The Qur'an is Allah's Perfect and Complete Word
Islam teaches, as one would expect, that the Qur'an is perfect, the complete revelation of Allah to mankind. The Qur'an is held to be flawless, completely unassailable in what it says, both in fact and doctrine. Because of this perceived completeness, Islam is thus viewed to be the penultimate in religion, the culmination of religious advancement throughout man's history. With the completion of the Qur'an, Muslims believe, the need for revelation ended and Allah's message to man finalised.
"The guidance he has shown unto mankind is complete and flawless, and is enshrined in the Holy Qur'an....Secondly, God has completed His revealed guidance through Prophet Muhammed (peace be upon him) and Islam is the complete religion for mankind. God has said that, 'Today I have perfected your Faith - religion - for you, and have completed my bounty upon you,' and a thorough study of Islam as a way of life proves the truth of these Quranic words."1
Concurrently, Muslims believe that the Bible and the Torah are also revelations to man from Allah, but that these revelations were corrupted, changed by Jews and Christians away from their original readings. They believe that the Bible and Torah contain God's Word, but are mixed with the words and thoughts of men.
False Claims of Biblical Corruption
However, Islam has always taken a somewhat double-minded position on the Bible. While teaching that the Bible is flawed, incomplete, and untrustworthy, Islam at the same time teaches that the Bible is to be followed by Muslims as a means of finding the truth. "And if thou art in doubt concerning that which We reveal unto thee, then question those who read the Scripture before thee. Verily, the Truth from thy Lord hath come unto thee." (Pickthal translation, Surah 10:94) Thus, we see supposed divine revelation from Allah directing Mohammed and his followers to seek truth as a final authority from the Bible, from Christians who "read the Scripture before thee", as a means of clearing up misunderstandings and doubts about Quranic 'revelation'. It is from this that the strange duality arises whereby Muslims must teach that the Bible is corrupted by man, yet at the same time accept what it teaches (more or less) as being from God.
Further, a question which then arises is this: If Allah is directing Mohammed (and therefore Muslims in general) to seek guidance from the Bible, then did Mohammed REALLY consider the Bible to be corrupted in and of itself? As will be seen below, the proof texts from the Qur'an which Muslims use to maintain the teaching of Biblical corruption are somewhat less than conclusive on this point. But the crux remains for Muslims. When do they suppose the Bible to have been corrupted? Was it BEFORE Allah told Mohammed to seek out guidance in the Bible and from Christians, in which case Allah told Mohammed to seek spiritual wisdom from corrupt sources? Or was it AFTER Allah told Mohammed to seek Biblical guidance from Christians, a fact which is refuted by the evidence from Biblical manuscripts in several languages which read the same in manuscripts dated from both before and after the rise of Islam (i.e. indicating that the texts are fundamentally the same throughout this time period)?
The corruption lies not with the Bible, but rather with the Qur'an, the creation of Arabs in need of a religious text to substantiate their developing monotheistic religion. Large parts of the Qur'an are direct transfers from the Bible. Many more parts of the Qur'an contain stories about personalities from the Bible, but often the stories are incorrect. The Qur'an states that Mary was Aaron's sister, that the great Flood of Noah occurred during the time of Moses, and that Joseph was bought as a slave by an Egyptian named Aziz (instead of Potiphar), to name a few. The evidence seems to point to an early acquaintance with the Christian scriptures during the early years of the Arab Empire, and also to the misunderstanding of much of what they heard and saw in them. The Arabs merely cobbled together their various impressions of what they had heard, and made them a part of the Qur'an.
Further, it ought to be noted that passages in the Qur'an which Islam points to as "proof" of the corruption of earlier texts really do not indicate that Mohammed taught the corruption of the texts themselves. Two primary Quranic passages used by Muslims to claim Biblical corruption are these:
"And there are among them illiterates, who know not the Book, but (see therein their own) desires, and they do nothing but conjecture. Then woe to those who write the Book with their own hands, and then say: "This is from Allah," to traffic with it for miserable price!- Woe to them for what their hands do write, and for the gain they make thereby." (Surah 2:78-79)
"Can ye (O ye men of Faith) entertain the hope that they will believe in you?- Seeing that a party of them heard the Word of Allah, and perverted it knowingly after they understood it." (Surah 2:75)
Neither of these passages indicate textual corruption. The first passage refers to people (illiterates, who wouldn't be able to read the Bible anywise) who act upon their own accord to create their own scriptures, and then try to pass them off as sacred writings. Of course, how illiterates create their own scripture is not explained. This aside, it does not refer to the corruption of the words of God, but rather to the development of competitors to the words of God, false teachings and new books. The second passage refers to people who heard preaching, and knowingly perverted what they had heard to something else. As Parrinder has noted, these ayat refer to misinterpreting scripture, and passing off something which is not scripture as if it were so, but say nothing about the text of the previous scriptures being corrupted.2
God's Preservation of the Bible
While the falsity of Muslim claims for the revelation of the Qur'an and its subsequent lack of change have been previously exposed, the Muslim charges concerning the corruption of the Bible ought to be addressed briefly. Islam has yet to produce any textual evidence to demonstrate the corruption of the Biblical texts as a whole. Often, Muslims will try to point to differences in readings between individual manuscripts, and use this to support their assertion. However, the science of textual criticism, as applied to the task of systematically examining the manuscript evidence, provides Christian scholars the ability to distinguish between true and spurious readings in individual manuscripts. The body of evidence, from Greek manuscripts, the manuscripts of other ancient versions (Old Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Latin Vulgate, etc.), and the quotations of early Christian writers allows us to determine the content of the original autographic texts with as yet unassailed certainty. It should be noted that, as was dealt with earlier, Islam cannot truthfully make the same claim, and in fact is logistically unable to even make the attempt because of the artificial standardisation of the Arabic Qur’an text by Uthman, and the subsequent destruction of most all contrary Quranic manuscript evidence. Thus, the Muslim assertion rests entirely on blind faith in what amounts to a tradition handed down through Islam for roughly 1500 years. Facts show, however, that the texts used to produce the King James Bible are the preserved, uncorrupted words of God.
