taha(20):82 "And
indeed I excel in forgiveness towards he who repents,
believes (in Islam), does righteous deeds, then is
guided."
In Al-Nissa(4):110 we read "And he who commits evil or
is unjust against himself but then seeks God's forgiveness,
He will find God Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful."
So what is meant by a man "being unjust against himself"?
To learn the answer we need to read Lukman(31):13:
"And (remember) when Lukman said to his son when he
was advising him: 'O my son! Join not partners with Allah in
worship. Verily, joining partners in worship with Allah is a
great injustice indeed!"
All Muslims are required to explain the Qur'an using the
Qur'an itself or else the explanation of the verse which was
given to us by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). So if we go to
the book "Sahih Al-Bukhari" we will find that the prophet
(pbuh) is quoted in a number of his Hadeeth teaching us the
above concept. For example:
The verses of Al-Anaam(6):82 says: "Those who believed
and did not clothe their belief in injustice, for them shall
be security and they are [rightly] guided,"
The Prophet's Companion Abdullah narrated that when the
Companions first heard this verse they began to fear for
themselves (since none of them were perfect humans) and they
asked the Prophet (pbuh) 'Who among us has not been unjust
against himself?" The Prophet (pbuh) replied "It is not as
you think. Do you not read: 'Verily, joining partners in
worship with Allah is a great injustice indeed!'
(Lukman(31):13)?
From these verses we see that the greatest injustice is
associating partners with God in worship, since it attempts
to refuse God His foremost right and results in severe
retribution from Him. However, the God of Islam as not only
Just, however He also excels in mercy such that not only
does He forgive all regular sins at His discretion even if
the person did not repent before death, however, He even
forgives the most major sins if the stated condition of
"repenting and seeking God's forgiveness before death" is
fulfilled. This is all verified in the Hadeeth of the
prophet (pbuh) many times, for example:
1) Jabir narrated in Sahih Muslim:
"A man came to the prophet (pbuh) and asked, what are the
'mujibatan'(two co)?. The prophet (pbuh) replied: 'He who
dies not associating partners with Allah shall enter Heaven
and he who diassociating partners with Allah shall enter
Hellfire'"
2) Jabir also narrated:
"I heard prophet (pbuh) saying: 'He who meets Allah not
associating partners with Him shall enter heaven and he who
meets Him associating partners with Him shall enter
Hellfire.'"
3) The scholar of the Qur'an and Companion of the prophet
Abdullah ibn Masoor said:
"The Prophet (pbuh) said: 'He who dies while associating
partners with Allah shall enter Hellfire' and I say, He who
dies not associating partners with Allah shall enter
Heaven." Narrated by Al-Bukhari.
Anas ibn Malik narrated in Mishkat Al-Masabih the
following:
"Allah's Messenger (pbuh) stated that Allah said, "O
Son of Adam, as long as you supplicate to Me and have hope
in me I will pardon you in spite of what you have done, and
I do not care. O Son of Adam, if your sins were so numerous
as to reach the lofty regions of the sky, then you asked My
forgiveness, I would forgive you, and I do not care. O Son
of Adam, if you were to meet Me with enough sins to fill the
earth, then met Me, not associating anything with Me (in
worship), I shall greet you with its equivalent in
forgiveness.'" Narrated by Al-Tirmidhi. And Ahmad and
Al-Darimi transmitted it from AbuTharr.
So is there still a "contradiction"?
* The event of worship of the golden
calf: The Israelites repented about worshipping the golden
calf BEFORE Moses returned from the mountain
[7:149], yet they refused to repent but rather
continued to worship the calf it until Moses came back
[20:91]. Does Aaron share in their guilt? No
[20:85-90], yes [20:92, 7:151].
The Israelites did not repent until Moses came back. The
verse uses the term "falamma suqita fi aydeehim" which is a
construct used in cases when people are openly exposed and
faced with utter ruination. They did not listen to Aaron
when he rebuked them, they claimed that Moses had lost his
way up into the mountain and that God had come down to them
in the form of the calf. This error was only exposed when
Moses returned, rebuking them and exposing their error. Even
Arabic grammar supports this fact. The verse describing the
return of Moses does not use the words "Fa" or "Thumma"
which imply that he returned after this happened, rather, it
uses the conjunction "wa" implying concurrence of action. In
other words, the use of the conjunction "wa" implies that
the return of Moses and the repentance of the Jews happened
concurrently. This is basic grammar.
Further, how anyone could read into the verses a claim
that Aaron 'shared in the guilt' is truly intriguing. 20:92
only says that Moses rebuked Aaron for not coming to fetch
him when the Israelites refused to obey him. Aaron explained
that he only did this out of fear that Moses would accuse
him of being unfaithful to his charge, so he stayed behind
and tried to reason with them. The verse of 7:151 only says
that Moses asked God for forgiveness for himself and his
brother Aaron out of fear that there might have been some
deficiency on their part in exhausting all possible avenues
to prevent this occurrence. If Moses' asking God for
forgiveness for his brother means that Aaron 'shared in
their guilt' then does Moses' inclusion of himself in this
same request mean that he too 'shares in this guilt' even
though he was not even present but was in the mountain
speaking to God at the time? A complete study of this issue
would require a study of the Islamic concept of God's
unlimited and continuous blessings towards mankind and our
inability to repay God for even a small portion of these
blessings through our own works or worship. This issue is
dealt with for example in the hadeeth of the man who's deeds
are weighed against the single blessing of 'eye-sight' on
the Day of Judgment. But that is a topic for another
day.
* Moses and the Injil? Jesus is born more
than 1,000 years after Moses, but in 7:157 Allah speaks to
Moses about what is written in the Injil [the book given
to Jesus].
In 7:156 one topic has been concluded, and in 7:157 a new
one has begun. They are speaking about two different time
periods. The new topic has moved from the time of prophet
Moses (pbuh) to the time of prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and is
describing those who "follow the unlettered prophet
(Muhammad, pbuh) whom they find written in the Torah and the
injeel that is with them." Many stories related to this
verse and the Jews of the time of Muhammad (pbuh) could be
narrated here confirming how they did indeed recognize him,
however, due to a lack of time and space the interested
reader is encouraged to read the chapter
on the life of Muhammad (pbuh) in "What
Did Jesus Really Say?" Neither is God speaking to Moses
in this verse nor is it even addressed to those who lived in
that age. If so, then how can they be expected to "follow"
prophet Muhammad (pbuh) if he has not even been born yet? In
order to generate a contradiction, this address is
redirected by the author of this list from the Jews and
Christians of the time of Muhammad (pbuh) and directed
towards Moses (pbuh) and then forced to be a continuation of
a previous topic. The verses narrate the story of the Jews
in the time of Moses (pbuh) and then move a few centuries
into the future in order to display their situation at and
after the time of prophet Muhammad (pbuh).
I suppose that according to this logic that it shall be
acceptable to claim that Deut. 18:18-19 is commanding
prophet Moses (pbuh) and the Jews that are with him to
follow a new prophet who is present in their time?
Similarly, according to such logic, should we insist that
Acts 3:24-26 is a continuation of the words of Moses (pbuh)
in Acts 3:22-23? Should we then insist that Acts 2:24-26
claims that prophet Moses (pbuh) spoke of Samuel's future
confirmation of his prophesy? Are the verses of Acts 2:24-26
the words of Moses? Should we force them into his mouth just
because the previous two verses of Acts 2:22-23 were his
words?
* Can slander of chaste women be
forgiven? Yes [24:5], No [24:23].
The general guideline is that Allah, who excels in mercy
and forgiveness, does forgive all sins with repentance, as a
general rule. This is the rule specified in Al-Noor(24):5
and which was revealed by God in relation to Hilal ibn
Umayyah who discovered his wife in bed with Shuraik ibn
Sahma'. A witness needs to bring three other witnesses of
this act before his claim regarding the chastity of a chaste
woman shall be accepted. Otherwise the witness shall be
whipped eighty lashes for this testimony if he can not
corroborate it with three other witnesses. If the witness
happens to be the woman's husband then his witness will
count as four witnesses, then the process of "mulaanah"
(oath-taking) by both parties begins. If the witness(es)
bore false witness then this is considered to be a very
major sin in the sight of God and worthy of severe
punishment. However, Allah excels in mercy and this is
displayed in most aspects of Islam. Even this tremendous sin
can be forgiven if the person sincerely repents and turns to
God in penitence before death. This is the general rule.
However, there is an exception to this rule and this is
found in the second set of verses a little further down this
same chapter.
In the second set of verses we are dealing with a
completely different context and situation. This set of
verses was revealed regarding a group of hypocrites lead by
Abdullah ibn Ubai ibn Salool who tried to frame Aisha the
wife of the prophet (pbut) and cast doubt on her integrity
and chastity by alleging infidelity with a Muslim by the
name of Safwan ibn Al-Muattal. Safwan had been charged as a
look-out behind the Muslim's caravan. During their travel
Aisha (pbuh) withdrew away from the caravan to relieve
herself and while she was out of sight the carapicked up and
left. Some hours later Safwan came up behind the caravan and
foher stranded in the desert after the caravan had left. He
coaxed his camel down, she got up on it, and he guided it
back to caravan. When she arrived Abdullah ibn Ubai wasted
no time in starting an unfounded rumor agatheir chastity.
This was a time of severe discord and tribulation and was
not resolved until God revealed their innocence in this set
of verses. The difference is that in this case the sin shall
not be forgiven since it was directed at the prophet's wife
in an attempt to destroy both their reputations. This is a
special case of a general rule and similar to cases found in
the Bible where similar special cases are excepted from
general rules. For example, in the Bible we read:
Matthew 12:31-32 "Wherefore I (Jesus) say unto you,
All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men:
but the blasphemy [against] the [Holy] Ghost
shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a
word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but
whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be
forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the
[world] to come."
Here we have a general rule: "All sins and blasphemy are
forgiven." However, a certain class of sin and blasphemy is
not forgiven, namely, that directed at the Holy Ghost.
Similarly, slander of chaste women is forgiven with sincere
repentance and penitence except when it is directed at the
wives of the prophet (pbuh). How do we know this? We know if
from the context of the verses which we get from the Hadeeth
and which inform us who each set of verses was revealed in
regard to, when and why.
"And We (God) have sent down unto you (Muhammad) the
Reminder (Qur'an), that you might make clear to mankind that
which was sent down unto them and perchance they might
reflect." Al-Nahil(16):44
"And We (God) have not sent down unto you (Muhammad)
the Book (the Qur'an) except that you might make clear to
them that in which they differ, and [as] a guidance
and a mercy for a folk who believe" Al-Nahil(16):64
For example, in these very same verses we read the words
"And let not those among you who are blessed with graces
and wealth swear never to render [aid] to the their
kinsmen, the poor, and the emigrators in the cause of Allah.
Let them pardon and forgive. Do you not covet that Allah
should forgive you? And Allah is Oft-Forgiving,
Most-Merciful." Al-Noor(24):22
At first glance this verse appears to be quite general
and we do not learn its true meaning until we study the
words of the prophet (pbuh) and his companions in the
Hadeeth in order to find its "context." This verse was
revealed as part of the previous story. When Abdullah ibn
Ubai first started to spread this rumor a poor man by the
name of Mustah ibn Uthata who was a close kin of Aisha's
father, Abu-Bakr, this man propagated the rumor and spread
it causing severe injury to both Aisha and her father even
though Abu-Bakr had always in the past done good by him and
had been providing for him. When the verses were revealed
confirming her innocence her father Abu-Bakr swore to never
again give him a red cent. This is when God revealed the
above verse, gently encouraging Abu-Bakr to forgive and
relent, and reminding him that God forgives those who
forgive others.
When Abu-Bakr heard these verses being recited and God
said "... do you not covet that God should forgive
you?..." Abu-Bakr broke down in tears and began weeping
bitterly while exclaiming, "Yes my Lord, I do covet Your
forgiveness. I forgive him and shall never withhold from him
whatever I have."
This is why Muslims recognize the title "those among
you blessed with graces and wealth" to be specific to
Abu-Bakr in this specific case even though the title is
quite general and this general attitude is recommended for
all Muslims as a whole, as seen for example in the more
comprehensive verse which commands all Muslims:
"Whether you disclose a good deed or conceal it or
pardon an evil, verily, Allah is Ever Oft-Pardoning,
All-Powerful" Al-Nissa(4):149
Similarly, what is meant by "chaste women" in the second
set of verses is the prophet's wives since they were the
context within which the second set of verses were
revealed.
In this manner, we see that it is necessary to know a
little about the contexts of the verses, the hadeeth related
to them, and at least a basic smattering of the history of
Islam in order to be able to understand the intent of a
given verse. Simply disregarding all of this information,
who the verses relate to and why, or what the prophet (pbuh)
or his companions said in this regard, is a sad way to cut
corners in search of quick "contradictions."
* How do we receive the record on
Judgment Day? On Judgment day the lost people are given the
Record (of their bad deeds): Behind their back
[84:10], or in their left hand [69:25].
It is handed to the evil doers in their left hands behind
their backs. For example, in Sahih Al-Bukhari, in the
chapter of "Tafseer Al-Qur'an," regarding
Al-Inshiqaq(84):10: "But whosoever is given his book in
his left hand..." Al-Bukhari narrates that Mujahid
explained "...in his left behind his back" The are also
other hadeeths of the prophet in this regard such as the one
narrated by the prophet's wife Aisha (pbut) in Musnad Ahmad,
chapter of "Al-Sunnah." The interested reader may look up
the other references.
* Can angels disobey? No angel is
arrogant, they all obey Allah [16:49-50], but: "And
behold, we said to the ANGELS: 'Bow down to Adam'. And THEY
bowed down, EXCEPT Iblis. He refused and was haughty."
[2:34].
Satan is not an angel, rather he is of the Jinn as stated
in Al-Kahf(18):50. Why then did he need to obey the command
which was directed to the angels? Because he was raised with
them from childhood and required to obey the laws applied to
them while in their company. This is similar to requiring
that a foster son obey the rules of his foster father while
living within his house. It is not necessary for the foster
father, whenever he commands his sons to do something, to
follow up with an explicit "and my foster son too must do
this," rather, it is implicitly understood that so long as
the foster son lives in this house he shall follow the same
rules and commands as apply to the other sons.
If a politician declares that "any American who drinks
and drives shall be thrown in jail," then does this mean
that any non-American who is visiting the USA then drinks
and drives shall be immune to this law? No. The law includes
him by default, however, they are the minority so the
command is issued to the majority with the implication being
that anyone in their company is implicitly included.
For example, in the Bible we are told that prophet
Abraham was given a covenant of "circumcision" for himself
and his family, however, fulfillment of circumcision was
required not only of all of his family but also of all those
who happened to be in his house at the time, even if they
were slaves purchased with his money. This is how all laws
work. They are required of all those who abide within the
confines of a given nation even if they are not officially
considered one of them. A diplomat from the republic of
Georgia recently got drunk in Maryland and ran down a young
girl. His home government did not invoke 'diplomatic
immunity' for him, rather, he was allowed to be held
accountable under US law even though he was not one of them.
This is basic justice and common sense. If you live in
someone's house you follow their rules.
* Three contradictions in 2:97 and
16:101-103 Who brings the revelation from Allah to Muhammad?
The ANGEL Gabriel [297], or the Holy Spirit
[16:102]? The new revelation confirms the old
[2:97] or substitutes it [16:101]? The
Qur'an is PURE Arabic [16:103] but there are
numerous foreign, non-Arabic words in it.
The title given by God to angel Gabriel within his
capacity as the conveyor or the message and the patron of
the prophets is "Holy Spirit." "Gabriel" is his name and
"Holy Spirit," "Trustworthy Spirit," or "Spirit" is his
title. This can be seen in many places, such as in
Al-Shuara(26)19, where he is described as the "Trustworthy
Spirit." Further, the noble Qur'an only cthe ancient
scriptures in THEIR ORIGINAL FORM. This is made clear in for
example the following verse:
"And unto you (O Muhammad) have We revealed the
Scripture (Qur'an) with the truth, confirming that which was
before it of Scripture, and a watcher/warden/corrector over
it. So judge between them by that which Allah has revealed,
and follow not their desires away from the truth which has
come unto you..."
The noble Qur'an, Al-Maidah(5):48.
The actual word used in this verse was the Arabic word
"Muhaimin" which means
"Guardian/warden/overseer/watcher/protector." The job of a
warden is to watch the actions of those he has been charged
to observe, permitting legal words and deeds and correcting
illegal ones. This is indeed the job of the Qur'an, namely,
to sift out the human tampering in the Bible and only leave
the original teachings of God. The closest English
equivalent to this Arabic word in my estimation is "warden"
or the similar one chosen by Gary Miller, namely "quality
control." For this reason, prophet Muhammad (pbuh) commanded
the Muslims to accept only that which is verified by the
Qur'an recognizing it as authentic and to reject that which
contradicts the Qur'an recognizing it as a later outgrowth
of Church tampering.
Further, the original Arabic does not say "pure Arabic"
rather, it says "clear Arabic." The actual words are: "wa
hatha lisanun arabiyyun mubeen" or "and this is a clear
Arabic tongue." This verse was revealed regarding a man by
the name of Jabr al-Roomi. When he passed through the land
the polytheists quickly jumped at the opportunity to claim
that he was the one who was teaching Muhammad the Qur'an and
this is why they could not replicate it, since this man was
a foreigner with a different background and culture. God
replied in these verses that if this claim were true then
the Qur'an would not have been revealed in "clear Arabic"
since that man had a very heavy foreign accent and could in
no way produce such a work.
