Thanks tbaba1234 for your response. I really appreciate your patience and hope I haven't offended any Muslims in my ignorance. My aim is just to learn as much as I can and not adhere to common misconceptions.

goggs:

Sir, I think you are being unfair to me on the following;

[size=15pt](i)[/size]

You presented quotations from western scholars who rate the Quran highly and challenge me. I provided quotations from western scholars who criticize the Quran and tell you why Arabs will seldom carry out an objective critique of the Quran. You say;

Earlier I told you

also

How do really expect an Arab linguist to objectively look at the Koran from a true unbiased critical view? Its either they are Muslims or as you know, researchers in the middle east are circumspect when it come to religious inquiries. Its like asking me to go to the Rome and get a person who would criticise the Pope/Church/Bible.

If you read my earlier messages critically, you will see that  i went into the intricacies of Arabic literature, Not Opinions of people who can't speak the language.

An Arab linguist/Literary scholar does not have to be an Arab, It is just someone that has studied the language in depth; For instance i gave a quote

Devin J. Stewart’s analysis, he states, “The Qur’an allows inexact rhymes which are not found in later saj’”[Devin J. Stewart, Saj’ in the Qur’an: Prosody and Structure, p.102.]

If you examine this quote; I talked only about the literature of the Quran in the arabic language.

So my point is this, Find me a renowned scholar of Arabic Literature, Muslim or Non-Muslim, that does not hold the Quran in high esteem as a literary marvel.


2.
Waraqa recited the scriptures he had in arabic, It does not show that there were written in Arabic. There is NO EVIDENCE of the biblical scriptures in Arabic .

The books of the scripture existed in hebrew and in the Aramaic language and was not readily available to every one.

You are just repeating the same things.

The prophet had scribes who wrote the revelations of the Quran.

(a) There were the written Gospels BEFORE Prophet Mohammed was called by God and his relation (Wife' Cousin) had access/were knowledgeable in them.
(b) One of Prophet's [Secretaries wrote his revelations for him (before leaving Islam)
(c) Written peotry was hung on the walls of the Kaaba
(d) Prophet Muhammed had revelations written down on the spot through Secretaries using camel shoulder blades and ink

a) that is correct; but there was none in the Arabic Languge
b) Scribe is a better term
c) I know
d) I already said there were scribes who wrote the Quran

I have never contradicted myself. My position is clear; All you have are conspiracy theories.

None of what you have said has proven that an Arabic Bible or scripture existed in any significant form.

You are just building straw-men.

There is no way the Quran could have been copied from any biblical texts, there are subtle differences in most stories. There are places where historical inaccuracies in the bible are corrected in the Quran. I will give you just a simple example and i will provide evidence.

It is a subtle difference but a significant one.

Titles of Egyptian Rulers in the Quran

Moses was not the only prophet who lived in the lands of Egypt in the history of ancient Egypt.  The Prophet Joseph had lived in Egypt long before the time of Moses.
We encounter a certain constrast while reading about the stories of Moses and Joseph.  While addressing the Egyptian ruler at the time of Joseph, the work "malik" (the King) is used in the Qur'an:

”The King (malik) said, 'Bring him (Joseph) to me straight away! so I may draw him very close to me.' When he had spoken with him, he declared, 'Today you are trusted, established in our sight.'„(The Qur'an, 12:54)

In contrast, the ruler at Moses' time is referred to as the "Pharaoh":

”We gave Moses nine Clear Signs. Ask the tribe of Israel about when he came to them and Pharaoh said to him, 'Moses, I think you are bewitched.'„
(The Qur'an, 17:101)

Historical records available today show us the reason for the different nomenclature of these rulers. The word "pharaoh" was originally the name given to the royal palace in ancient Egypt. The rulers of the old dynasty did not use the title. The use of the word pharaoh as the title of the ruler did not start until the "New Kingdom" era of Egyptian history. This period started with the 18th dynasty (1539-1292 BC), and by the 20th dynasty (945-730 BC) the word "pharaoh" was adopted as title of respect.

Therefore the miraculous nature of the Qur'an is manifested here once again:  Joseph lived at the time of the Old Kingdom, and hence the word "malik"(king) was used for the Egyptian ruler rather than "pharaoh". On the contrary, since Moses lived at the time of the New Kingdom, the ruler of Egypt is addressed as "pharaoh".

There is no doubt that one has to have a knowledge of the history of Egypt in order to make such a distinction. However, the history of Ancient Egypt was completely forgotten by the 4th century, as hieroglyphics could no longer be understood, and was not rediscovered (rosseta stone) until the 19th century. Therefore, there was no in-depth knowledge of Egyptian history available when the Qur'an was revealed. This fact is yet another one of countless pieces of evidence proving that the Qur'an is the word of God.

In case you are in doubt

Let's go the hieroglyphics,  Old kingdom called kings Malik
                                              New Kingdom called kings Paraa

Pharaoh was the greek, hebrew translation of peraa. But the ancient egyptians used "Malik" and "Paraa"

The best place to start the investigation is to look into the material which deals with ancient Egyptian civilization. Let us begin by looking at the entry "per-aa" in Wörterbuch Der Aegyptischen Sprache, the most authoritative dictionary of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.



There are three distinct entries mentioned in Wörterbuch Der Aegyptischen Sprache for the word "per-aa":

1. "The large house" as designation of the king's palace in the Old Kingdom Period.
2. "The palace" = residence of the king and other inhabitants.
3. As a designation of the king. Since the 18th Dynasty of the New Kingdom Period, the Egyptian word for "king".

Similarly, Die Sprache Der Pharaonen Großes Handwörterbuch Ägyptisch, a concise Egyptian-German dictionary under the entry "per-aa" says:



Figure 2: Hieroglyph entry for "per-aa".

Here the usage in the New Kingdom and Old Kingdom Periods for the word "per-aa" are underlined in red. In the New Kingdom Period, the word "per-aa" referred to Pharaoh, any Pharaoh, i.e., the king of Egypt. But in the Old Kingdom Period, the word meant "King's palace", "the great house", or denoted the large house of the king. Not surprisingly Lexikon Der Ägyptologie - an encyclopedia of Egyptology - under the entry "Pharao" says that this word was used to denote the person of the king from the New Kingdom Period onwards.