The Old Testament was written originally in Hebrew (except for certain portions of Daniel and Ezra which are in Aramaic). Therefore, we must look at the history of the Hebrew texts to examine for corruption. Romans 3:1-2 tells us, "What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision? Much every way: chiefly because that unto them were committed the oracles of God." This passage clearly illustrates to us that it was the Jews who had been given the responsibility and privilege of passing on and protecting God's Word. This they did, too, through their Masoretic school. The Hebrew Masoretes followed a very prescribed, very rigourous means of transcribing copies of the Hebrew scriptures.3 Among other things, they had to have an authentic copy of the texts before them when copying. They could not copy anything from memory, but had to have an authentic copy in front of them, sounding out each word before copying it. The copyist had to have the word on his lips, not just in his mind. Rules governed everything involved with the copying, even the colour of the ink used, the number of lines per column of text, the preparation of the parchment skins used, etc. Strict rules were followed which governed the style of letter formation, space between letters, the handling of the pen used to copy. Care was taken not just to transfer words, but to standardise them so rigourously that the copy was as nearly a perfect replica of the original as was humanly possible. The quality of copying from this method would compare favourably with what we would see from a copying machine today. Further, if one mistake was found on a sheet of parchment, the sheet was destroyed and the work started over. If three mistakes were found on any one page, the ENTIRE MANUSCRIPT was thrown out and copying began fresh. Thus, if a Masorete who was copying the entire text of the Hebrew Bible started in Genesis and got all the way to the end of II Chronicles (the last book in the original Hebrew ordering of the books) and made three mistakes on a page, the ENTIRE document was thrown out, along with months of work, and started anew.
This sort of effort was perpetuated by the Masoretes and protected God's Word in Hebrew from any sort of corruption. Islam cannot even begin to make the same sort of claim for the Arabic texts of the Qur'an, which evidence shows had already been corrupted by the time of Uthman. The result of the Masoretes' work was what was used to translate the Old Testament into
English. The King James translators used the Ben Chayyim Masoretic text, produced by Rabbi Abraham ben Chayyim iben Adonijah, and published by Daniel Bomberg in 1524.4 Thus, the King James Old Testament comes from a text that can be considered completely trustworthy and a preserved replica of the originals.
Likewise, the Greek New Testament underlying the King James remained uncorrupted. There are currently in the possession of scholars 5,255 copies, either partial or full, of the Greek New Testament, in various forms such as uncials, lectionaries, papyrus fragments, and cursive texts. Of these, 5,210 most generally agree with the Traditional Text (also called the “Syrian” or “Byzantine”), the text type underlying the Received Text (Textus Receptus) which is the Greek text from which the King James New Testament was translated.5 Hence, 99.14% of all existing Greek New Testament texts are in fundamental agreement with one another and with the Textus Receptus which Beza edited in 1598. What this means is that the vast bulk of Greek manuscripts for the New Testament were transmitted accurately down throughout the entire Church Age, right up to the time when Beza collated his complete Greek text. Further evidence for the accuracy of their translation is the fact that around 60% of New Testament quotations from early church fathers who died before 400 AD were in the form of distinctive Traditional readings.6 As Kenyon pointed out in his survey of Miller and Burgon‘s analysis, this preference for the Traditional Text increases to around 64% if the writers from the first three centuries are considered, and this further rises to 76% when a list of thirty highly important passages are considered from this group of patristics, chosen for their frequency of quotation and theological importance.7
The tiny remaining number of false Greek texts (that other 0.86%, or 45 manuscripts) all bear evidence of their being little used by the church of God. The two primary manuscripts of this class, Codex Aleph (aka “Sinaiticus”) and Codex B (aka “Vaticanus“), both have earmarks of Gnostic corruption. Further, not only do they differ from the vast body of manuscript and patristic evidence against them, they also are so eclectic that they contradict each other in reading nearly as much as they agree. Pickering notes,
"The variation between two 'Byzantine' MSS will be found to differ both in number and severity from that between two 'Western' MSS or two 'Alexandrian' MSS -- the number and nature of the disagreements between two 'Byzantine' MSS throughout the Gospels will seem trivial compared to the number (over 3,000) and nature (many serious) of the disagreements between Aleph and B, the chief 'Alexandrian' MSS, in the same space."8