Finally, as for the claim that Arabic contains non-Arabic
words in it, then that depends entirely on the criteria used
to judge what is or isn't "Arabic." In English we find such
words as "Algebra" which is corruption of the Arabic word
"Al-Jabr," (Arabic: "the re-unification") a Muslim science
which the West adopted by way of Italy. However, this does
not mean that "Algebra" is not an English word. It has been
assimilated into the language and is in this age considered
to be an authentic part of it. Similarly, words such as
"bordello" were transmitted from German (borde) to French
(Bordel) to Italian (bordello) and finally to English. So
does this mean that this word should not be included in an
"English" dictionary or a French or German one? Through
usage and acceptance foreign words are subjected to cultural
assimilation till they slowly cease to be "foreign words"
any more becoming an authentic part of the host language.
This is especially the case with regard to countries such as
the USA which are "melting pots" of numerous cultures,
languages, and traditions. There are many other examples in
the English language such as "Bouquet" from the French
"Bosquet," itself adopted from the German "Bosc" forest.
Once again, the examples number literally in the hundreds.
This is also how a few words of non-Arabic origin were later
assimilated over the centuries into the Arabic language
until after a number of centuries they came to be regarded
as "Arabic." Such examples are quite few and far between
when compared to English since the Arabian peninsula was so
barren, harsh and desolate a land that there never was any
real reason for anyone to migrate to it, and thus, this
inhospitality of the climate and land contributed greatly
towards the preservation of the purity of the language.
The infinite loop problem Sura
26:192,195,196: "It (the Qur'an) is indeed a revelation from
the Lord of the Worlds, ... in clear Arabic speech and
indeed IT (the Qur'an) is in the writings of the earlier
(prophets)." Now, the 'earlier writing' are the Torah and
the Injil for example, written in Hebrew and Greek. HOW can
an ARABIC Qur'an be contained in a books of other languages?
Furthermore, if would have to contain this very passage of
the Qur'an since the Qur'an is properly contained in them.
Hence these earlier writings have to be contained in yet
other earlier writings and we are in an infinite loop, which
is absurd.
This one has a number of interesting claims. The verses
speak about the Qur'an and describe it as being revealed by
the Lord and it being in Arabic, however, the verses only
say that the Qur'an was mentioned, or prophesied, in the
"Zubr" (etchings/scripture) of the ancients. Some
translators have understood the reference to "scripture" in
this context to mean the scriptures of the prophets, while
others have understood it to refer to the scriptures of the
angels (i.e. Al-Qamar(54):52). Regardless, this does not
mean that the Qur'an as a physical entity is to be
found in that scripture, rather, what is to be found therein
is mention of the Qur'an or a prophesy of it. This is indeed
similar to such verses as Al-A'araf(7):157:
Those who follow the Messenger (Muhammad), the
unlettered Prophet whom they find written in the Torah and
the Gospel with them... "
According to the author of this list, does this mean that
prophet Muhammad (pbuh) too was physically present,
in flesh and blood, within the pages of these books? Maybe
this is yet another "contradiction" since nowhere in the
Bible can we find prophet Muhammad (pbuh) present in flesh
and blood?
"An old woman" and God's character About
the story of Lot: "So we delivered him and his family, - all
exept an old woman who lingered behind." [Sura
26:170-171] And again: "But we saved him and his family,
exept his wife: she was of those who lagged behind.
[Sura 7:83]. Either this is a contradiction or if
indeed Lot's wife is derogatorily called "an old woman" then
this does not show much respect for her as a wife of a
prophet.
One tends to wonder, even if this sort of logic were
defensible, how it would be a contradiction for her to be
Lot's wife as well as for her to be an old woman? Is she
required to remain young forever in order to satisfy your
standards?
In any case, this is yet another example of how he knows
very little about the teachings of Islam or the Qur'an and
then bases his objections on this same ignorance of its
teachings. Even a very cursory study of the Qur'an or even
any basic Qur'anic reference would have shown him that the
Qur'an labels the wives of both prophets Noah and prophet
Lot as disbelievers who betrayed their husbands, died as
disbelievers to enter Hellfire, and their husbands could
avail them for naught. It also gives the example of the wife
of Pharaoh as a believing woman who could not be misguided
by her evil husband. This fact is stated quite clearly in
the verse of Al-Tahreem(66):10-11. So even though it would
not be a "contradiction" to claim that she was Lot's wife
and "at the same time" she was an old woman, still, as we
can see, it is quite appropriate to refer to her
derogatorily since she refused to believe in her husband,
prophet Lot (pbuh), and died a disbeliever to be sent to
hellfire.
Once again, do the verse really contradict
one-another?
More problems with the story of Lot "And
his people gave NO answer but this: They said, "Drive them
out of your city: these are indeed men who want to be clean
and pure!" [Sura 7:82 & 27:56]. Yet: "But his
people gave NO answer but this: They said: "Bring us the
Wrath of Allah if thou tellest the truth." [Sura
29:29]. Obviously these answers are different. They are
two different questions asked at two different times, and
thus, the answers too are different. We will study the
evidence of this below. It appears that the author of this
list is attempting to make the case that the word "no" in
the first two verses implies that the people of prophet Lot
(pbuh) never said any other words to him but those found in
the first two examples. However, this is a false argument
fortwo reasons:
First of all: We need to notice that the first
verse presented by the author, Al-A'araf(7):82, is one verse
in a group of five (verses 80-84) which are intended to
summarize the whole ministry on Lot in only
fiveverses. It is one in a list of very short stories,
narrated one after the other, each one giving broad summary
of the life of a given prophet, the major sin of his people,
and how God dealt with each one. The general theme is one of
a list of major sins and how God dealt with each people.
Noah, Hood, Salih, Lot, Shuaib.., each one's story is run
off in rapid-fire succession in only a few verses, each one
dealing only with the broadest possible summary of their
ministry and their people's response.
Similarly, the second verse presented by him,
Al-Namil(27):56, is once again a five verse summary of the
whole mission of Lot (verses 54-58). Once again, it is part
of a list of extremely short summaries of the ministries of
a list of prophets, their people's major sins, and how God
dealt with them. Of the prophets mentioned in this list is
Lot. In both of these cases the moral is to notice how these
people's arrogance and rejection was stamped out quite
effortlessly by God, one after the other, till they became
naught but tales told to others in a couple of pages. Thus
can we too have our arrogance and evil just as quickly
stamped out by Allah if we follow in their footsteps.
In both cases the theme is the same throughout. They both
deal with very briefly casting light on the most major sin
of a given people, their prophet's admonition of them in
this major sin, their response, and how God dealt with them.
Both of the first two examples do not concern themselves
with many side-issues such as these people's secondary sins
or vices. In both of these cases the question presented by
prophet Lot (pbuh) was the same. It only dealt with their
"major" sin, their sodomy. Fittingly, in both cases the
answer is exactly same.
Now let us look at a different case. The third verse
selected by this author, Al-Ankaboot(29):29, is part of a
slightly longer narration of the whole ministry of Lot in
only seven verses (verses 28-35). In this case the life of
prophet Lot is taken up in a little more detail and closely
intertwined with the even longer story of prophet Abraham
(pbuh) which itself starts way back at verse 16. In this
case more of the side issues and lesser sins of his people
are dealt with. In this case we also notice that the
question asked by prophet Lot is different than in the first
two cases. This time it is a little more comprehensive.
Fittingly, in this new situation the answer too is different
in some of its details.
What does this all mean? Well, hopefully it will not be
considered assuming too much to
presume that we can agree that Lot's ministry and preaching
to his people consisted of more than two minutes and one
sentence which he said only once. It would then be logical
to assume that he might have met with his people on many
occasions, that he might have spoken to them in the market
places, in the streets, in their homes, and in their meeting
places. None of the accounts listed by this author specifies
a well defined date, occasion, or event, such as saying for
example "This is what prophet Lot said on the
16th of January 502 BC while in the town hall and
during his one and only trial in front of the governor of
that town," etc. or to mention that the person he spoke to
was a very specific member of Lot's people, such as a
mayor or Governor, whom he is know to have never met nor
spoken to except on one very specific and restricted
occasion. This is the first major piece of evidence we must
notice and it is indeed an important one, as shall be
expounded upon shortly by the will of Allah.
Continuing, hopefully we can further agree that the words
of admonition prophet Lot spoke to his people during all of
these visits and continuous preaching might exceed a one
line sentence. And hopefully we can further agree that this
would especially be the case with regard to his tribe's
"major" sin. In other words if a given tribe is well known
for murder but has also been known on occasion to lie, then
it would be natural to assume that their prophet would
admonish them at times for their lying and at times for
their murder, however, his admonition in murder would be
much more continuous, diverse, frequent, and varied in
nature. When we look at the verses selected by this author
we find that this is indeed held out by the text.
In the first two verses the author has chosen, the verses
only deal with the most major aspects of Lot's ministry. If
one of us were asked to summarize the ministry of Lot in
three sentences, then obviously we would scan the whole life
of Lot for the specific occasions which best embodied the
broadest possible summary of his mission. Similarly, for
this very same reason, the specific admonition of Lot (pbuh)
to his people which was selected by God is one where he only
mentioned to them their sodomy, their "major" or most well
known sin. However, in the third verse he has selected (the
longer narration), God is giving us a little more insight
into some of the secondary details of Lot's ministry, and
for this reason, He chose to present Lot's words on a
different occasion wherein he admonished his people not only
in their major sin, but also in their other sins which they
used to commit. In this case the admonition of Lot (pbuh)
mentions three vices: (1)Their sodomy, (2)their banditry
(their robbery of travelers), and (3)their further evil over
and above these two which they used to practiced in their
gatherings. So this implies a different admonition in a
different time and place. Fittingly, the answer too is
different in its details, but the same as the first two in
its general attitude towards his advice. In other words, the
author of this list is comparing two different questions to
one another and requiring that the answer to both be exactly
the same, otherwise he shall consider them a
"contradiction."
Secondly: The Arabic construct "fama kaana jawaba
qaumihi illa an qaloo" ("but the reply of his people was
naught but that they said..") is a popular construct used to
imply someone snubbing or looking down upon someone else
when spoken to. It is used to imply that the speaker did not
want to give the person the time of day. It implies a
restricted answer to a specific question, otherwise, if his
claims were true then the verse would not have said "but
their reply (to that specific question) was naught
but to say," rather, it would have said "but they
never spoke to him but to say."
We need to notice that the first two verses say that
their "REPLY" was naught but to say
But their
"reply" to what? The answer is "the reply to the
STATED QUESTION." But the stated question is NOT THE SAME in
both cases. In the absence of the text of both verses
restricting both questions to having occurred in a specific
time, place and occasion, then the only way to force the two
questions to be one is to force Lot's ministry to be
restricted to only one question and one answer which they
said to one-another only once in passing. In other words,
the only way he can have his desired "contradiction" is for
him to allege that Lot got up one day, said one sentence to
his people, they replied with one sentence, and then God
killed them all. In this manner he can obtain his desired
"contradiction" by forcing both questions and both answers
to be the same ones, despite their obvious textual
differences.
Such concise narrations are indeed a hallmark of the
noble Qur'an. In many places throughout the Qur'an God very
briefly narrates the story of a given prophet in only a few
verses while placing emphasis on a given aspect of that
prophet's ministry as the topic at hand requires. For
example, Al-Thariat(51):38-40 contains a three-verse summary
of whole mission of Moses (pbuh). It says:
"And in Moses too [there is a portent] when We
sent him to Pharaoh with a manifest authority. But he turned
away along with his hosts and said: 'A sorcerer or a
madman.' So We tookhim and his hosts and discarded them in
the sea while he was blameworthy."
However, in Al Muminoon(23)"45-49 we find another similar
very concise narration of the ministry of prophet Moses
(pbuh). In this one the verses say:
"Then We sent Moses and His brother Aaron with Our
signs and manifest authority. To Pharaoh and hichiefs, but
they scorned and were arrogant, They said: 'shall we believe
in two men like ourselves and their people are servile to
us?' So they denied them both, therefore they became of
those who were destroyed. And indeed we gave Moses the
Scripture so that they might be guided."
So now, according the current author's logic, do these
two passages too "contradict" one another?
These first three verses sum up the whole ministry of
Moses (pbuh) in about one paragraph, however, does this mean
that it all occurred in a couple of minutes while Moses was
standing before Pharaoh? Of course not. For the details of
what happened in-between we need to go to other verses which
fill in the picture more completely. This is actually part
of the beauty and miracle of the noble Qur'an in that it
only presents in each case just enough detail in each case
in order to get the intended point across without getting
into useless "trim." When a different issue is discussed
then the details related to that issue are then presented
clearly, directly, and only in as far as is pertinent to the
topic at hand. There are no frivolous details in the Qur'an
that have no use to the reader such as describing fifty
generations of ancestors for a given obscure person, or what
colors a given obscure engraver used to embroider his work
in, etc.
Would it then be a contradiction if the Qur'an were to
after recounting the above three verses of the ministry of
Moses to then narrate in a different set of verses (like
Al-Muminoon(23)"45-49) more details of a given occurrence in
his ministry which "fill out" the picture a little and, for
example, describe in more detail how exactly the "manifest
authority" of Moses (pbuh) was displayed to Pharaoh through
his many miracles?
There is a distinct difference between this situation and
between saying that on a very specific and well defined
time, date, and location a person said two different things.
For example, in the Bible, we find two different version of
one story that occurred in a very "specific" time and
"specific" place, specifically the trial of
Jesus before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. In Matthew
27:11-14 Mark 15:1-5 and Luke 23:1-4 Jesus said "Thou
sayest" and NOTHING ELSE and he adamantly
refused to answer any more of the governor's questions.
Jesus refusal to answer the questions even went so far as to
cause Pilate to "marvel." However, in John 18:33-38 we are
told that in this very same trial, on this very same day, in
front of the very same person, and in the very same room,
Jesus (pbuh) said many things and answered more than one
question in detail, responding to all of the questions of
the governor and refusing to answer none. No "marveling" by
Pilate. No refusal of Jesus (pbuh) to answer. Same time,
same place, same people, different claims.
What this author has just attempted to do is to generate
a case where, in order to be fair, it will then be
permissible to generalize the specific contradiction between
Matthew 27:11-14 Mark 15:1-5, Luke 23:1-4, John 18:33-38 to
now also include any instance where Jesus (pbuh) is claimed
to have said anything at all to the Jews without it being
restricted to differing claims regarding matters which
occurred on a specific time, place, occasion, and in front
of a specific person.
* The "pleasure" or Allah?
The Qur'an says in the original Arabic "Allah wishes" not
"Allah pleases." As for the description of whom it is who
Allah guides or misguides, that shall be been dealt with in
detail in the "guiding to the
truth" question a little further down. In brief, God
misguides those who start the process of misguidance and He
guides those who start the process of guidance. Anyone who
insists on refusing any and all signs from God and insists
on finding a way out of any evidence or signs which God has
left for him on earth, in Islam, or in the Qur'an,
continually trying to find some way to reject all of it, for
these people God does not force them to believe, rather He
gives them rope in this life to continue along this path as
long as they like. This is how they are "misguided" by God.
By Him not forcing them to accept the truth against their
free will. As for those people who pray to God to show them
the truth, in all sincerity while no one sees them but Him,
and they sincerely are willing to accept the truth no matter
where they may find it or what their pride may tell them,
and in spite of what is popular, doing all of this sincerely
seeking God's good will and His pleasure, then God guides
them to find the truth so long as they continue to accept it
and do not let their personal whims or pride get in the way
of the truth of the Qur'an and Islam. The verses associated
with this issue shall, by the will of Allah, be presented in
the aforementioned question which is coming up soon.
Did Abraham smash the idols? The
accounts of Abraham, Suras 19:41-49, 6:74-83 differ quite a
bit from Sura 21:51-59. While in Sura 21 Abraham confronts
his people strongly, and even destroys the idols, in Sura 19
Abraham shuts up after his father threatens him to stone him
for speaking out against the idols. And he seems not only to
become silent, but even to leave the area ("turning away
from them all").
Note: It is truly saddening to find people using such
expressions as "shuts up" in reference to a messenger of
God. Even if that person does not like Muslims, still, that
is no excuse to display disrespect to God's messengers. This
is especially so with regard to a messenger whom God named
"Friend of God" (In Islam: "Khaleelullah," also see James
2:23). If one does not wish to refer to them with the words
"peace be upon them" then at least do not use vulgar
language when referring to them. Basic respect of God
requires that we at least guard ourselves in how we refer to
those whom He personally selected and preferred from among
His creation to receive His Words, Scriptures, Revelation
and Message.
By now the general theme of these objections is beginning
to become clear and quite repetitive. The Qur'an repeats a
number of stories of the prophets throughout its text, in
many cases very briefly, and each time emphasizing a
specific aspect of the ministry of that prophet. For the
author of this list this is objectionable. He requires that
the whole story be narrated in one location, all together,
or else if it is ever mentioned again in a different
location then it must be repeated word for word with no
additional details nor any details of the previous narration
left out. In this manner, if I were to ask him to tell me
the story of Jesus (pbuh) raising Lazarus, he shall be
required to recount in very great detail to me the complete
ministry of Jesus (pbuh) from birth to ascension, leaving
out no details. Similarly, if I ask him to tell me the story
of Jesus' purification of the Temple, then he shall
similarly be required to recount every single detail of the
story of the ministry of Jesus (pbuh) from birth to
ascension. Only in this fashion, according to his chosen
criteria can he avoid falling into a "contradiction."