The famous English egyptologist Sir Alan Gardiner discusses the term Pharaoh and cites the earliest example of its application to the king, during the reign of Amenophis IV (fl. c.1352 - 1338 BCE) as recorded in the Kahun Papyrus. Regarding the term Pharaoh, Gardiner says:



Similarly, under the entry "Pharaoh", the British Museum Dictionary Of Ancient Egypt confirms that it was first used to refer to the king in the New Kingdom Period.

Pharaoh: Term used regularly by modern writers to refer to the Egyptian king. The word is the Greek form of the ancient Egyptian phrase per-aa ('the great house') which was originally used to refer to the royal palace rather than the king. The 'great house' was responsible for taxation of the lesser 'houses' (perw), such as the temple lands and private estates. From the New Kingdom (1550-1069 BC) onwards, the term was used to refer to the king himself.[57]
The Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary agrees with modern linguist research and states concerning "Pharaoh":

the title of the kings of Egypt until 323BC. In the Egyptian language the word Pharaoh means "great house." This word was originally used to describe the palace of the king. Around 1500 BC this term was applied to the king.[58]

However, it has been claimed by the missionary Andrew Vargo that:

The Bible uses the distinctly Egyptian term Pharaoh to refer to the King of Egypt. The word Pharaoh, or "Great House" orginally refered to the government, or the royal palace. Since the Pharaoh was the absolute ruler of Egypt, the government and king were one and the same.

To begin with, the word "Pharaoh" was not used to refer to the king's "government" but to his palace. By fabricating this small piece of information the missionary conveniently extricates the Biblical account from any chronological difficulty by making the word "Pharaoh" equivalent in meaning to "the government." Although this incorrect description may find welcome in the missionaries' imaginative thoughts, it does not find any support in the critical scholarly literature.[59]

There was a clear distinction between the words "Pharaoh" and "King" before the New Kingdom Period. However, in the New Kingdom Period, this distinction was removed and the word "Pharaoh" was the term used to refer to the king himself, as we have already seen from the above discussion. Just like Vargo, vain attempts have been made by Yahuda to show that the events in the Hebrew Bible are amply supported by secular history. Yahuda claimed that the use of "Pharaoh" during the time of Joseph is correct from the point of view of Egyptian history.[60] He asserted that Pharaoh had been a "permanent designation" of the Egyptian king. This is clearly false. Unfortunately for him, Vergote has shown that his views are unsupported by the records of Egyptian history and that the word "Pharaoh" was used to refer to the king only in the New Kingdom Period.[61] The term "Pharaoh" used in the Hebrew Bible during the time of Abraham and Joseph for the rulers of Egypt is anachronistic. This is also confirmed by the noted egyptologist Toby Wilkinson who clearly states in his The Thames & Hudson Dictionary Of Ancient Egypt that:

Pharaoh: The term used for the ancient Egyptian king. The word is derived via Greek from the ancient Egyptian word per-aa ('the great house', palace). Originally applied to the royal residence, it was used from the 18th Dynasty to refer to the king himself. Hence, the use of 'pharaoh' for Egyptian rulers before the New Kingdom is strictly anachronistic and best avoided.[62]
Would it be surprising to see if the Encyclopedia Of The Bible says concerning the name "Pharaoh":

Pharaoh. Ruler over Egypt also known as "the King of Upper and Lower Egypt." He lived in a palace known as the "great house," which was symbol of his authority. The Egyptian word for the palace was applied to the kings of the New Kingdom (c. 1550-1070 BC),  The use of the title pharaoh in Genesis may be anachronistic in that Moses in covering the events of the patriarchs in relation to Egypt used the commonly accepted term "pharaoh" even though the title was not in use at the time of the patriarchs (cf. Gn 12:15-20; 37:36).[63]

Could it be that the writer(s) of the Book of Genesis composed the story hundreds of years after the actual event to reflect a later setting? It seems to be so. Hoffmeier says that the use of "Pharaoh" in the books of Genesis and Exodus "accords well" with the Egyptian practice and hastens to add that:

The appearance of "pharaoh" in the Joseph story could reflect the New Kingdom setting of the story, or, if its provenance is earlier (i.e., the late Middle Kingdom through Second Intermediate Period), its occurence in Genesis is suggestive of the period of composition.[64]


[54] "Pharao" in W. Heck & E. Otto, Lexikon Der Ägyptologie, 1982, Volume IV, Otto Harrassowitz: Wiesbaden, Column 1021.

"Großes Haus", von frühester Zt an Bezeichnung für den kgl. Palast bzw. den Hof, seit Thutmosis III. und generell mit dem Neuägypt. dann für die Person des Königs. Als Titel vor dem Herrschernamen seit Scheschonq I, Schreibung in der Kartusche seit der 22 Dyn. Als Titel der ägypt.

Könige, z.T. mit folgendem Namen (Hophra, Necho), im AT in der Form para`o(h),

[55] Sir A. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar: Being An Introduction To The Study Of Hieroglyphs, 1957, 3rd Edition (Revised), Oxford University Press: London, p. 75.

[56] W.V. Davies, Egyptian Hieroglyphs, 1987, British Museum Press: London, p. 45.

[57] "Pharaoh" in I. Shaw & P. Nicholson, British Museum Dictionary Of Ancient Egypt, 1995, British Museum Press: London, p. 222.

[58] "Pharaoh" in H. Lockyer, Sr. (General Editor), F.F. Bruce et al., (Consulting Editors), Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary, 1986, op. cit., p. 828.

[59] One can only speculate as to the reasons why the missionary has chosen to fabricate information central to his argument. In resonance with much that is penned by the Christian missionaries, what makes this undesirable situation even more stupefying is that Vargo clearly states that biblical accuracy is not his primary concern! He says:

In the final anylsis, I do not mind if the place/person names were updated in Scriptures.

[60] A. S. Yahuda, The Accuracy Of The Bible: The Stories Of Joseph, The Exodus And Genesis Confirmed And Illustrated By Egyptian Monuments And Language, 1934, William Heinemann Limited: London, p. 42.

[61] J. Vergote, Joseph En Égypt: Genèsis Chap. 37-50 À La Lumière Des Études Égyptologiques Récents, 1959, op. cit., pp. 45-48.

[62] "Pharaoh" in T. Wilkinson, The Thames & Hudson Dictionary Of Ancient Egypt, 2005, Thames & Hudson: London, p. 186.

[63] "Pharaoh" in W. A. Elwell, Encyclopedia Of The Bible, 1988, Volume II, op. cit., pp. 1668-1669.