Nevertheless, they are touted by modern day textual critics as being the most trustworthy manuscripts. This is because of their greater age, both date from the middle to latter part of the 4th century, exceeding the age of the oldest extant Traditional manuscript by at least three centuries. However, one fact that needs to borne in mind is this: When a text written on vellum is used constantly, it wears out and needs to be recopied. Conversely, when a text is never used, it remains in a more pristine condition. Further, there is much evidence to suggest that the worn out vellum manuscripts reached the point where they could not be used, they were “put to rest” through honourable destruction. This general point was first suggested over a century ago by Burgon, but was independently articulated by Lake, et al. nearly 50 years later.9 These two points combined would explain the lack of very ancient Traditional manuscripts, and concurrently provide a reasonable explanation for the continued existence of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. Given that the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus texts are the oldest, the obvious point is then that they were never used, and thus never had to be recopied. This doubly supports the notion that the Traditional texts have been preserved uncorrupted in that it tells us the early church and men of God through the ages recognised THEM, and not the small minority of heretical texts, as being the authentic readings. It also tells us that no significant mistakes were made throughout the course of transcribing and re-transcribing the Traditional texts over the centuries, for them to all agree with each other by the thousands of manuscripts, spread across the old Roman world. A point that bears making is that it is the small number (45) of heretical texts from which the 'modern' versions of the Bible like the NIV, NASB, RV, Berkeley, Living Bible, etc. are translated. The textual support for these modern versions is very small, and certainly does not outweigh the vast textual support which the King James enjoys. These modern versions carry through many of the heresies that their parent manuscripts contained, such as denying or downplaying important doctrines like the efficacy of Christ's blood, His virgin birth, His resurrection, etc. Christians interested in having and studying the true Word of God would do well do dump their “modern” versions in the garbage can and get hold of a solid King James Version.
God has again preserved His Word, by retaining for us a text in Greek, the Textus Receptus, which has been copied and carried through for centuries without error. Combined with the protection He afforded to the Hebrew Masoretic texts, we see that God has preserved and protected His Word through the ages. This is not surprising though, as God has promised to us to preserve His Word. "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand forever." (Isaiah 40:8). Truly He has done this with His Word, the Bible, and truly the same cannot be said for the Qur'an!
Pre-Islamic Source Materials Used in the Qur'an
Now let us turn to an examination of the "perfect and heavenly" Qur'an. Islam's claim that the revelation of the Qur'an was handed down from Allah to Mohammed in complete and final form does not seem to be possible, given the large amount of "borrowing" which is evident in the Qur'an. Many of the stories and teachings of the Qur'an originally were taught in a variety of pre-Islamic writings and among various pre-Islamic groups. To begin, there seems to have been a large amount of pre-Islamic Arabian mythology and legend that found its way into the Qur'an. This is not surprising as the Qur'an was, of course, developed by Arabs living in an evolving pre-Islamic Arabian society. This understanding has been sustained by many scholars who have studied Islam. For instance, one scholar writes, "Arabic legends about the fabulous jinns fill its pages."10 Indeed, much of what he included in the Qur'an from these sources was extremely fanciful:
- The story of the she-camel which leapt out of a rock and became a prophet was
known in Arabia long before Muhammad (Surat 7:73-77,85; 91:14; 54:29).
- The story of an entire village of people who were turned into apes because
they broke the sabbath by fishing was a popular legend in Muhammad's day
(Surat 2:65; 7:163-166).
- The gushing 12 springs story found in Sura 2:60ff comes from pre-Islamic Arabian legends.
- In what is called the "Rip Van Winkle" story, seven men and their animals
slept for 309 years in a cave and then woke up perfectly fine (Surah
18:9-26)! This was also a popular story in Arabia at and before Mohammed's time. This legend was also found in Greek and Christian folks fables from that time and before.
- The fable of the pieces of four dead, cut-up birds getting up and flying was
well known in Muhammad's time (Surah 2:260).
Additionally, there appear to be several Jewish sources which Mohammed used when developing the Quranic revelation.11,12,13,14 For instance, the source of Surah 3:35-37 is the apocryphal Jewish work, The Protevangelion of James the Lesser. Other examples of Jewish contribution to the Qur'an have been identified by scholars:
- The Second Targum of Esther supplied the non-biblical details of the Queen of Sheba's visit to King Solomon (Surah 27:17-44).
- The Testament of Abraham provided the teachings of the Qu'ran found in Surah 42:17 and Surah 101:6-9, which relate that on the judgment day, a scale of balance will be used to weigh good and bad deeds, and to make the determination of whether people will be sent to heaven or hell. This Jewish work is also apparently quoted in Surah 87:19.