Prophet Abraham (pbuh) was granted wisdom and guidance
from a very young age. He migrated with his father at a
young age to Harran in northern Sham (the land of the
Kildaniyeen). The people worshipped the planets and had set
up at each entrance to the city of Damascus an idol
representing their seven "planet gods" whom they would
worship and present their sacrifices to. Abraham (pbuh) was
guided from young age to worship Allah (God) alone and did
his best to guide his father and the people of the land. At
one point, he used his wisdom to display the truth to them
through logic. He began with a planet, then moved up to the
moon, then moved up to the sun, and then showed the
superiority of God oveall of them. One day he was discussing
this matter with some of them and they refused to lito
reason or logic, so he vowed to place them in a position
where they would be forced to recognize the truth. He stayed
behind after theleft town in order to celebrate their yearly
festival and he destroyed all of their idols except tbiggest
one. He placed the ax in the hands of the biggest idol to
make it look like it had destroyed all of the smaller idols
and this might get them to thinking whether they could
really talk or move. When they returned they were furious
and bound Abraham. They asked him if he had destroyed the
idols and he told them to ask the "grand" idol for the
answer. They recognized their error and that these idols
could not speak nor act, however, they quickly made an
about-face and returned to their previous stance. They
decided to burn prophet Abraham in a tremendous fire in
retribution for their gods. They collected wood for many
weeks in a very large valley and then lit it and threw
Abraham (pbuh) into it. Allah commanded the fire to not harm
Abraham (pbuh) and he remained in it for many days with no
ill effects while those outside watched but could not
approach him from the tremendous heat.
Abraham continued to try and guide his father and show
him the error of his ways, however, his father refused to
believe him and finally got fed up with him ordering him
away. Abraham (pbuh) spoke kind words to his father and
departed. He would continue to ask God for forgiveness for
his father for a very long time after that and up until his
father's death. Abraham (pbuh) decided to flee the land of
evil and "migrate unto his Lord" who would guide him. It is
assumed that his famous exchange with Al-Namrood, the king
of Babylon occurred during this period. This is when
Al-Namrood claimed to have the power of life and death by
killing one of his slaves and not killing the other. Abraham
(pbuh) replied to him: "Allah brings the sun from the
East, so bring it from the West!" Al-Namrood was
flabbergasted and could not respond. This was another
manifestation of the wisdom of the "Friend of God," Abraham
(pbuh).
Now, let us assume that one were to ask about prophet
Abraham's relationship to his father, which has no bearing
on the story of Al-Namrood or that of the smashing of the
idols. In this case it would be completely appropriate to
say: "Prophet Abraham spoke to his father and tried to
convince him to see reason and to stop worshipping his
idols. His father refused to listen to reason and after some
time he got so fed up with Abraham's advice that he told him
he did not want to see him again. Prophet Abraham (pbuh)
responded kindly to his father, departed, and continued to
pray for him until he passed away."
On the other hand, if one were to ask for a more general
narration of the life prophet Abraham and his ministry then
additional details could be included as necessary.
Indeed, the moral of one story in the Qur'an is to teach
all Muslims how to be respectful of their parents even in
the worst of situations and to speak kindly to them and pray
for them. It also teaches Muslims that one should not pray
for those who die upon disbelief after their death, if they
knew about the truth but refused it. It is all about parents
and family and relationships.
The second story is more general than that and teaches
wisdom and courage in the call to the path of God and His
salvation. For this reason, those aspects of the life of
prophet Abraham related to this issue are now recounted.
So, is this a contradiction?
The "Easter Challenge" and
a $2000 reward:
There is a difference between a set of stories, each of
which describe a different occurrence in the life a given
person and thus, can be harmonized together into one
narration without contradiction, and between a case where a
set of narrations claim that a specific occurrence happened
two or more different ways and can in no way be harmonized
together. One example of the later case is presented by a
former Christian priest and "The Skeptical Review" of
Canton, IL. After many years of sermons and study of the
Bible, Mr.
Dan Barker (dbarker@mailbag.com), a former Christian
priest and author of many books and musicals such as "Mary
had a little lamb" and "his fleece was white as snow" etc.,
after many years of trying, this man finally gave up on ever
trying to harmonize the conflicting narrations in the Bible,
abandoned his preaching and turned atheist. He has since had
numerous debates with many Christians and clergymen and has
recently offered a $1000 reward supplemented by a further
$1000 from "The Skeptical Review" (for a total of $2000) to
anyone who can present them with a complete chronological
narration of the "resurrection of Jesus" which includes all
verses of the Bible related to the resurrection, in any
order, and leaves out none. The challenge can be found in
his book "Losing Faith In Faith: From Preacher To Atheist."
It is as follows:
Paul wrote,
"And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching
vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found
false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God
that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be
that the dead rise not." I Corinthians 15:14-15
The conditions of the
challenge is simple and reasonable. Take the narrations
of the resurrection in each of the four Gospels. In each
one, begin at Easter morning and read to the end of the
book: (Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20-21. Also
read Acts 1:3-12 and Paul's tiny version of the story in I
Corinthians 15:3-8). These 165 verses can be read in a few
moments. Then, without omitting a single detail from these
separate accounts, write a simple, chronological narrative
of the events between the resurrection and the ascension:
what happened first, second, and so on; who said what, when;
and where these things happened. Send them to "The Skeptical
Review" at P.O. Box 717, Canton, IL 61520-0717. If anyone is
able to do this then they shall receive $2000 dollars.
I suggest that the author of this list and all of his
friends who maintain that the Church has never tampered with
the Bible please send Mr. Barker a complete and detailed
answer and then kindly post a photocopy of the $2000 reward
check on his same "Answering Islam" homepage. Before anyone
reverts to accusing Muslims of backwardness, faithlessness,
and ignorance, they are asked to please keep in mind that
Mr. Barker is not a Muslim. He is a former Christian priest
turned atheist with many years experience in the study and
preaching of the text of the Bible. Since our current
authors maintain the position that any contradiction in the
Bible is only an outgrowth of Muslim propaganda and inferior
understanding and that all contradictions can be harmonized,
therefore this should be a golden opportunity for them to
pick up a quick $2000 dollars. Obviously neither one of
these men shall wish to stoop to answering this challenge
only to increase their bank accounts, however, I am sure
that they shall be able to put it to good use in the charity
of their choice, since obviously this sum would go a long
way to feeding many needy people or clothing them and it
might also go a long way to guiding an atheist back to
Christianity. A win-win proposition. I encourage them to
keep us apprised of their progress.
What about Noah's son? According to Sura
21:76, Noah and all his family is saved from the flood. But
Sura 11:42-43 reports that Noah's son drowns.
First of all the author of this list manages to add the
word "all" to the word "family," even though the word "all"
is nowhere to be found in al-Anbia(21):76, either in the
original Arabic or in the Yusuf Ali, the Pickthall, or the
Hilali and Khan English translations of the meanings of the
Qur'an.
Secondly, this is yet another example of how little he
has actually studied the Qur'an. Once again, even a very
cursory study of the Qur'awould have revealed to him that in
the very same chapter he has just quoted (Hood(11)), only
tw verses after the ones he has just quoted, he can
find the answer to his question. After only three more
verses (specifically, Hood(11):45-47)we read:
"And Noah called unto his Lord saying: 'O my Lord, my
son is of my family and your promisis true. Truly, You are
the Most Just of judges.' He (God) said: 'He is not of your
family, verily, his work is unrighteous, so ask not of Me
that which you have no knowledge. I admonish you lest you be
of the ignorant.' Noah said: 'O my Lord, I seek refuge in
You that I should ask You that of which I have no knowledge,
and unless you forgive me and have mercy upon me I will
indeed be among the losers...."
The family of the prophets are the righteous people, not,
as human intellect would imagine, a simple blood
relationship. Where else can we find confirmation of this
fact? Well, let us read the Bible:
"There came then his (Jesus') brethren and his mother,
and, standing without, sent unto him, calling him. And the
multitude sat about him, and they said unto him, Behold, thy
mother and thy brethren without seek for thee. And he
answered them, saying, Who is my mother, or my brethren? And
he looked round about on them which sat about him, and said,
Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the
will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and
mother." Mark 3:31-35
Wouldn't it have been better to first read the Qur'an, or
even the Bible, before crying "contradiction"?
So, do the verses still contradict one-another?
Was Noah driven out? "Before them *the
people of Noah* rejected (their messenger): They rejected
Our servant and said, 'Here is One possessed!' And he was
driven out." [Sura 54:9] Now, if he is driven out
[expelled from their country] how come they can
scoff at him while he is buiding the ark since we read
"Forthwith he (starts) constructing the Ark: Every time that
the Chiefs of *his people* passed by him, they threw
ridicule on him." [Sura 11:38] He cannot be both:
Driven out and near enough that they can regularly pass
by.
No, he wasn't driven out. I am assuming that you got the
impression that prophet Noah (pbuh) was "driven out" from
the Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation, which is known to be
faulty in a number of places. The original Arabic uses the
word "Wazdujir" meaning "and he was rebuked/threatened" not
that "he was driven out." The word is derived from the root
word "za-ja-ra" which means "to reprimand and threaten with
such force as to repulse." The respected Abdullah Yusuf
appears to have understood this to mean "drive out" which is
incorrect. Indeed, he himself appears to have realized the
true meaning of the word in his translation, for example, of
Al-Naziat(79):13 where he translates "zajratun wahidah" as
"a single compelling cry" in his translation of how on the
Day of Judgment a single forceful cry will "awaken" the dead
to judgment. A derivation of this word, "Zajiran" used to be
used to describe fortune tellers because they used to raise
their voices in warning of impending peril to their clients,
by rising their voices in grim foreboding of terrible
danger. In this manner they would "rebuke" their clients
into taking preventative measures in order to avoid the
claimed foreseen fate. In a similar manner the people of
Noah (pbuh) would raise their voices against him in threats
of terrible retribution and bodily harm to him if he did not
immediately cease and desist from his preaching.
* Pharaoh's repentance in the face of
death? According to Sura 10:90-92, Pharaoh repented "in the
sight of death" and was saved. But Sura 4:18 says that such
a thing can't happen.
10:90-92 says that when Pharaoh was actually drowning and
his soul was now being taken, NOW he said "NOW
I repent and believe." However, the verse does not say that
"Pharaoh was saved" rather it says that Pharaoh's BODY
was saved and made a sign and warning for future
generations. Further, 4:18 does not say "that such a thing
can not happen," rather what it says is that forgiveness
from Allah shall not be given to those who wait until their
soul is coming out of their body and only then say
"NOW I repent" (like Pharaoh did). Forgiveness is
only for those who repent before death comes upon them. The
verses are:
"....till when drowning overtook him (Pharoah) he said
'I believe that there is no god but the One whom the
children of Israel believed in and I have submitted.' What,
now? After you had refused to believe before, and were of
the corrupters? So this day shall We deliver you in your
body that you may be a sign (admonition) to those after
you. And verily, many among mankind are heedless of Our
signs." Yunus(10):90-92
(Note: Dr. Maurice Bucaille has found salt water embedded
in the skin of one of the mummies in Egypt, suggesting that
this may indeed be the body of the Pharoah who drowned in
the sea but whose body was saved by God and left for us by
God as a sign.)
Quite the opposite to his claims, the above verse
regarding Pharoah is confirmed, not refuted, by the other
verses he has selected which states:
"But repentance is not for those who commit evil till
when death comes upon one of them he says 'Now I repent,'
nor for those who die while disbelievers. And for those We
have prepared a painful torment." Al-Nissa(4):18
Abrogation? "The words of the Lord are
perfect in truth and justice; there is NONE who can change
His words." [Sura 6:115] Also see 6:34 and 10:65.
But then Allah (Muhammad?) sees the need to exchange some of
them for "better ones" [Sura 2:106, 16:101]. And it
is not for ignorant people to question Allah because of such
practices!
Actually, if someone were to own a very valuable piece of
land and someone were to ask him to sell it to them, even
implying that he might be able to force him to sell it. He
might say: "I have made up my mind not to sell!. No one
can force me to change my mind!"
Now if another person were to attempt to do the same
thing, he might answer him: "I shall not sell! No one can
make me sell unless I myself choose to do so." Is this a
contradiction? In one place he said that "No one" can make
him sell, however in another he said that "he himself" can
do so. Is this a contradiction?
Secondly, the issue of abrogation is not reflective of an
indecisiveness of God, rather, it is a matter of mercy to
mankind. As mentioned in the hadeeth of the prophet's wife
Aisha (pbut), had God started out with the command to not
drink, not kill, not commit adultery, not steal, not lie,
not eat pork, pray five times, fast the month of Ramadan,
perform pilgrimage, etc. then not too many people would have
accepted His command and most of them would have been
destined for the fire. However, out of His mercy He
presented them with these regulations gradually.
The marines have a lofty goal they have set for
themselves; to build strong men of discipline and strength.
They do this by gradually increasing the pressure of
training they apply to their men with each passing day until
they are able to perform tasks they would have considered
impossible at the start. Had the recruits been required to
pass all of their tests on the first day then the vast
majority of them would fail. This is exactly how we raise
our children and teach them; out of mercy we do so
gradually, building them up slowly until they are able to
handle the difficult tasks. We do not start by overloading
our children with the most difficult obligations and tasks
and then reduce them as they grow older and become adults,
if their backs have not been broken first, till in the end
we require nothing of them at all.
This is indeed the goal of Islam; to generate a nation of
men and women who discipline themselves continuously
throughout the day and year to worship God, improve
themselves, improve their communities, and have faith in God
to assist them in their efforts. Indeed, God tells us in the
Qur'an to look at the signs He has left for us in the earth
and which guide us to recognize these basic facts. If
someone wants to increase their, strengthen their bodies,
lose weight, attain a raise or promotion, or achieve any
other useful then they need to
1) work for it,
2) increase one's efforts gradually so as to build up
tolerance and willpower,
2) have patience to contiand never give up,
3) never let their efforts end or else their achievements
will stagnate and reced.
Now, if the actual concept of abrogation is the issue
that is troubling this author then one needs to know how he
shall resolve all the issues of abrogation in the Bible. For
example, in the Bible we read:
Psalm 19:7-8: "The law of the LORD [is]
perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD
[is] sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of
the LORD [are] right, rejoicing the heart: the
commandment of the LORD [is] pure, enlightening the
eyes." and Deuteronomy 5:29: "O that there were such
an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my
commandments always, that it might be well with them, and
with their children for ever!" or Isaiah 24:5: "The
earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because
they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance,
broken the everlasting covenant." And Genesis 17:13-23:
"He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with
thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall
be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. ... And
Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all that were born in his
house, and all that were bought with his money, every male
among the men of Abraham's house; and circumcised the flesh
of their foreskin in the selfsame day, as God had said unto
him." and 1 Chronicles 16:16-17: "[Even of the
covenant] which he made with Abraham, and of his oath
unto Isaac; And hath confirmed the same to Jacob for a law,
[and] to Israel [for] an everlasting
covenant,"
Jesus (pbuh) did himself confirm the continuation of this
law of Moses(pbuh) till the end of time. In Matthew 5:17-19
we read:
"Think not that I (Jesus) am come to destroy the law,
or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one
jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till
all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of
these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall
be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever
shall do and teach [them], the same shall be called
great in the kingdom of heaven."
This is confirmed in Luke 16:17:
"And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than
one tittle of the law to fail." ..etc.
All of this was later abrogated by Paul with Galatians
3:13 "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law,
being made a curse for us" and Hebrews 8:13 "In that
he saith, A new [covenant], he hath made the first
old. Now that which decayeth and waxeth old [is]
ready to vanish away." and Romans 3:28 "Therefore we
conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds
of the law." And Romans 3:1 "What advantage then hath
the Jew? or what profit [is there] of circumcision?"
etc.
Note: All of the words of Paul (who never met Jesus in
the flesh) are refuted by James (who did meet him) in favor
of the words of Jesus (pbuh) as seen in James 2:14-26
To actually list all of the issues of law in the OT which
were abrogated in the NT would literally take many pages
just to list. Jews consider circumcision, the Sabbath,
refraining from non-Kosher food, etc. all capital issues in
their religion. Forsaking a single one would be equivalent
to corruption and heresy. Jesus (pbuh) himself confirmed the
continuation of their law and practices. So did James. Jesus
observed them steadfastly during his life on earth. After he
was raised up, Paul claimed to be receiving visions from
Jesus (pbuh), claimed to have converted from persecuting the
followers of Jesus to joining them (i.e. Galatians 1:13),
and then removed all of the law and commandments (i.e.
Romans 1:3), in spite of the fact that which Jesus (pbuh)
described anyone who would dare to do so as being called
"the least in the kingdom of heaven." In spite of this most
people today follow the words of Paul and not those of Jesus
(pbuh). Was Paul mistaken? Is abrogation wrong?