It must be added that although the word "Pharaoh" has been discussed by numerous scholars, many of them have ignored the fact that it is anachronistic during the time of Abraham and Joseph and some even claim that the biblical and Egyptian usage of this word corresponds "closely". See, for example, K. A. Kitchen, "Pharaoh" in J. D. Douglas (Organizing Editor), New Bible Dictionary, 1982, Second Edition, op. cit., pp. 923-924; "Pharaoh" in P. J. Achtemeier, Harper's Bible Dictionary, 1985, op. cit., pp. 781-782; K. A. Kitchen, "Pharaoh" in G. W. Bromiley (Gen. Ed.), The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, 1986 (Fully Revised, Illustrated), Volume III, op. cit., p. 821; J. A. Wilson, "Pharaoh" in G. A. Buttrick (Ed.), The Interpreter's Dictionary Of The Bible, 1962 (1996 Print), Volume 3, op. cit., p. 774; J. P. Free & H. F. Vos, Archaeology And Bible History, 1992, Zondervan Publishing House: Grand Rapids (MI), pp. 69-76; J. H. Sailhamer, Biblical Archaeology, 1998, Zondervan Publishing House: Grand Rapids (MI), pp. 35-46.

[64] J. K. Hoffmeier, Israel In Egypt: The Evidence For The Authenticity Of The Exodus Tradition, 1999, op. cit., p. 88.

You can check the references,

There are many examples of this:

How do i copy something and correct things that are incorrect? On your assumption, the prophet must had a library as big as the National Library of China.

emöfine:

Thanks tbaba1234 for your response. I really appreciate your patience and hope I haven't offended any Muslims in my ignorance. My aim is just to learn as much as I can and not adhere to common misconceptions.

It is my pleasure. Keep the Questions coming and id try to provide answers. The Prophet said: "Whoever follows a path in the pursuit of knowledge, Allaah will make a path to Paradise easy for him." (Al-Bukhaari).

Thanks.

(i)
I think I have shown the contradictions in your posts throughout our encounter. You can go through them yourself. i have made my point and will not go back to them.

I am surprised that you choose to explain away a Hadith Sahih Bukhari 4.56.81 among others. One thing is clear, the gospels were known in Arabia. And assuming we have only that Hadith to depend on and there were no gospel texts anywhere in Arabia (as you claim), its obvious Waraqa used to read (or recite as you prefer) them (obviously to an audience, in which recitation will fit in perfectly) and Khadijah knew (obviously) what he was doing and therefore sought assistance when the Prophet had his first visions.

Also, Christians are active witnesses ever since the great commission by Jesus ( Matthew 28:16–20), it will be impossible to have them in pagan Arabia and they not attempt to spread their faith. the Jews were there with their Torah especially in Medina where they controlled the city, how possible is it that their religious stories and mode of worship would not be known by their Arab neighbours? impossible.

But I shall let that pass cos I have made my points quite clear.


(ii)
As per the opinions of Arabic Linguist and scholars on the Quran, let me quote quite a few.

(a)

"Among the Muslim scholars of the early period, before bigotry and hyperbole prevailed, were some such as Ebrahim an-Nazzam who openly acknowledged that the arrangement and syntax of the Qur'an are not miraculous and that works of equal or greater value could be produced by other God-fearing persons"
"The Qur'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 gender and number; illogically and ungrammatically applied pronouns which sometimes have no referent; and predicates which in rhymed passages are often remote from the subjects. These and other such aberrations in the language have given scope to critics who deny the Qur'an's eloquence. The problem also occupied the minds of devout Moslems. It forced the commentators to search for explanations and was probably one of the causes of disagreement over readings" - Twenty Three Years: A study of the Prophetic Career of Muhammad, Ali Dashti

(b)
Rafiqul-Haqq and Newton demonstrate in their foundational essay a study of several errors in the Quranic Arabic grammar, and provide corrected readings based upon accepted rules of Classical Arabic grammar (too many to summarize here) - M. Rafiqul-Haqq and P. Newton, The Qur'an: Grammatical Errors

Muslims claim the Qur'an not just to be a human literary masterpiece, but a divine literary miracle. But this claim does not square with the facts. For the Qur'an, which we have in our hands contains obvious grammatical errors which is plain to see for all who know Arabic. The Qur'an, because of these errors, is not even a masterpiece. If, humanly speaking, the Qur'an cannot be called a masterpiece, can anyone honestly call it a divine literary miracle? - M. Rafiqul-Haqq and P. Newton

(c)

My idea is that the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, The Qur’an claims for itself that it is ‘mubeen,’ or clear, but if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn’t make sense. Many Muslims will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Qur’anic text is just incomprehensible. This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Qur’an is not comprehensible, if it can’t even be understood in Arabic, then it’s not translatable into any language. That is why Muslims are afraid. Since the Qur’an claims repeatedly to be clear but is not—there is an obvious and serious contradiction. Something else must be going on -Gerd-R. Puin

(d)
the wide extent to which both the text of the Koran and the learned Islamic account of Islamic origins have been distorted, a deformation unsuspectingly accepted by Western Islamicists until now - Koranic scholar Günter Lüling wrote in The Journal of Higher Criticism

(e)
The Qur’an contains 107 and 275 foreign words respectively taken from the Persian, Assyrian, Syriac, Hebrew, Greek, Coptic, and Ethiopian languages- some of which are:
Persian: Ara’ik and Istabraq (al-Kahf 18: 31) meaning couches and brocades respectively, Abariq (al-Waqi’ah 56: 18) meaning ewers, Ghassaqan (al-Naba’ 78: 25) meaning pus, Sijjil (al-Fil 105: 4) meaning baked clay;
Aramaic: Harut and Marut (al-Baqarah 2: 102), Sakina (al-Baqarah 2: 248) meaning God’s presence;
Hebrew: Ma’un (al-Ma’un 107: 7) meaning charity, Ahbar (al-Tawbah 9: 31) meaning Rabbis;
Ethiopian: Mishkat (al-Nur 24: 35) meaning niche;
Syraic: Surah (al-Tawbah 9: 124) meaning chapter, Taghut (al-Baqarah 2: 257; al-Nahl 16: 36) meaning idols, Zakat (al-Baqarah 2: 110) meaning alms, Fir’awn (al-Muzzammil 73: 15) meaning Pharaoh;
Coptic: Tabut (al-Baqarah 2: 248) meaning ark.

Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 1505), the great Muslim philologist and commentator. (This could mean multiple editing over the years or the lack of consistent usage of proper language a prose of such expected quality should have)

(f)
The quote is important cause is shows the Quran is incomplete:
“Many (of the passages) of the Qur'an that were sent down were known by those who died on the day of Yamama , but they were not known (by those who) survived them, nor were they written down, nor had Abu Bakr, Umar or Uthman (by that time) collected the Qur'an, nor were they found with even one (person) after them” - Ibn Abi Dawud, Kitab al-Masahif, .

(g)

ln examining the purity of the Arabic from the perspective of vocabulary, Alphonse Mingana demonstrated that rather a large number of words used in the Qur'an, both religious and common, are derived from Syraic, a liturgical language, which originated from the pre-Hellenistic lingua franca, Aramaic. Essentially several words in the Quran are not pure Arabic. A. Mingana, "Syraic Influence on the Style of the Koran"

(h)
"From the literary point of view, the Koran has little merit. Declamation, repetition, puerility, a lack of logic and coherence strike the unprepared reader at every turn. It is humiliating to the human intellect to think that this mediocre literature has been the subject of innumerable commentaries, and that millions of men are still wasting time in absorbing it." - Salomon Reinach

goggs:

(i)
I think I have shown the contradictions in your posts throughout our encounter. You can go through them yourself. i have made my point and will not go back to them.

I am surprised that you choose to explain away a Hadith Sahih Bukhari 4.56.81 among others. One thing is clear, the gospels were known in Arabia. And assuming we have only that Hadith to depend on and there were no gospel texts anywhere in Arabia (as you claim), its obvious Waraqa used to read (or recite as you prefer) them (obviously to an audience, in which recitation will fit in perfectly) and Khadijah  knew (obviously) what he was doing and therefore sought assistance when the Prophet had his first visions.

Also, Christians are active witnesses ever since the great commission by Jesus ( Matthew 28:16–20), it will be impossible to have them in pagan Arabia and they not attempt to spread their faith. the Jews were there with their Torah especially in Medina where they controlled the city, how possible is it that their religious stories and mode of worship would not be known by their Arab neighbours? impossible.

But I shall let that pass cos I have made my points quite clear.

Finally, you give me a little to work with:

i) In Mecca, there was only one reported person who was a christian; He died early after the message began,  Unless he could communicate with the living, his influence on early Islam is negligible.

ii) The second claim of the scribe is another conspiracy, so what happened when he left,  The verses came before  him and after him. The Qur’an was revealed in piecemeal manner over a period of about 23 years. Often times, revelations came in response to an issue, a problem, a question or an event in the life of the community. It  is totally unreasonable , if not impossible, to make a convincing argument that throughout this extended period, the Prophet [p] was learning from some secret teacher [s] and evading all the watchful eyes of his critics and detractors in such an open community without being “caught”, even once,  while doing so and for a period of 23 years. In Madinah, the Prophet [p] was surrounded constantly by his followers and mostly in public, If he were learning from others, how could his closest companions continue to believe him when he continued to affirm that the Qur’an he recited was purely Allah’s revelations?. All attempts to “discover” or even speculate about that unseen teacher [s], to explain the source of the Qur’an, were proven futile, illogical and un-historical.

The Prophet [p] was raised in a predominantly idolatrous society for the first 13 years of his mission. Before he immigrated to Madinah, where some Jewish tribes lived, the Qur’anic revelations in Makkah had already articulated Muslim beliefs and the Qur’anic core truths. He was in no need to learn from them or from others. In fact, some Qur’anic verses challenged their contentions and claimed to supersede some of their earlier revelations. More than one prominent learned Rabbi [such as Abdullah Ibn Salaam and Ka`b Al-Ahbaar] accepted him as prophet/teacher. . The stories of most of the prophets were revealed in mecca.

Please read the replies carefully, before you come up with imaginary contradictions

goggs:

(ii)
As per the opinions of Arabic Linguist and scholars on the Quran, let me quote quite a few.

(a)

"Among the Muslim scholars of the early period, before bigotry and hyperbole prevailed, were some such as Ebrahim an-Nazzam who openly acknowledged that the arrangement and syntax of the Qur'an are not miraculous and that works of equal or greater value could be produced by other God-fearing persons"
"The Qur'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 gender and number; illogically and ungrammatically applied pronouns which sometimes have no referent; and predicates which in rhymed passages are often remote from the subjects. These and other such aberrations in the language have given scope to critics who deny the Qur'an's eloquence. The problem also occupied the minds of devout Moslems. It forced the commentators to search for explanations and was probably one of the causes of disagreement over readings" - Twenty Three Years: A study of the Prophetic Career of Muhammad, Ali Dashti

(b)
Rafiqul-Haqq and Newton demonstrate in their foundational essay a study of several errors in the Quranic Arabic grammar, and provide corrected readings based upon accepted rules of Classical Arabic grammar (too many to summarize here) - M. Rafiqul-Haqq and P. Newton, The Qur'an: Grammatical Errors

Muslims claim the Qur'an not just to be a human literary masterpiece, but a divine literary miracle. But this claim does not square with the facts. For the Qur'an, which we have in our hands contains obvious grammatical errors which is plain to see for all who know Arabic. The Qur'an, because of these errors, is not even a masterpiece. If, humanly speaking, the Qur'an cannot be called a masterpiece, can anyone honestly call it a divine literary miracle?  - M. Rafiqul-Haqq and P. Newton

(c)

My idea is that the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, The Qur’an claims for itself that it is ‘mubeen,’ or clear, but if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn’t make sense. Many Muslims will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Qur’anic text is just incomprehensible. This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Qur’an is not comprehensible, if it can’t even be understood in Arabic, then it’s not translatable into any language. That is why Muslims are afraid. Since the Qur’an claims repeatedly to be clear but is not—there is an obvious and serious contradiction. Something else must be going on -Gerd-R. Puin

(d)
the wide extent to which both the text of the Koran and the learned Islamic account of Islamic origins have been distorted, a deformation unsuspectingly accepted by Western Islamicists until now - Koranic scholar Günter Lüling wrote in The Journal of Higher Criticism