- The story of the murderous brother and the raven (Surah 5:30-31) is found in several Jewish writings, these being the Pirke of Rabbi Eleazer, the Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziah and the Targum of Jerusalem, all of which pre-date the Qur'an.
- The tale of Abraham being delivered from Nimrod's fire (Surat 21:51-71; 29:16, 17; 37:97,98) originated in the Midrash Rabbah.
- The Talmud provided to the Qur'an the story of Moses' resurrection (Surah 2:55-57)
- The story of the golden calf which was made by Israel in the wilderness, in which the image actually leaps out of the fire and moos, comes from the Pirke of Rabbi Eleazer.
- Lastly, the seven heavens and hells described at various points in the Qur'an can similar be found in the Zohar and the Hagigah.
Heretical Christian sources also provided a source of inspiration to Mohammed. The fingerprints of Gnostic and heretical sects can be seen at several points in the teachings of Mohammed. For example, the Quranic definition of the Trinity, consisting of God, Jesus, and Mary, was a doctrine held by a small Arabian pseudo-Christian group known as the Collyridians, with whom the Arabs apparently had some contact. That heretical Christian groups exerted a strong influence on the developing Arab theology and beliefs has been demonstrated repeatedly by scholars of Islam.15,16 Two examples of fanciful stories which were taught by heretical groups and which found their way into the Qur'an are the story of Jesus' speaking from the cradle as an infant (Surat 3:49, 100:110) and the story of Jesus moulding a bird from clay and then breathing life into it (Surah 5:110). These were stories passed down from various Gnostic sources.
Trappings of Paganism Introduced into Quranic Teaching
Related to the above, we must also note that Mohammed introduced many pagan rituals and activities into his new religion, the large share of these finding root in the pagan pre-Islamic days of Arabia. The Sabeans, an Arabian group whose religion was centred about the worship of astral bodies, saw much of their worship style mimicked by Islam.
"Muhammad incorporated parts of the religion of the Sabeans into Islam."17
This included such well-known Muslim worship activities as worshipping at sacred stones (the Kaabah, for Islam), praying five times a day towards a sacred geographical location (Mecca, for Islam), and fasting for part of a day for an entire month (Ramadan, for Islam).
Less certain, but also suspected, is that the Muslim activity of throwing stones at Satan finds its origins in a pre-Islamic pagan ritual in which stones were thrown to symbolically drive away jinn and other evil spirits. Muslim tradition itself indicates to us that Mohammed had much to do with the jinn, as he was a shaman who could control the spirits which resided in rocks, trees, and bodies of water.18 Mohammed himself was even said to have been at various times bewitched and under satanic inspiration.19 These evidences provide additional support to the contention that much of Islam is repackaged pre-Islamic Arabian paganism.
Mistakes, Inconsistencies, and Imperfections in the Qur'an
Any book making the claim to be God's Word ought therefore to be free from demonstrable error. The Bible has withstood every test of literary, logical, historical, archaeological, and scientific truth and accuracy brought against it by skeptics and unbelievers. Can the same be said for the Qur'an?
The answer as can be shown is NO. Muslims claim the Qur'an is preserved and inspired, and point to Surah 85:21-22 as proof, "Nay, this is a Glorious Qurán, (Inscribed) in a Tablet Preserved!" The Qur'an is claimed, as an impregnable dogma, to be written in perfect Arabic, said to be "Allah's language", as a basis of its absence of error. This claim is made in Surah 13:37,
"Thus have We revealed it to be a judgment of authority in Arabic. Wert thou to follow their (vain) desires after the knowledge which hath reached thee, then wouldst thou find neither protector nor defender against Allah."