Dr. Arnold Meyer says: "If by Christianity we
understand faith in Christ as the heavenly Son of God, who
did not belong to earthly humanity, but who lived in the
divine likeness and glory, who came down from heaven to
earth, who entered humanity and took upon himself a human
form through a virgin, that he might make propitiation for
men's sins by his own blood upon the cross, who was then
awakened from death and raised to the right hand of God, as
the Lord of his own people, who believe in him, who hears
their prayers, guards and leads them, who will come again
with the clouds of heaven to judge the world, who will cast
down all the foes of God, and will bring his own people with
him unto the home of heavenly light so that they may become
like His glorified body - if this is Christianity, then such
Christianity was founded by St. Paul and not by our Lord"
Dr. Arnold Meyer, Professor of Theology, Zurich
University, Jesus or Paul, p. 122
Grolier's encyclopedia has the following to say under the
heading "Christianity": "After Jesus was crucified, his
followers, strengthened by the conviction that he had risen
from the dead and that they were filled with the power of
the Holy Spirit, formed the first Christian community in
Jerusalem. By the middle of the 1st century, missionaries
were spreading the new religion among the peoples of Egypt,
Syria, Anatolia, Greece, and Italy. Chief among these was
Saint Paul, who laid the foundations of Christian theology
and played a key role in the transformation of Christianity
from a Jewish sect to a world religion. The original
Christians, being Jews, observed the dietary and ritualistic
laws of the Torah and required non-Jewish converts to do the
same. Paul and others favored eliminating obligation, thus
making Christianity more attractive to Gentiles."
Abrogation according to Islam follows the general
guideline of "the only person who can abrogate a text is the
original speaker himself or one who is higher in authority."
This is the attitude of the Qur'an in this regard. Thus:
- Only the Qur'an can abrogate the Qur'an. In other
words, since no one is higher in authority than God
Himself, therefore, He is the only one who can abrogate
His words.
- The Qur'an and Sunnah can abrogate the Sunnah. In
other words, the only one who would be allowed to
abrogate the words of the prophet of God is either the
prophet of God or else the only one higher in authority
than him, namely, Allah Himself.
When contrasting this with the Bible we find the exact
opposite system. According to this system, the explicit
words of Jesus (pbuh) during his lifetime can be abrogated
by those lesser in authority than he, such as Paul. The
issue of Paul's cancellation of Jesus' confirmation of the
law of Moses is only one example of this system. Many others
can be found in the Bible.
Guiding to truth? "Say: 'God -
He guides to the truth; and which is worthier to be followed
...?" [Sura 10:35] But how much is left over of this
worthiness when we also read: "Allah leads astray whom he
pleases, and he guides whom He pleases, ..." [Sura
14:4]. And how do we know in which of Allah's categories
of pleasure we fall? How sure can a Muslim be that he is one
of those guided right and not one of those led astray?
This issue has already been touched upon in a previous
question. The concept of guiding and misguiding in Islam
is as follows: God guides to the truth. He presents the
signs of His presence and sends messengers to guide mankind.
He also is patient, merciful and forgiving. Anyone who sins
but repents before his death is forgiven and his sins passed
over. Allah also does not take people in their sins right
away, rather He provides sustenance and provisions for them
in this life in spite of their transgression and continues
to allow them to seek forgiveness or repent. Now, as we can
see, if someone in spite of all that insistson disbelieving
then in this case God gives him rope in order to do as he
wishes and transgress as he wish. He then imagines that God
can not take him, is unable to exact retribution, or does
not exist. He mistakes patience for weakness and this causes
hto emerse himself in further evil out of arrogance. This is
how God "misguides" him.
This is why we read the Qur'an such words as those found
in Al-Baqarah(2):26: "Verily, Allah is not ashamed to set
for a parable even of a mosquito or above it. As for those
who believed they know that it is the Truth from their Lord.
And as for those who disbelieved, they say: 'What did God
mean by this parable'? He misguides by way of it many and
guides by way of it many. And He misguides by it none but
those who have deviated(turned away)"
The actual word used is "Fasiqoon" meaning "trespassers"
in the sense of "one who has chosen to leave the straight
path which is lawful for him preferring to trespass beyond
the command of God." These are the people whom God misguides
by leaving them to become as immersed in misguidance as they
wish. Further detail of this process is given in a number of
verses, such as:
"Say: 'Whosoever is [immersed] in misguidance,
the Most Beneficent will extend [the rope] for him,
until, when they see that which they were promised, either
the torment or the Hour, then they shall know who is worst
in position and weakest in forces.'" The noble Qur'an,
Mariam(19):75
Since God guides whom He wills and misguides whom He
will, therefore we need to read more of the Qur'an in order
to find the criteria He uses to either guide or misguide.
For example:
"..and Allah does not guide those who disbelieve."
Al-Maidah(5):91
"..and Allah does not guide the transgressing
liers." Ghafir(40):28
"..and Allah does not guide the unjust folk."
Al-Bakarah(2):258
"..and Allah does not guide those who deviate."
Al-Maidah(5):108
"..and Allah does not guide those who are lying
disbelievers." Al-Zumar(39):3
Contrasted with:
"..Allah chooses for Himself whom He wills and guides
unto Himself he who is penitent." Al-Shura(25):13
"..As for those who strive hard in Us (Our cause), We
will surely guide them to Our paths. And verily, Allah is
with those who excel in good." Al-Ankaboot(29):69
..etc.
From all of this we see the that the criteria God has set
for Himself either to guide or to misguide is for the human
to start the process he or she chooses, then He facilitates
the completion of that person's choice. The basic message of
Islam is that Allah has placed us on this earth and given us
a free will in order that we can select for ourselves the
path which we choose. No one can force anyone else to be
guided and Allah does not force people to enter into heaven.
He could if He wanted to, just as He is able to force us to
come to judgment in the Hereafter. However, this life is a
test, and in all tests one needs to choose their own
destiny. He says:
"There is no compulsion in religion. Verily, guidance
is henceforth distinct from misguidance. Whosoever
disbelieves in all that is worshipped other than Allah, and
believes in Allah, then he has grasped the most trustworthy
handhold, there is no detachment for it. And Allah is
All-Hearer, All-Knower." Al-Baqarah(2):256
So here we have a detailed description of how He
misguides them. He does not start the process, however, he
gives them their free will and the freedom to chose their
destiny. If they chose to turn away then He does not force
them back to the truth, rather He allows them to transgress
as far as they wish against themselves, giving them as much
rope as they want. This is how He "misguides" them. Indeed
this is mentioned again, for example in Al-A'araf(7):179
where we read the description of them who were misguided and
entered Hellfire:
"they have hearts wherewith they understand not, they
have eyes wherewith they see not, and they have ears
wherewith they hear not. They are like cattle, rather they
are further astray; those! They are the heedless
ones."
A similar process is employed by the Almighty with those
who seek guidance. He does not force them into guidance,
however, if they start the process and follow the signs He
has sent down then He increases them in guidance. He says in
Muhammad(47):17:
"As for those who accept guidance, He increases their
guidance and bestows upon them their piety."
Other similar verses can be researched by the interested
student.
What is the punishment for adultery?
Flogging with a 100 stripes (men and women) [24:2],
"confine them to houses until death do claim them (lifelong
house arrest - for the women) [4:15]. For men: "If
they repent and amend, leave them alone" [4:16].
24:2 contradicts both the procedure for women and men in
Sura 4. And why is the punishment for women and men equal in
Sura 24 but different in Sura 4?
Al-Noor(24):2 is the punishment for unwed adulterers (men
and women both). If someone is unwed and performs adultery
then they are whipped 100 lashes and banished for one year.
This is described in detail by the prophet (pbuh) himself
in, for example, the Hadeeth of Abu-Hurairah and Zaid ibn
Khalid Al-Juhani (in the Sahihs of Bukhari and Muslim). On
the other hand, the verses of Al-Nissa(4):15-16 were an
early revelation in the early years of Islam and contain an
explicit condition at the end. They say "...until death
comes unto them or God ordains for them a
[different] path." This indeed occurred a number
of years later when God revealed this "other path" with the
new regulation of Al-Noor(24):2. This issue too can be
studied in the Hadeeth of the prophet (pbuh) narrated by
Ubadah ibn Al-Saamit (in the Musnad of Ahmad, 5/318).
Further, contrary to his claim, Al-Nissa(4):16 is speaking
about both men and women, not as he claims, only men. The
"dual" form of all verbs are used throughout. It says:
"And the two among you who are guilty thereof, punish
them both. But if they both repent and mend [their
ways] then leave them both alone. Verily! Allah is
Oft-Relenting, Most-Merciful."
A minority of commentators have suggested that this
verses applies to sodomites as suggested by Mujahid, and
this opinion appears to have been adopted by Yusuf Ali in
his translation. However the consensus in this matter is
that it refers to the adulterous partners, man and woman.
Nowhere in the original Arabic verse does the word "man" or
"men" appear. It only repeats the word "both" as seen in the
above translation. For more on this issue you may read
"Safwat Al-Tafaseer" by Muhammad Al-Sabooni.
* Will Christians enter Paradise or go to
Hell? Sura 5:69 says "Yes", Sura 5:72 (just 3 verses later)
says "No".
The first says that those who "believe in Allah," i.e.
became Muslims, shall be saved. This is explained in
sufficient detail by the proceeding verse, verse 68, which
requires them to first accept the Qur'an and "stand
straight" (Arabic: "Tuqeemoo") the Bible before they shall
be considered in possession of any portion of guidance.
Strange how the author of this list managed to side-step the
requirements that are presented and which first must be
present in them in order for them to be saved. All he reads
is the word "saved." The stipulation that they must first
follow the Qur'an is for some reason conveniently
disregarded.
So, what is meant by the condition "those who believed"?
Well, in case it is not obvious, it simply means to submit
to Allah and obey the commands of His messenger Muhammad
(pbuh). We find this spelled out in, for example,
Al-Hujurat(49):14 where we read:
"and the bedouins said: 'we believe.' Say [unto
them]: You have not yet believed, but say: We have
submitted. But belief has yet to enter into your hearts. But
if you obey Allah and His messenger (Muhammad) he will not
withhold from you aught of your deeds. Verily, Allah is
Oft-Forgiving, Most-Merciful."
So belief is the following of Allah and His messenger
Muhammad (pbuh).
The second verse presented, that of 5:72, contrasts those
who followed Muhammad (pbuh) and obeyed Allah with those who
did not believe in Allah, rather they said that Jesus (pbuh)
was a god, part of God, or in any way more than human. And
thus, thshall not be saved.
* God alone or also men? Clear or
incomprehensible? The Qur'an is "clear Arabic spe."
[16:103] Yet "NONE knows its interpretation, save
only Allah." [3:7]. Actually, "men of understanding
do grasp it." [3:7]
The short quotation from3:7 is not speaking about the
Qur'an in general, rather it is speaking about a special
class of verses, those that are deeper in meaning than
most and require deeper knowledge in Arabic speech and the
contexts of the verses than commonly available. Even at
that, the punctuation which is added to the English
translation of the meanings of the Qur'an is not present in
the original Arabic. A closer translation of the verse of
3:7 without the modern punctuation would be "yet none
knows its interpretation save Allah and those firm in
knowledge they say ..." Further, the fact that the
Qur'an is in clear Arabic does not require that all people
who may read it be proficient in Arabic, that their speech
be uncorrupted by slang or colloquialisms, that they all be
scholars of the language, or that they be familiar with the
contexts within which each verse was revealed. Those of
knowledge in these issues are the ones who can explain them
best.
Was Pharaoh Drowned or Saved when
chasing Moses and the Israelites? Saved [10:93],
drowned [28:40, 17:103, 43:55].
Pharaoh died in the sea. The verse of Yunus (10):92 says
that Pharaoh's BODY was saved and extracted
from the water so that it might be a sign for future
generations to the power of God. It seems strange how the
author of this list managed to skip the very word that
explains the verse and only narrate the portion of the verse
which will facilitate a desired "contradiction." Also, I
seem to remember this same author having some comments in
the past in one of the articles on his "Answering Islam"
homepage (I believe authored by Dr. Campbell whose opinions
we have already studied in the above question
on embryology) about the alleged unreliability of The
French physician, Dr. Maurice Bucaille's book "The Bible,
the Qur'an, and Science," and how it is supposedly so full
of errors. Anyone who had indeed read Dr. Bucaille's book
would have known what this verse says since Dr. Bucaille
goes into so much detail about this very issue and places so
much emphasis on the Qur'an's claim that the body of Pharaoh
was recovered and not left in the sea. This was a key issue
with him in his comparison of this statement with the
conditions of the mummified bodies of various pharaohs which
have been preserved in Egypt.
In any case, another "contradiction" down.
When Commanded Pharaoh the Killing of the
Sons? When Moses was a Prophet and spoke God's truth to
Pharaoh [40:23-25] or when he was still an infant
[20:38-39]?
Pharaoh issued this decree twice. The first decree was
issued by him in an effort to try and prevent the birth of
the one who would cause his downfall. The second decree was
issued for a completely different reason after Moses (pbuh)
grew up, became a messenger, and then showed Pharaoh the
signs of Allah. The slave workers, the Jews, began to rally
around him. In order to prevent a revolt he ordered a mass
slaughter of their children in order to bring them back in
line and, as he saw it, to put them back in their place.
What do we expect from Pharaoh? He was a tyrant. This is
how he dealt with his problems, by killing people. Why is it
so hard to believe that he might have done this more than
once? In the Bible we read in Matthew 8:6-13 that Jesus
(pbuh) cured a centurion's servant who was sick with the
"palsy." However, in Matthew 9:2-7 we read that he cured a
completely different man from the "palsy" in a completely
different location. Obviously this is a "contradiction,"
right? Jesus can't possibly have performed such a wondrous
miracle TWICE.
In the Qur'an we read that Moses (pbuh) brought no less
than nine signs before Pharaoh, however, each time Pharaoh
would say: "pray to your lord to lift this plague and I
shall submit and deliver the Jews to you." However, each
time Moses (pbuh) would do so he would go back on his word.
Obviously, according to the above logic, Pharaoh could not
have done this nine different times. They must
be nine "contradictions," right?
When/how are the fates determined? "The
night of power is better than a thousand months. The angels
and spirit descend therein, by the permission of their Lord,
with all decrees." [97:3,4] "Lo! We revealed it on a
blessed night." [44:3] To Muslims, the "Night of
Power" is a blessed night on which fates are settled and on
which everything relating to life, death, etc., which occurs
throughout the year is decreed. It is said to be the night
on which Allah's decrees for the year are brought down to
the earthly plane. In other words, matters of creation are
decreed a year at a time. Contradicting this, Sura 57:22
says, "No affliction befalls in the earth or in your selves,
but it is in a Book before we create it." This means it is
written in the Preserved Tablet, being totally fixed in
Allah's knowledge before anyone was created. All of the
above is contradicted by "And every man's fate We have
fastened to his own neck." This says that man alone is
responsible for what he does and what happens to him.
[17:13]
You have managed to mix two different topics together.
First of all, Al-Dukhan(44):3 speaks about the descent of
the Qur'an, not about God's decrees. It is well known to all
Muslims that the Qur'an was sent down to the lowest heaven
(sky) in "Bayt Al-Izzah" on the "Night of Decree" (not "the
night of power" as it is often erroneously translated). From
there it was revealed to Muhammad (pbuh) piecemeal, a bit at
a time, as the situation warranted. This continued until it
was completed. Anyone who would simply back up to the
previous verse would see that this verse is speaking about
the Qur'an since that verse says: "[God swears
by] the manifest book (the Qur'an) that makes things
clear. Indeed We sent it down in a blessed
night...."
This is once again confirmed in Al-Baqarah(2):185:
"The month of Ramadan in which was sent down the Qur'an,
a guidance for mankind ......"
The Qur'an was revealed a piece at a time in response to
the allegations and challenges of the disbelievers and in
order to strengthen the Prophet (pbuh). The Qur'an says in
Al-Furqan(25):32: "And those who disbelieved said: 'Why
is not the Qur'an revealed to him all at once?' Thus, that
we may strengthen your heart thereby, .."
In other words, this method is more conducive of your
experiencing the support of your Lord for you so that you
can be confident of your message. When you need His support
He brings it to you at that time and He is always close by.
This method is a little more intimate and closer in support
to the prophet (pbuh) than to simply hand him the Qur'an and
say "You are on your own. If they ask you something then
look it up."
The next verse continues in this theme with the words:
"...and they do not bring you a similitude but We reveal
to you the Truth and a better explanation thereof."
This issue is dealt with in sufficient detail in such
books as "Tafser ibn Katheer" with the relevant supporting
sayings of prophet Muhammad (pbuh) in this regard, so there
is no need to get into further detail here.
Once again, in Al-Qadar(97):1, the verse is speaking
about the descent of the Qur'an to "Bayt Al-Izzah" in the
lowest heaven, from where it was later slowly revealed to
the prophet. All of this is very basic information which can
be found in any number of fundamental Islamic references.
They do not require a whole lot of searching.
Now, regarding a Muslim's belief with regard to God's
decrees, they are as follows:
A Muslim is told that God forces no one to do anything.
They are given a free will as well as the faculties and
facilities needed to implement that will. Thus, they are the
only one's responsible for their actions. However, God is
also Omniscient. He knows everything before it happens and
He forgets nothing. He has complete and perfect knowledge.
"Anwith Him are the keys of the unknown, none knows them
but He. And He knows what is in the land and the seas, ano
leaf falls but He knows it, nor is there a grain in the
darknesses of the earth nor anything fresh nor dry but is in
a Clear Record" Al-Anaam(6):59
T, just as one of us, if he were able to go back in time,
would be able to write about the future exactly as it would
occur but without himself having forced anyone iany action,
similarly, God knows everyone and everything perfectly and
has recorded all things but without having Himself
forced anyone to perform actions of belief or
disbelief.