(e)
The Qur’an contains 107 and 275 foreign words respectively taken from the Persian, Assyrian, Syriac, Hebrew, Greek, Coptic, and Ethiopian languages- some of which are:
Persian: Ara’ik and Istabraq (al-Kahf 18: 31) meaning couches and brocades respectively, Abariq (al-Waqi’ah 56: 18) meaning ewers, Ghassaqan (al-Naba’ 78: 25) meaning pus, Sijjil (al-Fil 105: 4) meaning baked clay;
Aramaic: Harut and Marut (al-Baqarah 2: 102), Sakina (al-Baqarah 2: 248) meaning God’s presence;
Hebrew: Ma’un (al-Ma’un 107: 7) meaning charity, Ahbar (al-Tawbah 9: 31) meaning Rabbis;
Ethiopian: Mishkat (al-Nur 24: 35) meaning niche;
Syraic: Surah (al-Tawbah 9: 124) meaning chapter, Taghut (al-Baqarah 2: 257; al-Nahl 16: 36) meaning idols, Zakat (al-Baqarah 2: 110) meaning alms, Fir’awn (al-Muzzammil 73: 15) meaning Pharaoh;
Coptic: Tabut (al-Baqarah 2: 248) meaning ark.

Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 1505), the great Muslim philologist and commentator. (This could mean multiple editing over the years or the lack of consistent usage of proper language a prose of such expected quality should have)

(f)
The quote is important cause is shows the Quran is incomplete:
“Many (of the passages) of the Qur'an that were sent down were known by those who died on the day of Yamama ,  but they were not known (by those who) survived them, nor were they written down, nor had Abu Bakr, Umar or Uthman (by that time) collected the Qur'an, nor were they found with even one (person) after them” - Ibn Abi Dawud, Kitab al-Masahif, .

(g)

ln examining the purity of the Arabic from the perspective of vocabulary, Alphonse Mingana demonstrated that rather a large number of words used in the Qur'an, both religious and common, are derived from Syraic, a liturgical language, which originated from the pre-Hellenistic lingua franca, Aramaic. Essentially several words in the Quran are not pure Arabic. A. Mingana, "Syraic Influence on the Style of the Koran"

(h)
"From the literary point of view, the Koran has little merit. Declamation, repetition, puerility, a lack of logic and coherence strike the unprepared reader at every turn. It is humiliating to the human intellect to think that this mediocre literature has been the subject of innumerable commentaries, and that millions of men are still wasting time in absorbing it." - Salomon Reinach

ii) Good attempt, but it falls short sadly,

a. Ibrāhīm an-Naẓẓām was a brilliant muslim theologian but the source of this is highly doubtful, Almost all of his works is lost in history.( The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Vol. 7).

There is no authentic source for this view of him. Al-Jahiz was one of his most famous students and he did not have that outlook.

Ali Dashti's book 23 years of Prophethood  is hardly an authentic source for this kind of statement. Infact, it sounds more like what Ali Dashti will say, given his history.


b. I asked for a renowned literature scholar, who are M. Rafiqul-Haqq and P. Newton? The only books i see about them are  anti-Islam/anti-muslim books. Even an Arab christian would not accept what you just wrote. The Quran is the standard for proper Arabic.

c. This is not a literary statement but it is worthy of a proper response.

The Yemeni government hired Gerd Puin, one of the world's leading authorities on Qur'anic historical orthography, or the study and scholarly interpretation of ancient manuscripts, to study the oldest manuscript of the Quran.

After the publication of the Atlantic Monthly by lester.

Dr. Puin himself has in fact denied all the findings that Lester ascribes to him, with the exception of occasional differences in the spelling of some words. Here is a part of Puin's  letter - which he wrote to al-QaQi Isma'il al-Akwa' shortly after Lester's article - with its translation. (i could not paste the arabic here)

The important thing, thank God, is that these YemeniQur' anic fragments do not differ from those found in museums and libraries elsewhere, with the exception of details that do not touch the Qur'an itself, but are rather differences in the way words arc spelled. This phenomenon is well-known,even in the Qur'an published in Cairo in which is written:

Ibrhim next to Ibrhm
Quran next to Qrn
Simahum next to Simhum

In the oldest Yemeni Qur'anic fragments, for example, the phenomenon of not writing the vowel algis rather common. (For the Arabic text of his complete letter,see the Yemeni newspaper, ath- Thauna, issue 24.11.1419 A.H./ 11.3.1999.)


This deflates the entire controversy, dusting away the webs of intrigue that were spun around Puin's discoveries and making them a topic unworthy
of further speculation."

As regard to the Sana'a Manuscripts, there is nothing "shocking" about its discovery. At most, it is claimed that there is a fragment where the end of sura 26 is followed by 37. But this amounts to nothing, since it is permissable to place suras in any order in a partial mushaf. So this is hardly "news" or a "shocking" discovery.

c. I asked for something about the Arabic Literature of the Quran.

Besides Günter Lüling is a German Protestant theologian, his work was about how early muslims were actually christians.  Do i need to talk further?

e. Even english words have origins from other languages, Is this really an argument?

Linguistically the concept of foreign words in languages is described as ‘borrowing’ . The idea of borrowing words is a universal observation that applies to all languages. English is a good example of this; take the word ‘Philosophy’. It comes from the Greek words ‘Philo’ which means love of and ‘Sophia’ which means wisdom. The concept of ‘foreign’ or ‘borrowed’ words comes from the fact that different races, cultures and peoples come in contact with one another .

What was specific about the Arabs at the time of revelation was that they came into contact with other cultures due to trade and had subsequently borrowed certain words. These foreign words in the Qur’an had already been naturalised into the Arabic language before the revelation of the Qur’an. These words were already in use in the Arabic language. According to Imam Shafi’i (these words had been fully integrated into Arabic and were already a part of the language .

These foreign words include:

Mount (Qur’an 95:2) borrowed from Syriac
Heavy (Qur’an 18:31) from Persian
Sinai (Qur’an 95:2) from Nabatean
The Inscription (Qur’an 18:9) from Greek
The Sea (Qur’an 7:136) from Coptic
Brilliant (Qur’an 24:35) from Abyssinian
To turn onto someone (Qur’an 7:156) from Hebrew[8]

With reference to the Qur’anic statement that it is a “Plain Arabic Qur’an” al-Suyuti believes that the presence of a few foreign words does not make it any less Arabic then the presence of foreign words in a Persian Poem would not make it any less Persian. Additionally the reference to “Plain Arabic” is to the Qur’an as a whole, and not the individual words in it .