This claim is further refined,
"We know indeed that they say, "It is a man that teaches him." The tongue of him they wickedly point to is notably foreign, while this is Arabic, pure and clear." (Surah 16:103)
Surah 12:2 and Surah 41:41,44 are also often used to support this dogma, with the notion being that if Allah does something, it must be perfect, so his revelation of the Qur'an in Arabic means that the text in Arabic must be perfect. However, study of the Quranic Arabic shows this to not be true. Critical Muslim scholar Ali Dashti makes this comment concerning the Quranic text,
"The Qor'an contains sentences which are incomplete and not fully intelligible without the aid of commentaries; foreign words, unfamiliar Arabic words, and words used with other than the normal meaning; adjectives and verbs inflected without observance of the concords of number and number; illogically and ungrammatically applied pronouns which sometimes have no referent; and predicates which in rhymed passages are often remote from the subjects....20 To sum up, more than one hundred Qor'anic aberrations from the normal rules and structure of Arabic have been noted."21
The Qur'an has many grammatical errors in the Arabic, a partial listing being errors in Surat 2:177, 3:59, 4:162, 5:69, 7:160, and 63:10. A detailed exposition of the errors in the Arabic has been provided by Dr. Anis Shorrosh, a Palestinian Christian and native Arabic speaker.22 These errors demonstrate the fallibility of the Arabic text of the Qur'an. In a further exposition on the subject, Rafiqul-Haqq and Newton have provided detailed demonstrations of how the Qur'an uses grammatically unsound Arabic at several points (Surat 2:177, 3:59, 4:162, 5:69, 7:56, 7:160, 21:3, 22:19, 41:11, 49:9, 63:10, and 91:5) and provide the correct readings according to standard rules of classical Arabic grammar.23
Additionally, the Quranic Arabic cannot be considered "pure" because of the inclusion of many foreign words into the text. These words include "Pharaoh" (Egyptian, repeated 84 times), "Haroot, Maroot, sirat, hoor, tilmeeth, jinn, and firdaus" (Persian/Farsi words), "heber, sakinah, maoon, turat, and jehannim" (Hebrew words), "taboot, taghouth, zakat, and malakout" (Syriac words), and "injil", (Arabisation of 'eua[n]ggelion', Greek word for 'good news', referring to the Gospels).24 In his foundational study of Syriac influences on the Qur’an, Mingana noted several points where the Qur’an had either directly borrowed words from Syriac (a Christian liturgical tongue used throughout Syria, Mesopotamia, and Northern Arabia at the time), or else adopted foreign meanings for native words which were derived from their cognate usage in Syriac.25 Many of these words which entered into the Qur’an were drawn directly from Christian usage, including terms such as “resurrection” and “Messiah”. Despite the age of Dr. Mingana’s research, it still remains foundational to understanding on this point, as his evidences and conclusions have been little assailed by the intervening decades of Quranic research.
If Arabic is the language of Allah, and therefore perfect, than why the need for the inclusion of words from other languages, when there are perfectly viable Arabic alternatives for each word listed above which could have been used?
The Qur'an contains several outright scientific errors:
- In Surah 23:14, the embryo is said to be formed from a joining of the sperm with a clot of blood. This incorrect view entirely ignores the equally important presence of the female ova (egg), and the process of fertilisation which occurs between the egg and the sperm. Further, in Surah 86:6, the Qur‘an informs us that semen originates in a region of the body between the kidneys and the spine, which is obviously wrong, but which yet reflects a widespread belief of the time which originated with the Greek physician Hippocrates in the 5th century BC, and continued after him for many centuries.
- In Surah 18:86, the Qur'an says that a traveler sees the sun sets in a spring of murky water, and in 18:90 this same traveler finds the specific point at which the sun rises. We know, of course, that the sun does not set into a murky spring of water, and further that the earth is not flat, which is presupposed by the finding of specific places where it rises and sets.
- In Surah 51:49, the Qur'an claims that Allah made everything in pairs. However, we know that there are several species of plants, animals, and monerons which reproduce asexually through parthenogenesis, and which have only one gender, or really no gender at all.
- Surat 21:31 and 31:10 both seem to claim that mountains exist to prevent earthquakes, something which both science and simple observation demonstrate to be false.
-In Surah 25:61, the Qur’an intimates that the moon gives its own light. In this verse, the word muneer is used to describe the light of the moon. The phrase used here in the Arabic is “feeha sirajan waqamaran muneeran”. It appears as the bold portion of the verse, “Blessed is He Who made constellations in the skies, and placed therein a Lamp and a Moon giving light“. In this verse, the sun is referred to as the “siraj”, a word meaning “a bright lamp or light”. However, “muneer” is an adjective which describes the light produced by an object. Four times in the Qur’an, the word “muneer” is used to describe the light of illumination or enlightenment provided by the Qur’an itself (in a figurative sense, of course), in Surat 3:184; 22:8, 31:20, and 35:35. Would Muslims suggest that the Qur’an reflects the enlightenment from another, or rather that it is the source of enlightenment? Further, in Surah 33:46, the enlightenment which Mohammed was said to bring is described as “wasirajan muneeran”, thus demonstrating that “muneer” is an adjective describing “siraj”. Thus, the “muneer” of the moon, from the way these words are used elsewhere in the Qur’an, can be said to originate from the moon itself, an obvious scientific error.
However, this has not stopped Muslim apologists from trying to “prove” miraculously prognostic scientific knowledge in the Qur’an. Most all of these claims are so tendentious and strained in their exegesis that the average reader could easily see through the arguments. Some of the more modern claims, in fact, rely on blatant misunderstanding of science, or misinterpretation of science to make it appear to correlate with the Qur’an. A couple of these are presented for the reader’s examination below:
- Certain Muslim apologists will claim that Surah 79:30 (based upon what has been shown to be a mistranslation of the word dahaha) states that the earth is egg-shaped. The claim is that this statement shows that the Qur’an gives advanced knowledge of the slightly non-spherical shape of the earth. However, the earth is an oblate spheroid (having an equatorial radius greater than the polar radius, i.e. a “squashed” sphere). A bird’s egg, the type which can at least be inferred from other Quranic usage of the term “egg”, is a prolate spheroid (having an equatorial radius less than the polar radius, i.e. an “elongated” sphere). Thus, the earth’s shape actually departs from the shape of a true sphere in the opposite direction from what is claimed by some Muslim apologists.