Now, after God wrote all things in the Preserved Tablet,
then He gave all human two angels to accompany them
throughout their lives. These two angels were given this
man's book of deeds and decrees. In it is written his
provision, and his life span, etc., and then his deeds too
are recorded as he performs them. The book of deeds
continues to be updated until this human dies. It is then
closed and on the day of Judgment it is handed to him so
that he can see the complete record of his actions, however,
God's perfect knowledge as preserved and recorded in the
Preserved Tablet never changes.
Wine: Good or bad? Strong drink and ...
are only an infamy of Satan's handiwork. [5:90, also
2:219]. Yet on the other hand in Paradise are rivers of
wine [47:15, also 83:22,25]. How does Satan's
handiwork get into Paradise?
The reward of paradise contains rewards the like of which
no eye has seen not has any ear heard not has ever occurred
upon the hearts of humanity (Hadeeth Qudsi. Also read
Al-Sajdah(32):17).
In the face of such bliss, how do you tell people what
awaits them? You give them descriptive terms that bring the
issues closer to their understanding. For example,
Muhammad(47):15 describes the water of Heaven as never
putrefying, the milk as never changing in taste (going
sour), etc. In a similar fashion, the wine of Paradise does
not contain the very ingredient which has made it prohibited
in this life. Specifically, intoxicants. You can read the
confirmation of this, for example, in Al-Saffat(37):45-47,
or Al-Wakiah(56):19.
In the USA it is a crime to drink beer then drive. The
wisdom behind this law is that it impairs judgment. Does
this mean that if one were to drink "rootbeer" or "ginger
ale" then the law will stand? Of course not. Why? Because
they are not "intoxicants." The prohibition in Islam is
because of the "intoxicating" action and not because of the
name. If someone were to create a new kind of beer and
choose not to call it "beer" but to name it "Zima," would
this make it lawful to drink it then drive? No, the name has
no bearing on the law, it is only the intoxicating action
which is at issue. If it is present then it is unlawful, if
it is not then it is lawful, regardless of the name. This is
the same as the law of Islam. In Islam the name does not
matter, it is the intoxicants which make it prohibited, be
it named "beer," "wine," "alcohol," "heroin," "whiskey,"
"marijuana," or whatever.
Will all Muslims go to Hell?
Mariam(19):71 is described by the prophet (pbuh) and also
by the companions ibn Masood and Sulaiman ibn Murrah among
others. The verse is a description of how all mankind shall
have to pass over Hellfire upon the "sirat" (path) in order
to reach Heaven. Only the pious make it across. The prophet
(pbuh) was quoted by the Companion Sulaiman ibn Murrah as
saying that for the pious this traversal shall not harm them
since God shall make it safe for them just as He made the
fire of earth safe for prophet Abraham (pbuh). This
traversal shall be at speeds directly proportional to that
person's piety and obedience on earth, with some of them
passing as fast as lightning, some as fast as a swift wind,
some running, some walking, some crawling, etc. All of this
information can be found in various hadeeths of the
prophet.
Who is the father of Jesus?
The author of this list attempts here to piece together a
claim from the Qur'an that even though God specifically
declares many times throughout it that Jesus (pbuh) is not
His son and that this claim is a blasphemy of the worst
kind, still, he thinks that if he tries heard enough he
might be able to claim that through implication it might be
possible for the dedicated student to make the Qur'an "hint"
at endorsing what it explicitly refutes and warns against in
many places. But he is measured in his approach. He covers
all bases first. He starts by saying "Is Jesus the son of
Allah? The Qur'an says no." which he then follows up
with his implication that in spite of this, still, the
Qur'an might still leave the door open for the exact
opposite of its explicit claims to be true. In this manner,
he attempts to leave himself the room he shall need to
maneuver if anyone simply points to God's continuous and
repeated explicit refutations of the claim that Jesus (pbuh)
is his son. In this case, he can simply say "I already
said that the Qur'an says 'no'." However, he then goes
on to imply that such a simple matter as the God's explicit
condemnation does not necessarily mean that He really means
it. He attempts to justify this position with the following
words:
"1) Allah caused Mary to become pregnant with
Jesus.
2) Allah determined some of the physical
characteristics of Jesus
3) All of the genetic characteristics of Jesus
were determined by just two parties: Allah and
Mary"
From these claims he manages to convince himself that he
has managed to make the Qur'an hint at endorsing what it
explicitly condemns.
It is interesting to notice that in two previous
question he objected very
strenuously to any claims where the angels are described as
being responsible for "taking a person's soul" or
"protecting humans." In those cases he insisted that the
angels themselves must be responsible for this act in total
independence of God and would not allow their simply being
vicegerents of God or tools of God in the implementation of
His will. That was the only way he could generate a
"contradiction" in those two cases. By making their wills
independent or above that of God rather than being a result
or outgrowth of God's command and will. However, in this
case, suddenly he is fully able and willing to understand
and even accept the fact that angels are only the tools of
God which He uses to implement His will, since his
insistence on his previous stance would have required that
in this case he would need to claim that it was "angel
Gabriel and Mary" who were responsible for the birth of
Jesus (pbuh) and not his current claim of "God and Mary."
This is because the Qur'an tells us that it was the angel
Gabriel who "blew" into Mary (pbuh). I suppose that he could
probably fix this problem by claiming that angel Gabriel is
Jesus' father and that this will now prove another
"contradiction" with any verses which claim that God created
Jesus (pbuh) without any father whatsoever.
According to such "logic," we need to wonder that since
God "determined all of the physical characteristics" of Adam
(pbuh) and that "All of the genetic characteristics" of Adam
were also determined by only one party, God, therefore, does
the Qur'an also "hint" that Adam is God's son? Does the
Qur'an now contain claims that are "entirely consistent"
with God being both Adam's father and his mother? It appears
that this would be an entirely acceptable and logical way to
prove this claim in this author's eyes. It does not matter
what the verses explicitly say, those claims are far to
uncomfortable and hindersome to the desired goal. Far better
to try and give them "hidden" meanings so that they can be
bent and tortured into endorsing his preconceived beliefs
regardless of what they explicitly say.
It is strange that this is indeed the very way he
attempts to prove that the Bible claims that Jesus (pbuh) is
God. Through "hints" and "implications." Indeed, he is
incorrect in assuming that God only determined "some of" the
genetics or characteristics of Jesus (pbuh). The fact of the
matter is that God determines ALL of the genetics
acharacteristics of ALL humans. Read for example
A'al-Umran(3):6, Al-Infitar(82):8, Ghafi(40):64,
Al-Wakiah(56):58, or Fatir(35):11.
If I design and build a car, this means that I have
determined its "characteristics" or "genetics," that they
were all determined by m, and that I am responsible for
causing the plant to produce (become "pregnant with") this
car. If I then proclaim many times quite explicitly that
"I am not the fatherof this car, rather, I simply
designed and built it. It and the plant which produced it
are both vastly inferior to me," then will the author of
this list manage to completely side-step my explicit words
to manage to "imply" that in his view it is "entirely
consistent with these words to consider the designer of the
car to be the car's father"? But if someone is bent on
making a book say the exact opposite of what it explicitly
declares then I suppose such a small issue as its explicit
wording shall not be a big hindrance to the attainment of
that goal. Oh well.
Contradictions in the Qur'an
Christian Answers to Islam home page
Last edited: November 30, 1996
Final Comments
Now that we have studied all of the evidence the author
of this list has managed to collect, either by himself or
with the aid of a number of other men sympathetic to his
cause, and have responded point-by-point to each and every
allegation in his list, now we need to draw attention to the
fact that he is by far not the first person to ever attempt
to undertake the task of single-handedly finding what no
scholar in 1400 years has been able to discover. He shall
not be the last. Many more prominent scholars of
Christianity have tried this in the past and failed. Some of
them have been exposed in public debates and others have in
the end converted to Islam. For example, one very popular
champion of this cause is the Doctor of Divinity by the name
of Pfander, a 19th century leader of the
Christian missionaries to India while it was under the
occupation of the British. Even to this day he is quoted by
some of his followers in an attempt to prove the very same
claim of contradiction in the noble Qur'an. His arguments
are reproduced by these people without the slightest
realization of the fact that the good Doctor himself was
unable during his lifetime to defend his own claims. I have
in the past had people zealously present me with copies of
the good D.D.'s book not realizing that during his lifetime
his book was refuted in detail by a number of Muslim
scholars such as Al-Kairanvi Al-Hindi in his book "Izhar ul
Haqq" which has been translated into English and is widely
available today. They further do not realize that the good
D.D. was invited to a five day public debate in Calcutta
India with Al-Kairanvi which has been preserved for
posterity in the Indian archives. The debate was originally
scheduled to continue for five days and to discuss five
different topics (tampering, abrogation, the Trinity, the
origins of the Qur'an, and the prophethood of Muhammad,
pbuh). However, after only two days, the day the issue of
the Trinity was to be discussed, the good D.D. withdrew from
this public debate refusing to continue. Al-Kairanvi was
subsequently so severely persecuted by the occupying British
forces that he was forced to flee the country. This is how
such men managed to 'prove' their case and these are the
sorts of men whom people regard as champions of Islam
bashing and quoted by many modern authors.
On other occasions the very Christians who have set out
to discover contradictions in the noble word of God, the
Qur'an, have in the end been influenced exactly opposite to
their original expectations. For example, the
Christian Professor Abraham
Filibus had managed to cultivate such severe disdain and
hatred for all Muslims over his lifetime that he resolved to
study the Qur'an in detail and publish an all-inclusive list
of contradictions that would be the be-all end-all word on
this issue. He had in the past had strong ties to the
American military in World War II and had written a number
of books critical of Islam. This final project was to be the
crowning achievement of his career. Unlike our current
author, this man was very well acquainted with the Arabic
language and did his utmost to apply this knowledge towards
his desired end. Within his capacity as representative of
the Church of England, a missionary to the Muslims of Egypt,
and in association with the coordinated efforts of the
American, Swiss, and German Churches, he dedicated himself
to this task for a full five years beginning in 1955 through
1959. Five years later, after continuous and dedicated study
of this issue he converted on Christmas day of 1959 to Islam
and changed his name to Ibraheem Khaleel Ahmed. He has since
published over fifteen books on this topic of the true
prophethood of Muhammad (pbuh) and the evidence of Church
tampering with the Bible. He has also held numerous debates
with many Christian missionaries and clergymen on this and
other topics over the last few decades. When people
are balanced and objective in their study of God's words in
the noble Qur'an God guides them to it's truth,
extinguishing the hatred they find in their hearts with the
light of guidance and virtue.
".. Say: It (the Qur'an) is a for those who believe a
guidance and healing. And as for those who disbelieve it is
a heaviness (deafness) in their ears, and it is a blindness
upon them. They are those who are called from a place far
removed (so they neither hear nor understand)" The noble
Qur'an, Fatir (41):44.
By the will of the Almighty Creator and Sustainer of the
Universe, this article has been completed. In it every one
of the claimed contradictions in the words of God has been
refuted. The criteria and guidelines followed in this
refutation were the following:
- All claims were answered and not only "one or two" or
"most" of them.
- The reader was not told "there is a book out there
that has the answer, go find it and read it." If one can
not put the information found in a given book to good use
in providing concrete answers then simply quoting titles
of books will not do us much good.
- All replies were based upon information which can be
found in the sources of Islamic law, the Qur'an and the
Hadeeth.
- No baseless suppositions were adopted by adding
narrative details which were not found in the text simply
based upon "MAYBE if I add the following details not
found in the text then I can try and harmonize the
issue." The only time any assumptions were made was when
they were obvious and warranted due to the fact that
those assumptions were the norm and to be expected, such
as assuming that prophet Lot's ministry lasted more than
a few minutes.
Assumptions are two kinds:
those which are the exception and those which are the rule.
For example, if I am told that a man is walking then I shall
assume that his legs are moving. This is the "rule." This is
the "norm." The assumption is warranted in this case since
it would be very strange to have someone walk without moving
his legs.
The other type of assumption is the "exception to the
rule." So if I am told that someone is walking and I
"assume" that he is ALSO eating an ice-cream bar then
I have made an unwarranted assumption based upon no other
evidence but my own personal whims.
Contrast this with one who tries to harmonize the many
and varied problems with the conflicting accounts of the
resurrection by saying:
"It is quite possible that much of the confusion about
these trivial facts stems from the fact that many women went
to the tomb that morning (Luke 24:10). its possible, at the
very least, that a group of women came to the tomb, and saw
that the stone had been rolled away. Some women went inside,
but the more timid remained outside. Those inside saw the
vision of the two angels, while those outside saw the angel
on the stone."
In this manner, we make it
possible for one Gospel to claim that only one woman went
(John 20:1), but another to claim that three went (Mark
16:1) and another to claim that two went (Matt 28:1), and
for one to claim that one angel was present (Matt. 16:2),
while another claims that two were present (Luke 23:4), and
another claims that initially there were no angels but a
trip to Peter was first pand only upon the return were two
angels found and they were seen by threcompletely different
people (John 20:1-6), and also to claim that the women were
afraand spoke to no one (Mark 16:8), while the women were at
the same time not afraid and spoke openly (Luke 23:9), while
it was only one woman who spoke but in this case thangel had
still not been seen (John 20:2), and in one there is an
earthquake, the descent of an angel from heaven and the
rolling of the stone all in the presence of the women, and
all of which terrified them (Matt 16:2-7), while in another
the angel was already there and sitting on a rock when they
came in and there is no mention of any earthquakes etc., the
women simply found the stone moved and walked right in(Mark
16:5), and in one the angel is sitting on the stone outside
the sepulcher(Matt. 28:2), while in another two angels are
sitting not on the stone outside but inside the sepulcher
where the stone would not fit (John 20:12) while in yet
another the angel is once again sitting inside the sepulcher
but now there is only one angel not two sitting inside (Mark
16:5) and finally in yet another version there are two
angels but now they are not sitting but standing outside
(Luke 24:4) ....etc. All of this is done by adding details
not found anywhere in the text and which can by no stretch
of the imagination be considered to be "obvious assumptions"
and still, the explanation does not sit well. Why? Let us
only look at only one basic problem with the above
attempts:
Let us take the example of the OJ Simpson trial where one
reporter was allowed in the court room and all of the others
had to get their "feeds" or information from him. Let us
then assume that the cameras went out and all of the
reporters had to get their accounts of what happened today
from this one solitary reporter. Four newspaper reporters
will then come to a joint conference and ask this one
witness what happened. After this conference is over then
all four will go write their stories.
Now let us compare this with the narrations of the
Gospels. All four of the Gospel writers were not present at
the alleged resurrection. All four of them allegedly got
their information through the Holy Ghost who was
theoretically guiding the hands of each Gospel writer in
writing their accounts of the exact same occurrence.
However, this one witness, the Holy Ghost, appears to have
found it necessary to give each author he "inspired" a
different version of many of the details of the same story.
Keeping in mind that in the first three centuries C.E. there
was no such thing as the "New Testament" we have today (Read
chapter
two of "What
Did Jesus Really Say?"), and all Christians simply
followed their one "gospel," such as the "the Gospel of
Thomas," or "the Gospel of John" or "the Shepherd of
Hermas," etc. then we begin to see how these very first
Christians would have each had a vastly different account of
exactly what happened in a given situation. It was only
after the Church finally selected which "Gospels" it wanted
to include in its list of "inspired" books and destroyed the
rest, at the same time "fixing" their chosen texts, only
then did we get the book we know today as the New Testament
which still needs a broad measure of latitude in adding
details and disregarding "difficulties" in order to
harmonize the conflicting accounts which the original
authors never intended to be placed on the same footing as
anyone else's writings.
Groliers encyclopedia says under the heading "New
Testament, canon":
"The process by which the canon of the New Testament
was formed began in the 2d century, probably with a
collection of ten letters of Paul. Toward the end of that
century, Irenaeus argued for the unique authority of the
portion of the Canon called the Gospels. Acceptance of the
other books came gradually. The church in Egypt used more
than the present 27 books, and the Syriac-speaking churches
fewer. The question of an official canon became urgent
during the 4th century. It was mainly through the influence
of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, and because Jerome
included the 27 books in his Latin version of the Bible
called the Vulgate, that the present canon came to be
accepted.."
Now, it may indeed be possible for someone to narrate the
conflicting accounts in such a sequence as to make them
harmonize with one-another without contradiction. If someone
could do that then they can claim the $2000 "Easter
Challenge" prize. However, far too many well known
Christian scholars have tried to explain away the
discrepancies and failed for me to hold out any great hope
of anyone coming up with anything new. Actually, Mr. Barker
has gone out of his way to make confronting this challenge
as simple as possible by even allowing the respondent to add
additional narrative details to the story which can not be
verified from the text of the Bible. In any case, the door
is not closed and all that is needed is to fit the pieces
together in such a way as to generate a non-contradictory
narrative. The author of this list is encouraged to muster
all of his friends and then collect all his explanations
into one narrative with their assistance, submit their
answer and then post the reward check on his web site, thus
forever silencing all tongues and exonerating the Church
from the affirmation that they have extensively tampered
with this story (among many others).