To conclude, claims made by some critics are debased by understanding the nature of languages and how they naturalise foreign words into their vocabulary. This phenomenon happens as a result of different cultures and races integrating and coming together. Furthermore the Qur’an can be described as ‘plain Arabic’ because the foreign words in the Qur’an had already been naturalised and were already part of the Arabic language before revelation.

f. This again does not deal with the Literature of the Arabic Quran.

This report is da'eef jiddan (very weak) or mawdoo' (fabricated), because its isnaad includes 'Abbaad ibn Suhayb, whose hadeeth is to be rejected.
'Ali ibn al-Madeeni said: his hadeeth is no good. Al-Bukhaari, al-Nasaa'i and others said: he is matrook (to be rejected). Ibn Hibbaan said: he was a Qadari who promoted his innovated ideas, and he narrated things which a beginner in this field would realize were fabricated if he heard them. Al-Dhahabi said: he is one of those who are to be rejected. See Meezaan al-I'tidaal, by al-Dhahabi, 4/28.

Kitaab Al Masaahif contains narrations that need to be investigated on an individual basis in order to determine its authenticity. We can't just cherry pick what we like. We must rely on an objective standard such as the isnaad (chain of narration) system, which filters out the weak and fabricated narrations from the authentic ones.

g. This has been dealt with in e.

h. Salomon Reinach was no Arab literature scholar

I can see you are trying really hard to find something:: But all of these fall short, 

The truth is you wouldn't find one. You will find plenty quotes against islam or the Quran but not any based on a proper Arabic study of the literature of the Quran or something done by a renowned scholar of Arabic Literature.

I was able to find the link you copied these from. Please always check out all the references you quote.

If you are still in doubt, The Quran States:

Surah 2:23. And if ye are in doubt as to what We have revealed from time to time to Our servant, then produce a Sura like thereunto; and call your witnesses or helpers [If there are any] besides Allah, if your [doubts] are true.

It has been nice talking with you, please forgive me if i said anything rude or improper,  I think the thread needs to get back on track.

Ciao.

(1)

but there was none [ Gospels] in the Arabic Languge

None of what you have said has proven that an Arabic Bible or scripture existed [In PreIslamic Arabia] in any significant form.

If in Pre-Islamic times  there were Christians and Jews in Arabia, and there were written forms of Arabic language, its perfectly logical that there will be written scriptures in Arabic also.

You dispute this because of the next obvious  assumption which is that the Prophet could have copied from the Gospels. That assumption is there already since its obvious that the Gospels (through the the presence of Jews and Christians) were in Arabia before Islam and didn't have to be in a written form to be copied.

"In fact, the whole choice of material (borrowed religious material found in the Quran) is such as to suggest that it came from the memories of men and was communicated to him (Muhammed) orally" - Richard Bell

There are a few scholars who have focused on the prevalence of  gospels in ARABIC as against in Hebrew or the communication between Jews, Christians and Arabs. These can also be found in several Hadith;

(a)

Syriac Infancy Gospel text was originally written in Syriac, possibly during the fifth-sixth century , but later became translated into an Arabic text, which has since been lost. Its earliest known mention was by Isho'dad of Merv, a ninth-century Syrian church father, in his biblical commentary concerning the Gospel of Matthew. The narrative of the Arabic Infancy Gospel, particularly the second part concerning the miracles in Egypt, can also be found in the Qur'an. According to some critical scholarship, its presence in the Qu'ran may be due to the influence the Gospel had amongst the Arabs. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syriac_Infancy_Gospel

(b)

Middle Arabic proper is mirrored in what is perhaps the earliest Christian Arabic text in our possession. This though undated, presumable belongs to the end of the eighth century.  B. Violet seems justified in ascribing to the end of the eighth century a bilingual Greek-Arabic psalm fragment found in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus-------
but has found an important note revealing that part of the text of the manuscript was translated into Arabic far back as AD 772 - Joshua Blau The emergence and linguistic background of Judaeo-Arabic: a study of the origins of middle arabic


(c)

"Emphasis has been placed in recent years on the too long forgotten fact that Arabia at the time of Muhammad as not isolated from the rest of the world, as Muslim authors would have us believe. There was at that time, as indeed for long before, full and constant contact with the surrounding peoples of Syria, Persia, and Abyssinia, and through intercourse there was a natural interchange of vocabulary. Where the Arabs came in contact with higher religion and higher civilization, they borrowed religious and cultural terms. This fact was fully recognized by the earliest circle of Muslim exegetes, who show no hesitation in noting words as of Jewish, Christian, or Iranian origin. Later, under the influence of the great divines, especially as ash-Shafi'i, this was pushed into the background, and an orthodox doctrine was elaborated to the effect that the Quran was a unique production of the Arabic language. The modern Muslim savant, indeed, is as a rule seriously distressed by any discussion of the foreign origin of words in the Quran. - Arthur Jeffrey


(d)

"The fact that Islam regarded Christianity as a religion from which something could be learnt, and did not disdain to borrow from it, is acknowledged by the Muslim theologians themselves, (1) and the early elements of Hadith literature offer us a great wealth of examples which show how readily the founders of Islam borrowed from Christianity. We do not here allude to those vague borrowings which in the earliest times of Islam, through verbal communications with Christian monks or half-educated converts, helped in building up the form and content of the faith, and which appear in the form of isolated technical expressions, Bible legends, and so forth; but we mean those borrowings which are presented in a more definite shape, and evince a certain, if not a very extensive, knowledge of the Christian Scriptures."- Ignaz Goldziher



(2)

You ask for Arab linguists and scholars opinion on the Quran, I give you some and you challenge them as being biased, discredited and Muslim Haters (sincerely who wouldn't be described as such if he speaks unflatteringly about the Quran) .

Since you have a habit of challenging authors of my sources, lets take a look at yours;

Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot : He is noted to be well versed in the ancient literature of India. A translator and an Orientalist, he hardly qualifies as a linguist.