- In Surah 57:25, many Muslim apologists will claim that the reference to Allah “sending down iron” is a miraculous foreknowledge of modern scientific understanding concerning the appearance of iron in the solar system. Since the latest cosmological theories state that iron entered the solar system from outside, as the sun is not hot enough to produce iron in situ, the “sending down” of iron reflects this. Of course, such an interpretation, which presupposes the truth of the evolutionary bases which underlie the scientific theory, flatly contradicts the instantaneous creation taught by the Qur’an (Surah 2:117) where Allah says, “Be! And it is.” Even disregarding this, the argument is flawed if we assume the cosmological theories to be true. These theories state that the solar system formed from the gravitationally-induced aggregation of pre-existing elements (from the Big Bang, previous supernovae, take your pick) which over time formed the planets, moons, the sun, etc. Now, if iron were present in the solar system at the time of its theoretical formation, then it would have been incorporated into the earth at that time. Yet, the phraseology “we sent down” (using the Arabic term nazal, meaning “to bring down, to cast down”) presupposes that the earth was already in existence at the time of the sending down of iron (else there would be nothing to send it down to, as the plain understanding of the Arabic clearly says). Hence, the apologists’ argument as an attempt to ingratiate Islam to modern science does not stand firm in the face of reasoned investigation.
On a further note, I have actually seen some Muslim apologists go beyond this and claim that it is miraculous that the Surah containing this verse (entitled Al-Hadid, “The Iron”) is numbered (in the order of how the surat are arranged) the same as the atomic weight of iron. However, since Al-Hadid is the 57th surah in the current arrangement, and the atomic weight of iron is 55.847 daltons (which we can charitably round to 56), the argument seems to be mooted. Even in the face of this, some apologists will yet argue that, if one does not count Al-Fatiha (the opening surah of the Qur’an, Surah 1), then Al-Hadid is number 56 and thus falls into line with the atomic weight of iron. I find this interesting because at no other time would any sort of modern orthodox Muslim suggest ignoring or removing any surah of the Qur’an!
Interestingly, this claim that Allah (or other deity) sent down iron to mankind did not originate in the Qur'an. Instead, this belief that iron was sent down from heaven has a long history among many ancient peoples all around the Mediterranean and the Near East. This belief, as pointed out by Bauval,26 likely originated from the meteoritic origin of the iron which probably formed the first major sources of iron for ancient man. Among the ancient Egyptians, iron was known by the word "Bja", a word which also had the meaning "material of which heaven was made", indicating a belief on the part of the Egyptians of a divine origin for iron.27 McCall tells us that the Phrygians of the 7th century BC worshipped a cone-shaped iron meteorite,28 and Bauval also gives several examples of stones which "fell to earth" that were venerated by ancient peoples, including the black meteorite enshrined in the Muslim Ka'abah. Hence, this story in the Qur'an has clear pre-Islamic pagan origins.
The Qur'an holds within its pages some historical inaccuracies, as well:
- In Surah 28:38, Pharaoh (the king of Egypt) orders Haman to begin making baked bricks in a kiln out of clay, this during the time of Moses. Historical evidence demonstrates that the Egyptians at this time built their buildings out of two materials: cut stone and sun-dried bricks. The Egyptians would not have baked their bricks (a practice not introduced to Egypt until the Roman era), but made them and dried them in the heat of the sun.29
- In Surah 20:87 and 20:95, the Jews are said to have made the golden calf idol at the behest of the Samaritans, a group of people who did not exist until around the time of the Post-Exilic period, nearly eight centuries after the Exodus.
The Qur'an in several points also makes mistakes regarding the beliefs of non-Muslims groups with whom Mohammed had contact. One example which was discussed above is the erroneous Quranic teaching on the Trinity, or more properly, what Christian beliefs about the Trinity supposedly are. The Qur'an says that Christians join two gods with Allah, and that the Trinity is composed of God, Jesus, and Mary. This composition is not the historic Trinity which was accepted by the vast bulk of Christendom. Instead, this "Trinity" which Mohammed railed against in the Qur'an was a heretical construction of the Collyridians, who were steeped in Mariolatry. The historical trinitarian understanding of the Trinity (as was later defined in the Athanasian Creed) was quite broadly established throughout Christendom at least two centuries before Mohammed, and evidence for the trinitarian belief exists from the very start of the churches. However, Allah somehow missed the teaching of the vast bulk of the early churches, which was that the Trinity is God being ONE in essence while THREE in persons, and instead revealed to Mohammed that Christians believed the Trinity to be God, Jesus, and Mary. In other words, Allah apparently made a mistake, and did not understand what was the true teaching of Christianity, and what was the false teaching of heretics.