We are constantly told by the apologists that "there are
many books out there that have completely resolved all
contradictions in the Bible, their titles are..." And then
the reader is comforted by the fact that although we still
do not have the answers, still, it "must" be out there and
"someone" appears to have answered it. They want us to
believe that they Church at no time ever intentionally
tampered with the Bible or ever intentionally
changed it's text, resulting in the side effect of
discrepancy. Even when they do tackle the problem with
concrete explanations, even then, the method employed is to
reduce every ten discrepancies to only one or two, and then
quickly "explain" these hoping that the reader does not know
about the other eight which contradict this explanation. In
reality however, when someone is actually courageous enough
to try and quote these explanations we find them to be
anything but convincing. I do not mean to be disrespectful,
however, one can not defend the indefensible. Many very
highly respected and esteemed members of the Church have
publicly admitted that the Church
has changed the text of the Bible, many times, and many
Christians openly admit this fact. Some of these men were
quoted in the beginning of this article. The evidence is
simply to overwhelming to ignore. Unless one is simply
willing to blindly trust the Church, blindly curse all
Muslims, blindly label any and all Christian scholars or
clergymen who admit Church tampering as despicable lowly
heathen, and blindly continue to repeat a given excuse even
when it is shown to be unworkable, then it is necessary to
begin to try and move on, accept this basic fact, and try
and find out the reasons why the Church felt it necessary to
tamper with the text of the Bible in order that we might be
able to distill the original message of Jesus (pbuh) from
all of the "trim" added by the Church during the "Dark
Ages." This is the only way one can truthfully claim to have
indeed searched for the truth of God and His guidance and
not allowed the blind pursuit of what is "popular" to cloud
their judgment.
Three days and three nights: The
"Explanation."
Once again, another example of the techniques employed in
order to try and to harmonize the problem with Jesus'
alleged ultimate
challenge to the Jews, the "three days and three nights
in the earth" challenge. Since the actual time perioonly
works out to one day and two nights (Friday night, Saturday
morning, Saturday night) therefore, they say: "Orientals
reckon any part of a day as a whole day. Thus, onewhole and
two parts of a day, along with two nights, would be
popularly styled as three days and three nights."
Muslims are told in the Qur'an that Jesus never claimed
to be God, divine, or destined to die and be resurrected for
the sins of mankind. On the other hand, we are told in the
Bible that Jesus (pbuh) issued an "ultimate challenge" to
the Jews which would be his be-all end-all proof of
truthfulness to them. We are told that He told them that he
would only be showing them the "three days and three nights"
miracle (Matthew 12). We are also told in the Bible that
after Jesus (pbuh) was claimed to have been in the ground
and then came back to life after three days then he could no
longer die or be killed by the Jews. He no longer had
anything to fear from them(Romans 6:9). Yet he still refused
to show himself to him to establish the validity of this
claimed greatest challenge and he only showed himself to his
closest disciples. Church scholars have struggled with this
conundrum for many centuries. One of the theories put forth
is that Jesus' refusal to show himself to his enemies in
fulfillment of his ultimate challenge was "so
that they would not be smitten with blindness.."?
etc. However, this is not the only problem with this
picture.
It is an accepted fact with the Church that Jesus (pbuh)
was crucified on "Good Friday" (i.e. Mark 15:42). It is
further an accepted fact with them that this was done very
late on Friday just before nightfall since the Jews were in
a great hurry to break his legs so that he would die quickly
from suffocation and they could take his body down before
the night of the Sabbath (Friday night) would fall (John
19:31). Their frantic race against time in this regard tells
us that night fall was so close upon them that they didn't
know if they would be able to kill him and get him down off
the cross before God's curse fell upon them and their land
(Deut. 21:22-23). So in the best of situations Jesus was
taken down just before nightfall on Friday. He still needed
to be properly buried. We also read in the Bible that when
the woman (or women) came to the sepulcher early Monday
morning while it was still dark (John 20:1),
the tomb was already empty and the stone rolled away. This
means that Jesus (pbuh) left sometime before dawn on
Saturday. This sums up to two nights and one day. Even if we
were to be generous and consider the last remnants of Friday
to be a "full" day, and we consider his being "off the
cross" equivalent to being "in the ground," then this still
only works out to two days and two nights.
This problem is resolved, as seen above, by strange and
torturous manipulations first by completely "forgetting"
the number of nights altogether, then by trying to make
this period "a few minutes on Friday and all of Saturday" to
be three days. Why then, if parts of a day can be considered
a whole day, do we not claim that Jesus (pbuh) was actually
in the ground for four or five or even six days? If a part
of a day is the exact same thing as a day, and we are given
the freedom to manipulate time as we see fit then let us
make this one day and two nights "forty days and forty
nights" by splitting Saturday into forty parts. Why not?
There is nothing in the text to prevent it. Notice how the
text is tortured through bending and warping to submit to
the teachings of the Church while kicking and screaming?
Further, notice that we are speaking about what is
claimed to be Jesus' greatest, and only, challenge to the
Jews for all time (Matt. 12:39-40). If Jesus (pbuh) had
indeed issued this challenge and it was not a later
insertion of the Church then would we not expect Jesus
(peace be upon him) to go out of his way to establish it as
completely and fully as possible so that his enemies would
have no excuses or room to maneuver in rejecting him?
Assume that I challenge my life-long rival to a
"pumpkin-pie and turkey eating contest" and tell him "I can
eat three pumpkin pies and three turkeys in three minutes."
Further assume that my rival tells me "If you can do that
then I shall pay you $10,000 and admit in front of everyone
that you are a better man than me." Now, if I am truly able
to fulfill my promise, and it did indeed come from me and
was not a fabrication which I did not say, then would it be
logical to assume that I would then be happy to only eat
"two turkeys, one pie, and perhaps one bite from the other
two pies"? Would my rival happily accept "one bite" as being
equivalent to "a whole pie"? Would he consider two turkeys
the same as three? Would he pay the money and admit defeat?
If I was "able" to eat the whole of the first and last pies
and the third turkey would I not do it? Further, if in
addition to not eating all of first and last pies and the
third turkey, I also hid in my home while eating the ones
which I was indeed able to eat and did not let my rival see
me then would this not be defeating the purpose?
According to Islam, Jesus (pbuh), like all prophets
before him, was very pious and dedicated to his task. He was
very keen on getting all of his followers (in this case the
Jews) to accept his message and follow him in the obedience
of God. If he had any tool which he could use towards this
end he would not hesitate to use it completely and fully in
order to ensure their repentance and salvation. Any claim to
the contrary would not be accepted by a Muslim. Any claim
that he was untruthful would not be accepted by us. Why
then, if he is the one who said these words and not the
Church, did he not simply wait a little longer in his grave
in order to not leave any way out for his enemies? Why also
did he not even show himself to them after leaving the
sepulcher but only showed himself to his own disciples?
Indeed these very problems have driven some members of
the Church to come up with a new theory. That of "Good
Wednesday." But even this theory does not fix the problem,
it only generates a set of new ones in place of the old
ones, such as the opposition of this theory to all of the
verses which display the Jew's eagerness to get Jesus (pbuh)
off the cross before the Sabbath, etc.
What is God's central message to mankind in
Islam?
But how critical is all of this to the basic message of
Islam? Is it true as this author keeps trying to convince us
that Islam is based upon claims of corruption of the Old and
New Testament and this is the basic message of Islam? Far
from it. The true basic message of Islam is "monotheism" and
the worship of God (Christianity: "The Father") alone. All
else derives from this central concept. The truth is
that:
- Islam is a universal message to atheists,
Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, and all of the
rest of mankind. To attempt and make one of these groups
central to the call of Islam and more important than the
rest is to display severe ignorance of its teachings. To
give just one example, atheism is far more a central
issue in the Qur'an than is Christianity. Does this mean
that Christianity is not important? No. It only means
that one should try and display a degree of objectivity
and restraint before trying to restrict Islam to being a
message to his solitary group and no one else.
"We (Allah) have not sent you (O Muhammad) but as a
universal [Messenger] to all mankind, giving them
glad tidings, and warning them, but most of mankind
understand not." The noble Qur'an, Saba(24):38
- It is also far from true that Islam's message to
Christianity is simply based upon claims of corruption.
While this may indeed be an important consideration and
should not be disregarded since so many Christian
scholars, Doctors of Divinity, Dictionaries, Church
proclamations, and official Church encyclopedias all
admit this fact and admit quite openly that the Church
had been tampering quite extensiveand contwith the Bible
over the last few centuries, still, it is very deceptive
to try and claim ththis is the main issue that Muslims
contend with their Christian neighbors. The real issue is
that of monotheism, the
"oneness of God." Indeed, when my personal email mailbox
first was flooded with challenge after challenge to
debate this author on any topic, this was indeed the very
topic I chose. I did not demand that he prove that the
Church has never tampered with the Bible, rather my
request was much simpler than that. I very simply asked
him to prove from anywhere in the Bible that Jesus (pbuh)
ever said "worship me" or "I am God" or where anyone at
all in any verse of the Bible from cover to cover ever
taught the concept of the Trinity. If this concept came
from Jesus (pbuh) or from God and not from the Church
then it would not be asking too much to ask that he
simply show me where the Bible says this and then I shall
be satisfied that the one who is propagating this belief
is indeed more devoted to the following of Jesus (pbuh)
and God than the men of the Church. Further, I never
refused to accept even "implicit" quotations in this
regard where Jesus (pbuh) might happen to be "hinting"
that he is God or that he want's to be worshipped, or
where God is "hinted" at being a Trinity. Indeed, the
vast majority of the verses presented by him in this
regards were all of this "implicit" nature. To now come
back, after all that has transpired, to claiming that the
whole message of Islam is based simply upon a search for
"corruption in the Bible" is highly deceptive.
Many people who attempt to debate Muslims on this the
above topic of monotheism try to simply claim that Muslim
"do not understand" who it is that Christians worship or who
God is. I have even see much more of this in a number of
links pointed to from the "Answering Islam" web page. All of
this is based upon misrepresentation of both what Muslims as
well as what the Church says in this regard. Their error is
multifaceted:
- I have seen many of these men when they read that the
Qur'an says "they have indeed disbelieved who say God
is the third of three.." they then go on to try and
claim that they did not say this. First of all, we need
to remember that when the Qur'an refers to "God" it is
referring to the one whom the Christians refer to as "the
Father." The apologists try and maneuver around this by
trying to make the word "Allah"(God) in the Qur'an refer
to a "Trinity" so that they can make their claims. This
is quite obvious to anyone who has the slightest
knowledge of the teachings of the Qur'an since they will
know that it condemns as blasphemy any and all claims
that anyone else is a god, or that God has a son, or that
anyone else is a god "with" God ..etc. The Qur'an also
repeats many times not only that "God" is "Wahid"
(English: One), however, it also tells us that he is
"Ahad" and "Fard" meaning that He is indivisible and not
consisting of sub-parts, or sub-gods making up a single
God. As we shall in the next point, the Church did
indeed make this claim and those who wish to
challenge Muslims to a debate on this issue should at
least first be willing to be honest in this regard and
debate that which is "different" between the two beliefs
rather than trying to force the Qur'an to teach Church
beliefs while at the same time backing out of their own
official definition, and then base all arguments on this
unsound ground.
- Secondly, now that we see what the Qur'an means by
"God" and we are ready to understand any and all
references to "God" in the Qur'an to mean in Christian
terminology "the Father" now we need to study the claim
of these apologists that they do not say that "the Father
is the third of three" etc. They tell us that they do not
say this and that Muslims simply do not understand "who"
God is or what their mental picture of God is, and so
forth. In actuality it is the Christians I have
spoken to who display the severest dismay at this concept
and can not fathom its illogical nature. But in order to
remain objective when claiming that something is a belief
of Christianity I have always done my best to always
quote the Church or leading Christian scholars in this
regard. So let us do so again. The very first official
Church definition of "God" as being a "Trinity" was
weaved together in the council of Nicea in the year 325
C.E. For those who claim that it is Muslims who lyingly
say these things let us simply quote from this official
definition. It reads:
"Whoever wishes to be saved
must, above all, keep the Catholic faith. For unless a
person keeps this faith whole and entire he will
undoubtedly be lost forever. This is what the Catholic
faith teaches: we worship one God in the Trinity and the
Trinity in unity. We distinguish among the persons, but
we do not divide the substance. For the Father is a
distinct person; the Son is a distinct person; and the
Holy Spirit is a distinct person. Still the Father and
the Son and the Holy Spirit have one divinity, equal
glory, and coeternal majesty. What the Father is, the Son
is, and the Holy Spirit is. The Father is uncreated, the
Son is uncreated, and the Holy Spirit is uncreated. The
Father is boundless, the Son is boundless, and the Holy
Spirit is boundless. The Father is eternal, the Son is
eternal, and the Holy Spirit is eternal. Nevertheless,
there are not three eternal beings, but one eternal
being. Thus there are not three uncreated beings, nor
three boundless beings, but one uncreated being and one
boundless being. Likewise, the Father is omnipotent, the
Son is omnipotent, and the Holy Spirit is omnipotent. Yet
there are not three omnipotent beings, but one omnipotent
being. Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, and the
Holy Spirit is God. But there are not three gods, but one
God. The Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Holy
Spirit is Lord. There as not three lords, but one Lord.
For according to Christian truth, we must profess that
each of the persons individually is God; and according to
Christian religion we are forbidden to say that there are
three gods or lords. ... But the entire three persons are
coeternal and coequal with one another .... So that, as
we have said, we worship complete unity in the Trinity
and the Trinity in unity. This, then, is what he who
wishes to be saved must believe about the Trinity ....
This is the Catholic faith. Everyone must believe it,
firmly and steadfastly; otherwise He cannot be saved.
Amen." So, now we need to ask, does Christianity, as
God said in the Qur'an, say that God (Christianity:
"Father") is the "third of three"? I challenge anyone to
re-write the above statement without (1) using the word
"three" or (2) using the "three" names. If anyone can
write the above definition without either mentioning
three names or using the word "three" then
I will admit that their claim that Muslims are simply too
backward to understand the truth is based upon more than
simple misrepresentation of the truth. In actuality,
objective and honest Christian ministers, such as Tom
Harpur, have the following to say in this regard:
"What is most embarrassing for the church is the
difficulty of proving any of these statements of dogma
from the new Testament documents. You simply cannot find
the doctrine of the Trinity set out anywhere in the
Bible. St. Paul has the highest view of Jesus' role and
person, but nowhere does he call him God. Nor does Jesus
himself anywhere explicitly claim to be the second person
in the Trinity, wholly equal to his heavenly Father. As a
pious Jew, he would have been shocked and offended by
such an Idea....(this is) in itself bad enough. But there
is worse to come. This research has lead me to believe
that the great majority of regular churchgoers are, for
all practical purposes, tritheists. That is, they profess
to believe in one God, but in reality they worship
three.."
.. Something to think about. I encourage all readers to
get a copy of the words of God in the Qur'an, read them and
follow them, and be saved eternally. MAllah Almighty Guide
us to His infinite mercy, and to His straight path.
All praise be to Allah (God)the Almighty and all thanks.
I ask your forgiveness and I repent unto you. And Peace be
unto God's messenger Muhammad (pbuh), upon his companions
and the prophets of God from thbeginning of time.
Misha'al
Addendum:
After this article was completed the author of the
original list continued to do his best to continue his
search for more evidence of contradictions. Since these were
submitted after the completion of the article, and since I
believe the above response to his article in its original
form manages to amply prove the intended point, therefore,
it shall be considered sufficient. This does not mean that
at times, if I find myself to have time to kill, I may not
responded to any new claims he may attempt to add to his
list. It only means that I believe that his previous
examples and the responses to them should be sufficient to
allow the reader to study his methods and the means he
employs to achieve his ends. When someone has a set of
questions then it is important to address those questions
with appropriate answers completely and fully. I have
responded to a couple select quotations from the expanded
list a little further down. As we shall see there, these new
claims have a tendency to employ partial-quotations while
withholding evidence and selective re-interpretation of
verses only in the cases when such re-interpretation shall
facilitate a contradiction. In the face of such methods
(see more examples below) I have
no great desire to spend the rest of my existence to every
time in the future I am told that the word green really
means white and that this is a contradiction that I should
then have to drop everything and prove to the author that
green really means green.
If we were speaking about sincere questions or real
issues then that would be a different story. However, if we
are to be reduced to partial quotations, withholding
evidence, and selective re-interpretation, etc. then one
begins to question the motives of the author of these
questions. In any case, eighty pages of claims and
refutations in my estimation is sufficient for anyone who is
searching for the truth. For those who still insist on
coming up with new "contradictions" every time the old ones
are refuted that is their choice. The truth is now clear for
those who are searching for it.
In the new version of this list, posted a couple of days
ago, he has chosen to add an invitation from him to post any
and all replies on his web page if they are in html format.
He says:
"My special offer: I
will link to any answer to any of these above listed
contradiction, if you want to display a discussion of them
on a web site. If it is impossible for you, I even will
display it myself but I ask you to produce the file with
HTML formatting for it. This is part of my policy of
integrity(5), even
though no Muslim site has ever offered to link to any
Christian answers to their Bible contradiction lists.
Attention: But be careful what
you send in for display. If it is up it is there to stay.
You can add to it but not retract from it. So don't give too
hasty answers you haven't really made sure are
solid."
In the face of such words it is very tempting to drudge
up some historical facts from the text of previous debates,
however, I will let this comment slide. In any case, I thank
you for your offer. You may post this reply.
A short course on how to generate
contradictions:
OK, getting back to some quick selections from the
expanded list:
Can non-living matter think, feel and have a will?