A. T. Welch; apart from an obscure mention in http://www.islamreligion.com/articles/19/viewall/#_ftnref9780 and similar sites (where you get your quotes), he doesnt have a good following in the academic world

Kenneth Cragg - An Anglican Priest and Scholar whose major goals in life is to improve Muslim and Christian relations is not someone who will want to rock the boat. His unusual high praise of the Quran is likely for a "politically correct" posture. This is what he had to say about the Quran - There are ambiguities in the Qur'an  ----- the Qur'an contains passages that say God himself ordained human diversity in order that people might compete together to be the best. God has sanctified diverse cultures by giving each a pattern of worship, a ritual to follow. Another verse says that there is no people to whom a prophet has not been sent.  He again speaks on the difficultirs of Arab Scholars that are per cieved to go against the norm ie Quran and the Prophet We must be concerned about the Muslim scholars who are persecuted in their own countries or are forced into exile Again poses the question Can Islam move toward accepting the secular state -- secular in the sense that the state treats equally citizens of any and every tradition, consonant with public order and the common good? This may sound like off point, but it affects the free critique of Religious text in Arabia - http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=500

John Burton His work on the Quran was merely to establish its transmission through the ages from the Prophet to this day. I don't see any high praise for its contents

Taha Hussein The man didnt have nice things to say about the Quran at some point, and was prosecuted for his views. For someone with radical views, I have doubts if the quotes you made from him were not made by him to appease the authorities.
The Stream of Days (1943).-Gāhilī}(a  book by Taha) in which he expressed doubt about the authenticity of much traditional Arabic poetry, claiming that it may have been faked during ancient times due to tribal pride and competition between those tribes. In this book, he also hinted indirectly that the Quran should not be taken as an objective source of history. Naturally this book excited the intense anger and hostility of al-Azhar and many other traditionalists, and he was prosecuted with the accusation of insulting Islam, but the public prosecutor stated that what Taha Hussein said was the opinion of an academic researcher and no legal action was taken against him, although he lost his post at Cairo University in 1931. His book was banned but was later published with slight modifications under the title "On Pre-Islamic Literature". = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taha_Hussein



While it is clear that the Quran is a product of the rich poetry background of the preislamic era of Arabia, many will exaggeration its beauty based on their perception of it, others will not be so sure owing to a variety of reasons ranging from what they see as incompleteness, errors or prejudice. What ever it is one thing is clear, not all share your enthusiastic admiration for the the Book.

One of the few distinct impression gleaned from a first perusal of the bewildering confusion of the Quran, is that of the amount of material therein which is borrowed from the great religion that were active in Arabia at the time when the Quran was in process of formation. From the fact that Muhammad was an Arab, brought up in the midst of Arabian paganism and practicing its rites himself until well on into manhood, (1) one would naturally have expected to find that Islam had its roots deep down in this old Arabian paganism. It comes, therefore, as no little surprise, to find how little of the religious life of this Arabian paganism is reflected in the pages of the Quran. ,  , it is plain that Muhammad drew his inspiration not from the religious life and experiences of his own land and his own people, but from the great monotheistic religions which were pressing down into Arabia in his day - Auther Jeffrey

@goggs I disagree with your assertions but we are derailing this thread and just going in circles.

We have both made our points, Set up a new thread if you want to explore this more and i will provide responses.

I will be glad to take any question you might have,

Thank you.

tbaba1234 has done a wonderful job on this thread. May Allah elevate you in knowledge and all forms of goodness.

Emofine (Air-More-Fee-Nay) keep asking your questions, you are not offending us.

maclatunji:

tbaba1234 has done a wonderful job on this thread. May Allah elevate you in knowledge and all forms of goodness.

Emofine (Air-More-Fee-Nay) keep asking your questions, you are not offending us.

Jazallahu Khairan

tbaba1234:

@goggs I disagree with your assertions but we are derailing this thread and just going in circles.

We have both made our points,  Set up a new thread if you want to explore this more and i will provide responses.

I will be glad to take any question you might have,

Thank you.

I did say earlier that quoting people will take us nowhere.

A great reminder by Ustadh Nouman Ali Khan.

"Pride is dissatisfaction with the truth, and belittling the people." [Hadith in Muslim]

"Indeed, He does not love the proud." [The Quran - an-Nahl (16):23]

"So enter the gates of Hell to dwell therein. Indeed evil is the abode of the proud. [ The Qur'an - An-Nahl (16):29]

"Pride is dissatisfaction with the truth, and belittling the people." [Hadith in Muslim]

This is one of the best lectures, i have listened to. I hope everyone enjoys it.



Islam and Ego - Nouman Ali Khan

[flash=500,400]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtjwtmjbOKE[/flash]

A Journey Like No Other - Abu Hafsah Abdul Malik Clare

Abu Hafsah Abdul Malik Clare (Jerome Clare), was born totally without sight and raised in Canada. He embraced Islam in 1996. Here he is London on December 25th 2011 with iERA at the Arise and Warn Tour.

[flash=500,400]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytFXntkj9uI#![/flash]

IF GOD IS ALL POWERFUL CAN HE DO ANYTHING?

The Islamic theological position regarding God’s ability is eloquently summed up in the following creedal statement found in The Creed of Imam Al-Tahawi. It states,

“He is Omnipotent. Everything is dependent on Him, and every affair is effortless for Him.”

A common contention or question regarding God’s power and ability is that if God is omnipotent then can He create a stone He cannot move? A key point to make in answering this question is to highlight that ‘Omnipotence’ is misconstrued as ‘all powerful’. What omnipotence really implies is the ability to actualise every affair, rather than raw power. So God being able to “create a stone He cannot move” actually describes an affair that is impossible and meaningless, just like if we were to say “a white black crow” or “a circle triangle” or even an “amphibian mammal”.

Such statements describe nothing at all and have no informative value, they are meaningless. So why should we even answer a question that has no meaning? To put it bluntly the question is not even a question.

Another way of looking at this is that since God is all powerful it means that He will always be able to do what He wills, as the creedal statement above mentions “and every affair is effortless for Him.” Therefore omnipotence also includes the impossibility of failure. The questioner however is saying that since God is all powerful He can do anything which includes failure! This is irrational and absurd as it is equivalent to saying “an all powerful being cannot be an all powerful being”!

To conclude, God can create stone that is heavier than anything we can imagine, but He will always be able to move the stone, what must be understood is that failure is not an aspect of omnipotence.

http://www.hamzatzortzis.com/?page_id=267

Why do Muslims use the word Allah? (Whats the Deal with Islam?)

[flash=500,400]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsSm-_I5ZS0&feature=g-all-u&context=G2a0caceFAAAAAHgAOAA[/flash]

Muslim Poem about Jesus

[flash=500,400]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ELRxGttxo4&feature=context&context=G22572d9FAAAAAHgASAA[/flash]

The poet says:

Jesus, peace be upon him, is one of the greatest prophets. He did a lot of miracles by the will of God. he was a devote servant of the most high. We should look to the prophets as an example.