Further, we note that in Surah 9:30, the Qur'an attributes to the Jews the belief that Ezra (Uzair) was the son of God. This is not a belief which has been expounded by Jewish theologians and teachers, however, and is thus another error which Allah purportedly makes concerning the beliefs of a non-Muslim group.
Also, we must note the Quranic fascination with referring to Jesus as "Isa". Muslims maintain, based upon the authority of the Qur'an, that Isa is the true name for Jesus in the Arabic language. However, this is not the case. Instead, "Yasu" is the Arabic form of Jesus, (itself a Hellenisation of the Hebrew "Yeshua"). The Arabic form of Jesus is clearly shown to us to have been "Yasu" among Arabians who lived even before Mohammed's time:
"Mr. G. Lankaster Harding, Chief Curator of Antiquities Hashimite
Kingdom of Jordan, kindly sent me copies of a little more than five
hundred Thamudic inscriptions....It is the inscription [Harding No.
476] that interests us here....Below the circle there are four
letters: a y, a sh, a c, and again a y. These letters are so placed
that they can be read from right to left or from left to right y-sh-
c, probably pronounced Yashûc, and this name is the same as Yêshûac, the Hebrew form of the name of Christ. It is known that Yêshûac, is the later pronunciation of Yêhôshûac or Joshua; it was used after the
Exile in order to avoid the immediate sequence of two dark vowels (o
and u). Of course, it is well known that the Christians whose
language is Arabic commonly use the form Yasûc."30
Further, in page 18 of this article, Littman says that the form "Yasuc" represents "the ancient Arabic name of Jesus", and "Inscription Harding No. 476 is the oldest native document of Christianity of Northern Arabia known so far."31
What this means to us is that this form, "Yasuc", is the name by which Jesus was known in the most ancient inscriptions in the Arabic
language, of which Thamudic is an archaic form. This construction
appears amazingly similar to the Hebrew "Yeshua" or "Yehoshua", and
the Aramiac "Yeshua" (seen in Ezra 5:1, a passage written in Aramaic,
which appears in the English Bible as Jeshua, and is the same name
with the same meaning "Jehovah saves"). Hence, initially, the Arabs
appear to have referred to Jesus with the name Yasu, not Isa as Muslims and the Qur'an claim.32
Where did the name "Isa" come from then? Isa is the Arabic form of the name "Esau". That this is true is even admitted by Muslim apologists:
"The Holy Quran refers to Jesus as "Eesa", and this name is used more times than any other title, because this was his "Christian" name.
Actually, his proper name was "Eesa" (Arabic), or "Esau". (Hebrew);
classical "Yeheshua", which the Christian nations of the West
Latinised as Jesus. Neither the "J" nor the second "s" in the name
Jesus is to be found in the original tongue - they are not found in
the Semitic language....The word is very simply - "E S A U" - a very
common Jewish name, used more than sixty times in the very first
booklet alone of the Bible, in the part called "Genesis". There was
at least one "Jesus" sitting on the "bench" at the trial of Jesus
before the Sanhedrin. Josephus the Jewish historian mentions some
twenty five Jesus' in his "Book of Antiquities". The New Testament
speaks of "Bar-Jesus"- a magician and a sorcerer, a false prophet
(Act 13:6); and also "Jesus-Justus" - a Christian missionary, a
contemporary of Paul (Colossians 4:11). These are distinct from Jesus
the son of Mary. Transforming "Esau" to (J)esu(s) - Jesus - makes it
unique. This unique (?) name has gone out of currency among the Jews
and the Christians from the 2nd century after Christ. Among the Jews,
because it came to be the proper name of their God(?) - their God
incarnate. The Muslim will not hesitate to name his son - "Eesa" -
because it is an honoured name, the name of a righteous servant of
the Lord."33
While Deedat makes some mistakes in his analysis above (such as claiming that Esau is a "common Jewish name", the sixty times which the name is used in the Old Testament all refer to one individual, the brother of Jacob), the essential point of his writing is evident -- Isa is the name for Esau. The rest of his analysis is inaccurate, as he is trying to show that the name "Esau" was the name which Jesus came from in the New Testament. Both the Greek "Jesus" and the Hebrew/Aramaic "Yeshua" mean "Jehovah saves", while Esau means "hairy". However, his admission to the truth of Isa equaling Esau speaks volumes.
What was the source of Isa being applied to Jesus in the Qur'an? Nobody knows for sure, though the most plausible explanation to date is that certain Jews with whom the Arabs had contact, in an effort to insult the Lord Jesus, told them that the Son of God worshipped by Christians was "Isa", thereby applying the name of Jacob's hated brother Esau to the hated Christian Saviour. This claim, however, rests on much hearsay, and thus should be taken with a grain of salt. Perhaps the Arabs at the time of the infiltrations into Syro-Palestine simply misunderstood the hearing or reading of the name, and began to refer to Jesus as "Isa" out of simple mistaken understanding. What should be clear to us, though, is that the Quranic use of "Isa" rests upon a name for Christ which was NOT His name, even in the Arabic. Is it really likely that an omnipotent, omniscient deity such as Allah is claimed to be would make such a simple error as to misname one of his prophets?