How can mountains both be able to "refuse the trust" and
"feel fear" as Sura 33:72 says?
Well, if you object to God being able to communicate with
His creation then for regular humans to do this with
inanimate objects and to be anointed by them should
really offend you. How then will you regard the
following words of the Bible?:
Judges 9:7-15 "And when they told [it] to
Jotham, he went and stood in the top of mount Gerizim, and
lifted up his voice, and cried, and said unto them, Hearken
unto me, ye men of Shechem, that God may hearken unto you.
The trees went forth [on a time] to anoint a king
over them; and they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou
over us. But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave
my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go
to be promoted over the trees? And the trees said to the fig
tree, Come thou, [and] reign over us. But the fig
tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness, and my
good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees? Then said
the trees unto the vine, Come thou, [and] reign over
us. And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine,
which cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the
trees? Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou,
[and] reign over us. And the bramble said unto the
trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you,
[then] come [and] put your trust in my
shadow: and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and
devour the cedars of Lebanon."
How about another example:
Isaiah 29:15-16: 5"Woe unto them that seek deep to
hide their counsel from the LORD, and their works are in the
dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us? Surely
your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the
potter's clay: for shall the work say of him that made it,
He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that
framed it, He had no understanding?"
The Islamic concept of this matter is that God, unlike
humans, is Omnipotent and can do anything He chooses making
anything He wills answer Him. Do they all generate sound to
communicate? Not necessarily. Some humans communicate by
sound, others by sign, some animals communicate by smell,
etc.. The Qur'an says:
"And (remember) the day (of Judgment) that the enemies
of Allah shall be gathered to the Fire so that they will
(all) be collected there. Till, when they reach it, their
hearing and their eyes and their skins will testify against
them as to what they used to do. And they will say to their
skins 'Why did you testify against us?' They will say:
'Allah has caused us to speak, [for He is] the One
who caused all things [which He willed] to speak,
and He created you the first time, and unto Him you are
returned." The noble Qur'an, Fussilat(41):19-21.
Once again, let us have a look at another attempt at the
system of partial-quotations in an attempt to generate
"contradictions." He says:
Muslim Traditions in contradiction
to even the Qur'an:
Abraham's sacrifice: Isaac or Ishmael?
"Many Muslims allege that one indication that the
Bible has been altered to discredit Islam is the story of
Abraham and the divine command to sacrifice his son. Most
Muslims insist that this son was Ishmael. The Bible,
however, claims that the son was Isaac (Genesis 22:9,
Hebrews 11:17, and James 2:21). There is only one reference
in all the Qur'an that relates this incident and it begins
with Abraham making this request: "O my Lord, grant me a
righteous (son)!" So We gave him the good news of a boy
ready to suffer and forbear. Then when (the son) reached
(the age of) (serious) work with him, he said, "O my son, I
see in a vision that I offer thee in sacrifice. Now see what
is thy view!" (The son) said, "O my father, do as thou art
commanded. Thou will find me if Allah so wills one
practicing patience and constancy!" So when they had both
submitted their wills (to Allah) and he had laid him
prostrate on his forehead (for sacrifice), We called out to
him, "O Abraham, thou hast already fulfilled the vision!"
Thus indeed do we reward those who do right. For this was
obviously a trial -- and We ransomed him with a momentous
sacrifice. -- Surat-us Saffat (37):99-107 Notice carefully
in this passage, which is the only one dealing with the
sacrifice, that the name of the son is not given! It does
indicate, however, that this was the boy whose birth was
foretold as "good news." If one searches the whole Qur'an,
he will find nothing menthe birth of Ishmael. In fact very
little is said about Ishmael, and absolutely nothing is said
about thidentity of his mother or his sons. It is from the
Bible that we learn that Ishmael's mother was named Hagar,
and that Ishmael had twelve sons (Gen. 25:12-17)."
Notice where he quoting the verses; at verse
107. Why is that? It is because if we stop
here then we still have not read either the name "Ishmael"
or "Isaac." Actually, his arguments might even be quite
convincing if the reader were willing to trust his claims
and not bother to go back to the original text of the noble
Qur'an. The issue which will destroy his hypothesis is that
continuing on reading the next five verses we will read
"....and We (God) left for him (Abraham) in the latter
[generations] the salutation 'peace be upon
Abraham.' Thus do We reward those who excel in good. Verily,
He was one of Our believing servants. And We gave him
glad tidings of Isaac, a prophet of the
righteous."
This is why he stopped at verse 107, so
that we would not read that after this trial Isaac was born
as a reward for Abraham's sincerity. If he does not quote
these verses then he is able to generate doubt that maybe
Muslims do not know their Qur'an and that maybe it was Isaac
that was to be sacrificed. It saddens me that this is the
way he chooses to manifest his "policy
of integrity."
He also insists on trying to restrict Muslims to only one
half of Islamic law and tradition, that found in the Qur'an.
If he can not find something in the Qur'an then he
automatically insists that it must have come from the Bible.
He does not allow for the possibility that it may have come
from the other source of Islamic law, the Sunnah (or
"Hadeeth"). But he only does this when it suites him. When
he was speaking about "the number
of wings" question he readily accepted the Sunnah and
tried to make it contradict the Qur'an. But let us be
generous and assume that nowhere in the Qur'an or in the
Sunnah is Hagar (pbuh) referred to by name and that she is
only referred to as the "mother of Ishmael." Then what? Does
it make the Qur'an any less the words of God or the Sunnah
any less the words of His prophet if this were the case? How
will the knowledge of her proper name enhance how I perform
my daily prayers? How will it increase my obedience to God?
What about all of the countless other men and women in the
Qur'an whose proper names are not mentioned? For example
"Pharaoh." How will the knowledge of his proper name
increase my worship of God?
But he is not the only person obsessed with bashing Islam
to find it necessary to employ such regrettable techniques
in an attempt to propagate their agenda. Indeed, he has even
provided us with pointers to yet other examples of some
Christians who employ the very same techniques. For example,
through his pointers we arrive at another similar page where
the author points to the verse of the Qur'an, Merriam(19):33
and which conveys peace upon Jesus (pbuh) both in this life
and in the hereafter when we shall all be raised back to
life. The verse says regarding Jesus "And peace be upon me
(Jesus) the day I was born, the day I die, and the day I
shall be raised to life." Such men then zealously
reinterpret this verse to mean that Jesus was crucified,
died and was resurrected, in blatant defiance of numerous
verses of the Qur'an which insist that Jesus (pbuh) did not
die on the cross, such as:
"And because of their saying (in boast): We killed the
Messiah Jesus, son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah, but they
killed him not, nor crucified him, but a similitude of that
was shown to them, and those who differ therein are full of
doubts. They have no (certain) knowledge, except the
following of conjecture. For surely; they killed him not.
But Allah raised him up unto Himself, and Allah is
All-Powerful, All-Wise" The noble Qur'an,
Al-Nissa(4):157-158.
What these authors neglect to tell their readers in their
"lists" is what the Qur'an actually means by
this term. Indeed, the exact same formula is
repeated again this time in relation to prophet John the
Baptist in Mariam(19):15. This verse says "and peace be
upon him (John) the day he was born and the day he dies and
day he is raised to life." However, this time none of
these authors of "contradictions lists" try to claim that
prophet John the Baptist died and was resurrected for the
sins of mankind. That would not fit their personal agendas.
Rather than allowing both verses their intended meaning,
that Jesus (pbuh) did not die on the cross and that both
John and Jesus (pbut) are held in honor in life and in the
hereafter, instead, these men insist on giving the verse
which speaks about Jesus (pbuh) a completely different
meaning than when the exact same words are applied to John
in the Qur'an. Once they have forced their chosen meaning on
the verse (only in the case of Jesus and not John, usually
not even quoting the verse applied to John at all) then they
go on to declare that they have just managed to make the
Qur'an contradict itself since now the meaning they have
created for this verse contradicts the many verses of the
Qur'an which affirm that Jesus (pbuh) was not killed. Notice
how the intricate web is weaved by withholding evidence,
selective personal interpretation, and then, magically.....
contradictions are born.
1) Mr. Abdulsaleeb is the co-author
of the book "Answering Islam" with Mr. Norman L. Geisler.
Mr. "Abdulsaleeb" refers to his co-authorship of this book
in his articles. I have had occasion to browse through his
book in the hope that these two might be the ones to break
the mold and try and present compete quotations and an
honest representation of the teachings of Islam or the
verses of the Qur'an in their commentaries. I was quite
saddened to find that this is indeed not the case, as they
both appear to have succumbed to the sad trend of
misquotation and partial-quotation which sadly is becoming
the norm with their colleagues. Let us take a look at one
quick example. On page 148 of their book they say:
"Fifth, the Qur'an itself states that the prophetic
line came through Isaac, not Ishmael 'And We bestowed on him
Isaac and Jacob, and We established the Prophethood and
Scripture among his seed' (29:27). The Muslim scholar Yusuf
Ali adds the word 'Abraham' and changes the meaning as
follows: 'We gave (Abraham) Isaac and Jacob, and ordained
among his progeny Prophethood and revelation' by adding
Abraham, the father of Ishmael, he can include Muhammad, a
descendant of Ishmael, in the prophetic line! But Abraham's
name is not found in the Arabic text of the Qur'an, which
Muslims consider to be perfectly preserved."
These authors object to the pronoun "him" being replaced
by the bracketed name "(Abraham)" by some translators. The
sad method employed by these two men is to assume that the
reader can not read Arabic nor will he actually go back and
verify these two author's claims from an English translation
of the meanings of the Qur'an (a fair assumption), and then
based upon this assumption they "tell" the reader what the
text of the Qur'an says.
The truth of the matter is that these two authors are
objecting to the translation of verse 27, however, they
chose not to quote the previous verses 16 through 26 which
are all speaking about prophet Abraham, about how he called
upon his people to believe in God, to submit to His will, to
forsake their idols, and to worship God alone. The verses go
on to describe how his people responded by saying 'kill him
or burn him..etc.' but that prophet Lot (pbuh) believed in
him and followed him. It is only NOW that we
get to the quoted verse, that of 29:27 where we read that
after all of this abuse and rejection God says "So We
gave him Isaac and Jacob and we placed in his
progeny the Prophethood and the Scripture and we bestowed
upon him his reward in this life, and verily, in the
Hereafter he is among the righteous."
What these two men have done is to quote onthe laverse in
a long story relating to prophet Abraham and discard the
rest. Once the reader does not know who the story ispeaking
about, since these two authors have not bothered to mention
it, then it becomes possible for them to try and make this
one verse an independent topic. The problem with thiis that
even if we take this verse in isolation it will not make
sense without knowing the context of the previous verses.
The reason why it will not make sense in isolation is
because then the verse only says "and We gave him
Isaac and Jacob and placed in his progeny..." So
the obvious question becomes who is this 'him' and
'his' whom God gave Isaac to?" The verse does not say
"and we gave Isaac the prophethood..." Both of these men
(Isaac and Jacob) as well as the prophethood were given to
this 'him.' So who is this 'him'? Who did God give
Isaac, Jacob, the Prophethood and Scripture to? This is why
we need to back up and read the previous verses in order to
realize that they are all speaking about prophet Abraham
(pbuh). This verse is narrated at the end of the story and
contains a description of the reward God gave to prophet
Abraham (pbuh) because of his service to God.
Here is the complete text which these two authors chose
not to quote. Let us read it together and then see for
ourselves who the last verse is speaking about. Is it Isaac,
as they allege, or is it Abraham as conferred by Yusuf
Ali?:
"And [make mention of] Abraham when he said to
his people: Worship Allah [alone] and guard
yourselves from Him. That is better for you if you but knew.
You worship besides Allah [naught] but idols, and
you invent only falsehood. Verily, those whom you worship
besides Allah possess no provision for you. So seek your
provision from Allah [alone], worship Him
[alone], and be thankful to Him. To Him is your
return. And if you deny me then nations before you have
denied (their messengers). And the duty of the messenger is
only to convey[the message] clearly. Do they not see
how Allah originates the creation then repeats it? Verily
that is easy for Allah. Say: Travel throughout the land and
see how Allah originated creation, then Allah will bring
forth the creation of the Hereafter. Verily, Allah is able
to do all things. He punishes whom He wills and shows mercy
to whom He wills, and to Him you will be returned. And you
shall not overcome [the will of Allah] in the earth
nor in the heaven. And besides Allah you have no Guardian
nor any Aid. And those who disbelieve in the signs of Allah
and in the meeting with Him [in the Hereafter], it
is they who have no hope in [attaining] My mercy and
it is they who will have a painful torment. But the reply of
his people was naught but to say: Kill him or burn him!. So
Allah saved him from the fire. Verily, in that are indeed
signs for a people who believe. And he said: You have taken
[naught] but idols instead of Allah, and the love
between you is only in this world, but on the Day of
Resurrection you shall disown one-another and you shall
curse one-another, and your abode will be the Fire, and you
shall have none to help you. So Lot believed in him and
said: I shall migrate unto my Lord. He is the All-Mighty,
the All-Wise. And We bestowed upon him Isaac and Jacob,
and placed in his progeny the Prophethood and the Scripture,
and We bestowed upon him his reward in this life, and in the
Hereafter he is among the righteous."
Al-Ankaboot(29):16-27
Once we are able to read the whole text of this story,
now we are able to realize that prophet Abraham was indeed
the one intended, and not his son Isaac, nor even his
grandson Jacob (peace be upon them all). It is true that all
of these three men are held in the highest regard in the
noble Qur'an and by all Muslims, however, this fact in no
way makes it necessary for all verses which relate to
prophet Abraham (pbuh) to be forced to apply to his son
Isaac. It is saddening that these two authors would employ
such methods as this in order to attempt to slander Yusuf
Ali and make him out to be a liar in his translation of the
verses. It is really too bad that they would find it
necessary to employ such methods in their "Answering Islam"
book, in their attempt to attack God's words in the noble
Qur'an.
The other issue which these two authors neglected to
mention in their claims in this regard is that contrary to
their claims, there is yet another verse which is even more
explicit in this regard. It is Al-Hadeed(57):26 which says
"And We sent Noah and Abraham and We placed in their
progeny the Prophethood and the Scripture..."
If these two authors object to the use of the pronoun
"him" in the above verses and wish, by the above methods, to
force all of the pronouns in the verse to refer to prophet
Isaac rather than his father, prophet Abraham (peace be upon
them both) then in this case one needs to wonder what
further "interpretations" they shall apply to the above more
explicit verse?
Now that we see that both verses are referring to prophet
Abraham either explicitly by name or through the use of the
pronoun 'him', now all that is left is personal bias which
can restrict this promise to Abraham's (pbuh) second son
(Isaac the father of the Jews) and not his first (Ishmael
the father of the Arabs, including prophet Muhammad). In
this case, one needs to read such verses of the Qur'an as
"And make mention in the Scripture of Ishmael. Verily, he
was truthful in promise, a was a messenger, a prophet."
Mariam(19):54. For someone to say that he personally does
not like Ishmael (pbuh) and does not want God to include him
in His Covenant and Promise is one thing. To employ partial
quotation of the text of the Qur'an in order to try and
force the Qur'an to endorse their beliefs is a completely
different matter. How much worse to unjustly slander Yusuf
Ali through such regrettable techniques.
The sad fact of the matter is that I seriously doubt that
Mr. Geisler or Mr. "Abdulsaleeb" would sit still for such
gross and blatant misquotation of the Bible from a Muslim.
Undoubtedly they would jump upon any such similar attempt
with glee and venom. Yet they do not scruple to employ such
methods with their readers since they know that the vast
majority of them will never have occasion to doubt them or
actually go back and read the text of the Qur'an. To better
drive this point home, let us indeed employ these two
author's methods. Let us take for example the verse of Mark
5:41 and do exactly what they have done making the exact
same case. Assume a Muslim were to quote that verse and
say:
"Mark 5:41 says: 'And he [Jesus] took the
damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which
is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.'
This verse contains a miracle performed by this damsel
where she commands a dead person to 'arise.' The Christian
translators have dishonestly inserted the word 'Jesus' in
this text and made Jesus the one who performed this miracle
even though the original Greek text does not contain his
name anywhere in this verse."
If someone has not memorized the text of Mark 5 then it
would be a knee-jerk natural reaction to go back and read
the previous two or three verses in order to find out who is
this "he" who took the hand of the damsel. Upon reading the
previous verses we would find that the story is speaking
about Jesus and his actions. Now we know who the "he" is. It
is not necessary to remove all pronouns from a given
scripture replacing them with proper names in order to avoid
claims of unfaithful translation. If this were the case then
notice how easy it would then be in our brief example to
just as easily quote a verse of the Bible in isolation and
out of context and hope that the reader does not refer to
the original text? The end does not justify the means. A
person's zeal to get someone to convert to Christianity or
to bash Islam does not give him the right to misrepresent
the truth. I had hoped that these two author's comments
would simply involve honest misunderstanding of the Qur'anic
text and not go to such extremes of blatant misquotation,
withholding of evidence and unwarranted slander. That is
indeed saddening.
Sadly, this not the place in their "Answering Islam" book
where these two authors have stooped to such tactics in
order to achieve their end. However, we can not get into the
other examples here due to a lack of time and space. Perhaps
in the near future if Allah wills. In any case, the author
of the list we are currentlstudying appears to have copied
much of their claims into this list. Responding to this list
will therefore, by the will of Allah, have the added
side-benefit of answering much of the claims made by these
two authors.
Actually, I have seen much worse examples than this with
some missionaries and evangelists. One very glaring example
that comes to mind is that of one of the leaders of the
nineteenth century Christian missionary efforts in India,
namely D.D. Pfander. In Mr. Pfander's book I have seen
examples of such blatant misquotation as to literally
reverse the meanings of the original Arabic words written by
the authors "quoted" by him. This is clearly demonstrated
for example on page 77 of his book in his quote of
"Al-Bazawi" where he actually reproduced in his own book the
original Arabic words of the author he claims to be
"quoting," but he only translated into English part of the
text such that his English "translation" actually reverses
the original Arabic meaning. Thus, magically, Muslim authors
are made to support his claims. I suppose that if one were
to take into consideration such regrettable measures as
this, then by such standards the words of today's authors
become almost palatable.
2) The beliefs and claims of the
various sects of the Christians in the first three centuries
C.E. (and even long after) were many
and varied. The specific sect which held this belief are
known in Arabic as the "Barbaraniyya," "Reemitieen," or
"Maryania" sect. They are responded to in the noble Qur'an
in Al-Maidah(5):75.
3) The examples of this are
numerous. One example from the time of the prophet (pbuh)
was a pagan from Quraish by the name of Labeed ibn Rabeeah.
He had managed to make a name for himself among the men of
Quraish as a leader among them in poetic composition and the
various sciences of the Arabic language. When it came to his
attention that there was a man in his city by the name of
Muhammad who was challenging the pagans to produce a work
similar to that which had been revealed to him in the noble
Qur'an, Labeed decided to answer this challenge. Without
bothering to listen to the Qur'an he immediately set about
employing his considerable skills towards composing a
complex work which he then hung on the door of the Kaaba in
the middle of the city. It must be observed that the
privilege of hanging one's literary works on the door of the
Kaaba was considered the most eminent of honors and a
supreme testimony to that person's ability and
accomplishment which was reserved only for the chosen few.
It could be compared to today's "halls of fame," or "purple
hearts."
When Labeed had completed his work and hung it up on the
door of the Kaaba for all to admire in awe and reverence, a
Muslim from the city saw it and a passion was kindled in his
heart to defend the word's of God. During this period the
Muslims were still being severely persecuted and tortured by
the pagans and could not openly speak out without fear of
severe retribution or much worse. Despite this fact he was
able to transcribe some verses of the noble Qur'an onto a
parchment and steal into the holy mosque to hang it up next
to Labeed's work. The next day when Labeed passed by the
Kaaba he saw this parchment and read it. This was his first
exposure to the words of the Qur'an and he was awe-stricken
by what he read. Such was the impression that these verses
had upon him that he immediately proclaimed: "By Allah! This
is not the work of man, and I submit." In spite of this
testimony, Labeed did not accept Islam right away. Rather,
his acceptance of these words as being the words of God did
not in his mind automatically nullify his own beliefs or
make them invalid. That realization would take a little
longer to sink in. However, when Labeed finally did come to
embrace Islam, so indelible was the effect that the words of
God upon him that he altogether gave up on any further
literary composition. Some years later, Umar ibn Al-Khattab
addressed him with the request: "O Abu-Aqeel, recite for us
a portion of your poetry." Labeed responded by reciting some
verses of the chapter of Al-Baqarah (from the noble Qur'an).
He then said "How shall I ever again recite [human]
poetry after Allah has taught me Al-Baqarah and
Aal-Umran?"
A second similar occurrence occurred roughly a century
later when a group of agnostics and atheists culled their
resources in order to have another stab at answering the
challenge of the Qur'an. Towards this end they enlisted the
aid of one of the most prominent men of Arabic literature of
that age. That man's name was Abdullah ibn Al-Muqaffa.
Abdullah accepted this challenge and informed them that this
task would require of him a full year's dedication, during
which he would require them to provide for all of his
material needs and provision. After six months had passed
the men returned to him to check on his progress only to
find him sitting in the middle of the room, pen in hand,
caught up in deep thought, his room littered with various
crumpled half written pieces of paper strewn throughout, and
Abdullah himself sitting in the middle of this chaos in
utter disarray. When they inquired after his progress he was
forced to admit that during the last six months he was
unable to come up with a single verse equal to the verses of
the Qur'an. He then concede defeat and terminated his
attempts.
4) The English translation of this
verse (Al-Alaq(96):2) has become a popular issue of
contention with many Christian evangelists, with most of
them attacking this verse and its translators with all
manner of accusations, including allegations of ignorance,
scientific inaccuracy and worse. Mr. "Abdulsaleeb" and his
friend Mr. Geisler too have snapped up this issue on page
199 of their book in their attempt to try and accuse Muslims
of manipulating verses and altering meanings simply based
upon personal whims. They give the reader the impression
that Muslims are simply changing verses at random in an
attempt to fix errors and incorrect information as it is
exposed. This even though even they themselves point to the
English Translation in their objections and
not the original Arabic text which remains
exactly the same in every single copy. In order to study
such men's claims we need to study the details of the
original Arabic meaning of this word and a little of the
history of how the translators came to translate this verse
into English as they did.
In many English translations of the noble Qur'an, such as
the nineteenth century translations of Yusuf Ali or
Marmaduke Pickthall, the verse is translated as "(God)
created humanity from a blood clot." Recently, Muslims have
more correctly begun to translate this verse as "(God)
created humanity from a leech-like entity." Those who have
dedicated themselves to attacking the words of God in the
noble Qur'an have snapped this up as a prime opportunity to
accuse Muslims of altering verses and changing their
meanings without justification simply to maneuver around
incorrect claims. The truth, however, is quite different
than that and has nothing whatsoever to do with what they
claim. But in order to understand this matter better we need
to back up a little and start at the beginning.
The actual word "Alaq" has a dual meaning in Arabic.
Depending on the context it can either mean "clump of blood"
or "leech." This can be seen for example in the
Arabic-English Dictionary "A Dictionary of Modern Written
Arabic" By J. Milton Cowan. On page 634, this word is
translated into English as "medicinal leech; leech, blood,
blood clot." To find a much more comprehensive and
authoritative study of this word we need to go to the 18
volume encyclopedia of Arabic language, Lisan Al-Arab. In
volume 10, pages 261-270 we can find a detailed treatment of
this word, its ro, its deriv, its usage, its various
permutations, and their meanings. In these ten pages we are
presented with roughly 160 different perof this word. Each
differing only very slightly from the others in written or
pronounced form, and with all of them being united by the
common theme of different ways of "clinging or " Let us have
a look at a couple of examples:
The root word from which this word is derived is the word
"Aa-la-qa." It has the general meaning of "to hang" or "to
cling." By employing various grammatical manipulations on
this word we come up with the aforementioned 160 derivations
each of which is closely associated with the concept of
"clinging or hanging." For example, one derivation has the
general meaning of "devotion" (to cling to with love),
another has the general meaning of "hanger" (to hang up
clothes), a third conveys the meaning of "dowry" (the money
paid to the woman in order to cause the couple to "cling
together" in marriage), a fourth form of this word has the
general meaning of "lust" (to cling to something with desire
and lust), a fifth form has the general meaning of "to
ensnare" (an animal gets hung up in a net), a sixth form has
the general meaning of "to cling to by your nails," etc.
Now, when looking for the meaning of the precise form of
the word at hand, "Aa-la-qu" (For those who speak Arabic
"fatha-fatha-dhammah") we find the aforementioned two
meanings; leech or clump of blood. So which one was the
meaning intended by God in this verse? To better study this
word and its dual meaning let us start with a similar
example from the English language:
In English we find a number of words with two or more
meanings, the correct one of which is chosen based upon the
context of the text. For example, the word "right" can have
one of more than ten different meanings depending on the
employed context. Among these meanings are:
- Conforming with or conformable to justice, law, or
morality: do the right thing and confess.
- In accordance with fact, reason, or truth; correct:
the right answer.
- Fitting, proper, or appropriate: It is not right to
leave the party without saying goodbye.
- Most favorable, desirable, or convenient: the right
time to act.
- In or into a satisfactory state or condition: put
things right.
- In good mental or physical health or order.
- Intended to be worn or positioned facing outward or
toward an observer: the right side of the dress; made
sure that the right side of the fabric was visible.
- a. Of, belonging to, located on, or being the side of
the body to the south when the subject is facing east. b.
Of, relating to, directed toward, or located on the right
side. c. Located on the right side of a person facing
downstream: the right bank of a river.
- Often Right Of or belonging to the political or
intellectual Right.
- Mathematics a. Formed by or in reference to a line or
plane that is perpendicular to another line or plane. b.
Having the axis perpendicular to the base: right
cone.
- Straight; uncurved; direct: a right line.
So if the text says "I picked it up with my right hand"
then the meaning of the word "right" will be quite different
than when I use the same word in the sentence "you gave him
the right answer." In these two cases the context very
clearly leads us to the correct selection.
However, there are other cases when the selection of the
correct meaning is not so clear cut. For example, if one
were to say "I struck him by my right" then this could be
interpreted either to mean that "it was my legal right to do
so" or it could mean "my right hand, or right side." Now the
meaning is not so clear. Indeed, one example of this in the
noble Qur'an can be found in Al-Saffat(37):93, where based
upon the nature of the Arabic word "bilyameen" the verse can
be translated into English in one of two ways; either "So he
(Abraham) attacked them (the idols), striking them with his
right hand" or it could be translated into English as "So he
(Abraham) attacked them (the idols) striking them in
fulfillment of his oath (which he made in verse 21:57)."
Since there is no way to translate this word into English
without preferring one meaning over the other, therefore the
first was chosen by many translators and the English
translation thus becomes more restricted in meaning than the
original Arabic.
Now, if we were to come to a high-school dropout who has
no experience in computers, and we were to give him the
operation manual for an IBM compatible Pentium computer, and
this manual were to contain references to the computer
having "bits" "bytes" and "nibbles" of memory, or having
"bugs" in some programs, or "viruses" in its software, then
what will this person think? If this person did not know the
first thing about operating a computer, and he was asked to
read the manual and to explain the operation of a computer
without actually having been given access to a physical
computer or the tools necessary to dissect it, then this
lack of knowledge will indeed influence his "explanation" of
what he read in the manual.
Assume that this person were then to read that the
computer has a "hard drive." Is it not then possible that he
may come away thinking that the computer "is driven to do a
good job"?
We begin to see that a person's background and
understanding are central to how he "interprets" or
"understands" a given text. His understanding in no way
alters the intended meaning as found in the manual or
conveyed by the language, however, that is the only meaning
his mind can comprehend at that time based upon his current
level of knowledge.
Now assume that this same person went back to school, got
his high-school diploma and perhaps a bachelor's degree in
Computer Engineering. Now he will begin to have doors of
understanding opened up to him which he never before
imagined. The meanings begin now to make much more sense and
take on broader implications. He now understands that a
computer "nibble" does not mean that it bites something, a
computer "bug" is not a mosquito, and a computer "virus" is
not influenza.
This is indeed what happened with the words of God in the
noble Qur'an. Muslims were presented with a book from God
which told them that "He (God) created humanity from an
Alaq." Those who read this verse "interpreted" it based upon
the meaning they felt most appropriate. Humans have blood in
them so the verse must mean "blood clot." How could a person
be created from worms, they reasoned? However, the verse
remained in Arabic and the text retained its dual meaning
despite how humanity had tried to understand the meaning.
When some people chose to translate the meanings of the
Qur'an into English they were faced with a situation where
they had to chose one or the other. Unlike the original
Arabic, the English language would not allow for a dual
meaning. Thus, the translators looked at both meanings,
"clump of blood," and "leech" and tried to reason, "Which
one appears to my intellect to be the intended meaning, for
humans to have been created from a blood clot or for them to
have been created from leeches?" Obviously, just as humans
would have a hard time imagining "bugs" flying around in
their software, so too did they have a hard time imagining
"leeches" transmuting into humans, so the verse was
translated as "blood clot."
Now that scholars of embryology
have begun over the last twenty years to discover the
staging
of human development through microscopic study of human
embryos in their various stages, now they began to see that
one of the very first stages of human development (in the
third and fourth weeks) is in a form
very similar to a common leech. This similarity is in
both form and in function. Now humans began to understand
the verse more fully and began to understand what was meant
by "leech" in the noble Qur'an. It was God's way of telling
humanity, using terms which laypeople could understand, how
He had created them from a form very similar to a
microscopic worm.After He ordafor them to become fully
developed into a complete human being then they become
arrogant and haughty and think themselves above Hiscommand
and above His obedience. They forget that He who created
them from mere microscopic worms can indeed very trivially
transmute them into whatever other form He wishes. Now the
closed dooare beginning to open up and the meanings begin to
take on spectacular new details.
Indeed, Mr. "Abdulsaleeb" appears to know Arabic well
enough to restrain himself and Mr. Geisler from claiming
that either English translation of this verse is incorrect
since he knows full well that they are both correct from a
linguistic viewpoint. However, the most he and Mr. Geisler
do is to use carefully worded gymnastics in order to imply
something which is not explicitly said. They only say that
it is "questionable" simply because many "English
translations" word it as "blood clot." Thus the blame is
placed not on the meaning of the word itself, rather it is
only the "English translations" which they attack. In this
manner they do not commit to accusing either translation of
being "wrong" since that would be a grave error on their
part and easily refuted, however, they simply "imply" to
their non-Arab readers that it is wrong.
This is why in the Qur'an we read such verses as:
"We (God) shall show them (humanity) Our signs on the
horizons and within themselves until it will become clear to
them that it is the Truth. Does it not suffice that your
Lord is Witness over all things?" The noble Qur'an,
Fussilat(41):53.
"He is the One who sent down
upon you the book (the Qur'an), of it are verses which are
entirely clear, they are the foundations of the book, and
others are 'mutashabihat' (not entirely clear, or of
multiple meaning). As for those in whose hearts is
perversion, they follow that which is not entirely clear
thereof, seeking discord and seeking to interpret them. But
none knows its interpretation except Allah and those firm in
knowledge they say 'We believe in it. The whole of it is
from our Lord' Yet none are admonished [thereby]
except those of understanding" The noble Qur'an,
Aal-Umran(3):7
"Allah did not create (all) that except in truth. He
details the signs for people of knowledge." The noble
Qur'an, Yunus(10):5
"And those who were given knowledge see that which was
sent down upon you by your Lord is the truth and guides to
the path of the 'Exalted' (in Might) the 'worthy of all
praise'." The noble Qur'an, Saba(34):6.
"And We have indeed simplified [the comprehension
of] this Qur'an for remembrance, so is there any that
will remember [and be admonished]?" The noble
Qur'an, Al-Qamar(54):17
This is also why the prophet of Islam, Muhammad (pbuh)
told us in part of one of his Hadeeth: "
It (the
Qur'an) contains the report of what was before you, the news
of what will be after you, and a the ruling in matters
between you. It is the distinguisher and not a jester. If
any tyrannical person abandons it Allah will break him, and
if anyone seeks guidance elsewhere Allah will lead him
astray. It is Allah's stout rope. It is the wise reminder.
It is the straight path. It is that by which the desires do
not swerve nor the tongues become confused, and the learned
never become filled in [learning from] it. It does
not become worn out by repetition, and its wonders never
cease
." (Narrated by Al-Tirmathi and
Al-Darimi)
This is why Muslims have been promised that God's word in
the noble Qur'an shall never grow old, nor its teachings
stale. Rather its guidance shall remain appropriate for all
times and people, and its marvels shall continue to renew
themselves in new unexpected ways until the coming of the
hour.
For more on the issue of the meaning of this word, please
read "Safwat Al-Tafaseer" by Muhammad Al-Sabooni.
5) It is interesting that this
"policy of integrity" emphasizes the inclusion of all points
of view. I seem to remember a certain someone, who shall
remain nameless, who first made himself known to me by
flooding my personal email mailbox with challenge after
challenge to debate him on any issue related to the Bible. I
finally responded and agreed to participate in this debate
with the stipulation that I would be able to publish the
text wherever I chose. After the debate concluded I began to
take steps towards publishing it on the web but was
immediately lambasted up one side and down the other for
attempting to do so. I did not publish it and a second
debate was then begun on the public news group
soc.religion.islam on the same original
topic of "Did Jesus ever ask to be worshipped or
claim to be God, and can the trinity be found anywhere in
the Bible, from cover to cover?." This second debate
spanned about 60 pages and contained detailed refutations of
all of the presented verses and a complete reproduction of
his entire original arguments, word for word, so that I
would not 'forget' to respond to a single one. The claim was
made that Muslims had no leg to stand on, that all they
could do was twist verses, etc. and that the truth was clear
to anyone with eyes. Upon this note an attempt was made to
publish this new debate and once again, common courtesy
required that I ask permission to do so, regardless of
whether he could legally prevent me from publishing this
public discussion or not. Once again, this permission was
withheld and he made no effort whatsoever to publish it
himself on his own page. Rather than choosing to start a war
by publishing this public debate on the web regardless of
his consent, it was presumed that he had received the
answers he had so energetically requested of me and I chose
to drop the matter and move on to other concerns. It has
recently come to my attention, however, that from his side,
over the last two years, the closest he ever came to
publishing either debate himself was to collect his original
arguments (which were refuted in detail in the original
discussions) into one file and publish them on his web page
without including in it a single one of my original
counter-arguments. Instead he has redirected his efforts to
bashing the words of God in the Qur'an. Oh well.
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