The Qur'an also contains many internal self-contradictions and logically problematic statements:
- The heavens and the earth were created by Allah in six days, according to Surat 7:54, 10:3, 11:7, and 25:59; but it took eight days, according to Surah 41:9-12.
- In Surah 22:47, Allah's day equals 1000 human years, but in Surah 70:4, a day to Allah is reckoned as 50,000 human years.
- Evil that befalls human beings is alternatively viewed to be from Allah (Surah 4:78), from ourselves (Surah 4:79), and from Satan (Surah 38:41), with two of these contradictions occurring side by side!
- The punishment for adultery is flogging with 100 stripes for both sexes in Surah 24:2, versus lifelong house arrest for the woman and no punishment upon repentance for the man in Surah 4:15-16.
- Satan is viewed as misleading and misguiding people in Surah 4:119-120, but Allah is said to perform this in Surah 16:93.
- Surah 2:256 claims that there must be no compulsion in religion, yet Surah 8:38-39 commands Muslims to fight until all religion but Islam is done away with. Similarly, Surah 45:14 tells Muslims to forgive unbelievers, while Surah 9:29 commands them to fight unbelievers.
In addition to this short list, there are literally dozens of other contradictions which point to the Qur'an as being a flawed book. See a more complete listing
here.
In conclusion, we see that the Qur'an cannot legitimately claim divine inspiration and/or preservation. It has many errors, inconsistencies, and a history of corruptions. The Qur'an is an imperfect book, and cannot be claimed as the work of a perfect and complete God. The same charges cannot be made against the Bible, however, which has withstood every attack upon it made by unbelievers.
End Notes
(1) - S. Abul Ala Maudadi, Towards Understanding Islam, pp. 81-82
(2) - G. Parrinder, Jesus in the Qur’an, p. 147
(3) - Dr. D.A. Waite, Defending the King James Bible, pp. 24-25
(4) - Dr. D.A. Waite, Defending the King James Bible, p. 27
(5) - Dr. D.A. Waite, Defending the King James Bible, p. 56
(6) - J. Burgon, The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels Vindicated and Established, pp. ix-x
(7) - F.G.Kenyon, Handbook of the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, pp. 321-322
(8) - W.N. Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, p. 54
(9) - K. Lake, R.P. Blake, and S. New, "The Caesarian Text of the Gospel of Mark," Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 21 (1928), p. 349
(10) - C.G. Pfander, The Mizan-ul-Haqq: Balance of Truth, p. 283
(11) - The Concise Dictionary of Islam, ed. Cyril Glassé, p. 229
(12) - J. Jomier, The Bible and the Quran, pp. 59ff
(13) - Canon Sell, Studies in Islam, pp. 163ff
(14) - A. Guillaume, Islam, p. 13
(15) - R. Bell, The Origin of Islam in Its Christian Environment, pp. 110ff, 139ff
(16) - Canon Sell, Studies in Islam, pp. 216ff
(17) - Encyclopedia of Islam, ed. M. Eliade, pp. 303ff
(18) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 1, no. 470; vol. 5, no. 199
(19) - Sahih al-Bukhari, vol. 4, nos. 400, 490
(20) - Ali Dashti, 23 Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammed, p.48
(21) - Ali Dashti, 23 Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammed, p.50
(22) - A. Shorrosh, Islam Revealed: A Christian Arab's View of Islam, pp. 199-200
(23) - M. Rafiqul-Haqq and P. Newton, The Qur’an: Grammatical Errors, http://debate.domini.org/newton/grammar.html
(24) - A. Shorrosh, Islam Revealed: A Christian Arab's View of Islam, p. 199
(25) - A. Mingana, "Syraic Influence on the Style of the Koran", Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Vol. 11 (1927), p. 84-5, 87 - A detailing of these can be found in my essay specifically addressing this issue at http://www.studytoanswer.net/islam/purearabic.html
(26) - R. Bauval, "Investigation on the origins of the Benben Stone: Was It An Iron Meteorite?", Discussions in Egyptology, Vol. 14 (1989)
(27) - see G.A. Wainwright, "Iron in Egypt", Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 18 (1931), p. 11
(28) - G.J.H. McCall, Meteorites and Their Origins, p. 17
(29) - G. Maspero, H. Grevel, Manual of Egyptian Archaeology, p. 3
(30) - E. Littman, "Jesus in a Pre-Islamic Arabic Inscription," Muslim World, 1950, vol. xi, p. 16.
(31) - E. Littman, "Jesus in a Pre-Islamic Arabic Inscription," Muslim World, 1950, vol. xi, p. 18.
(32) - please note - the c used in the above is a graphical representation of the “ayin“, a soft gutteral semi-consonant found in most Semitic languages, very difficult for Westerners to imitate as there is no real analogue in most Indo-European languages. It can be approximated by elongating an “ahh“ sound in the back of the throat.
(33) - A. Deedat, Christ in Islam, Ch. 2
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