Just want to make this simple poem to make you think. I am not trying to convince you. Just want you to think about stuff.

I like Christians, they are nice people. May Allah guide us both to the straight path. Ameen.

I was inspired to make this video from a series of videos called:
Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus Muslim Version

tbaba1234:

Muslim Poem about Jesus

[flash=500,400]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ELRxGttxo4&feature=context&context=G22572d9FAAAAAHgASAA[/flash]

The poet says:

Jesus, peace be upon him, is one of the greatest prophets. He did a lot of miracles by the will of God. he was a devote servant of the most high. We should look to the prophets as an example.

Just want to make this simple poem to make you think. I am not trying to convince you. Just want you to think about stuff.

I like Christians, they are nice people. May Allah guide us both to the straight path. Ameen.

I was inspired to make this video from a series of videos called:
Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus Muslim Version

Lol,

What you do not understand is that Christians operate spiritually speaking with a direct and 1:1 relationship with God, they have heard from him, felt his presence and warmth, enjoyed his love and kindness and are enjoined to do the same to others.

Islam is carnal, earthly and offers nothing superior to what God himself has revealed through Christ Jesus . Pick up a bible read and pray that God will open your eyes to TRUTH.

Allah and Muhammad are a sure way down to the pit of destruction, come out now, before you perish in your sins. !!!!

Truth

“The truth is from your Lord, so on no account be among the doubters.” Qur’an 2: 147
“Do not mix the truth with falsehood, or hide the truth when you know it.” Qur’an 2: 42

The question of truth has perplexed the mind of nearly every human being that has lived on this planet. What is truth? How do we get to know truth? Is there such a thing as truth? This type of thinking dates back to the ancient Greek Philosopher Socrates, as a young man he endlessly questioned and sought after the truth. However, in our day and age we do not really think about concepts such as truth. We may have argued, “tell me the truth!” if we suspect our friends of betrayal, or we “swear to tell the truth” in a court of law, but when it comes to our existence, and questioning what it means to be a human being, we forget about truth and adopt skepticism as a philosophy.

Skepticism answers in the negative the following question: can we know anything? It essentially implies the belief that the truth about life and the universe will never be known. Founded by Pyrrho of Elis, Skepticism was advocated and put into writing by the Greek Philosopher Sextus Empiricus who was the first to detail and codify the doctrine. This school of philosophy is common in today’s society, however, its approach regarding truth is unwarranted because we can discover it, and the only way to do that is by endless, insistent questioning. Socrates was great at questioning and by doing so he would bring his opponents to realise the truth, and this is because he believed the truth was already within us. For example, there are many universal principles that we can never deny, and to deny them would deny knowledge itself. For instance, take two planks of wood that are equal in length: do we know they are equal because they are the same length or do we know what the concept of equality is prior to our experience? It is because we have the innate, inbuilt concept of equality that enables us to see that the planks of wood are the same length. Also, we know that half of something is less than its whole, and we know the truth of the fact that all fathers are men. These innate ideas and concepts are known in epistemology as a priori, which means knowledge independent from experience.

From a practical perspective the skeptic’s position is untenable, because we know the truth of the laws of physics that enable bridges to withstand heavy loads, including the laws that keep boats afloat. If a skeptical position was assumed when building our houses, would we agree to implement the architect’s design? The Polish Philosopher Leszek Kolakowski writes,

“We might say: well, since we know nothing, what is the point of constructing theories that have no foundation? But if philosophers and scholars had seriously attempted to achieve such self-satisfied serenity, would they have been able to build our civilization? Would modern physics have been invented?”

So there are some universal truths that we can feel secure in accepting, and the way to find out further truths is to use these universal truths as a starting point, which is called epistemic foundationalism in the language of philosophy.

The importance of truth has been emphasized by many thinkers past and present. Plato the ancient Philosopher said “And isn’t it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are.” So why is the search for truth important? The significance of truth is not only intuitive; it is something that gives us a sense of reality, that things are real. In absence of truth life on occasions can seem unreal and illusory in a certain sense. Additionally, many psychologists have acknowledged that human beings want to be right and seek to learn from social norms when they are unsure about things, this psychological process is known as ‘Normative and Informational Social Influence’, in this view the search for truth is very important as it has the possibility of shaping who we are or the person we want to be.

Another way of looking at this is that not searching for truth is tantamount to lying to ourselves, or even accepting a lie, because anything other than truth will be accepting it’s opposite. So the search for truth would be a means of trying to be more sincere with our own existence, as we would be seeking to establish the truth of who we are and the life we are living. Finally, holding on to the skeptical view that there is no truth is self-defeating, because the claim that there is no truth is actually a truth claim, so how can anyone claim that skepticism is true but everything else is not? This is the inconsistency of the skeptical view; a skeptic would claim the truth of skepticism but would deny all other truths! Consequently no matter what position we hold we still have to accept a truth, and in this light, let the search for truth begin!

http://www.hamzatzortzis.com/?page_id=89

"Jesus answered, "I am the way and[b] the truth[/b] and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."-John 14:6

1 John 5:20 We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true--even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

Success

“…they are the ones who are successful.” Qur’an 7:157
“Truly, this is the supreme success!” Qur’an 37: 60

One of the best definitions I have found of success is “the completion of what is intended”. For example, if I were to intend to learn how to drive, and I passed my driving test, that would be a success. As human beings we intend to achieve things all the time; to get a promotion; to be our own boss; to be a good father and husband; to travel the world or to write a book. If we achieve or complete our aims and objectives thenit can be argued we have been successful. However is this view of success meaningful? I would argue it is not.

If we live our lives to complete the things that we intend to achieve, without even questioning the intention of our own existence, we will have not found any ultimate meaning to our own lives. Therefore our view of success is almost baseless and devoid of real value. If each person completes his life by intending to achieve all of the things we mentioned, and he or she didn’t even complete the intended meaning for his or her life, then can we call their lives successful? We can even ask: does it really matter whether they ever existed at all? His or her life may be of some importance relative to the things they want to complete, but what is the ultimate significance of completing their own lives?

Let’s look at it from a scientific perspective, our children, our actions, our loved ones and everything we do are just arrangements of molecules. Carbon and other atoms in various combinations make up our lives and even the things we intend to complete. From this perspective mankind is thus no more significant than a swarm of flies, or a herd of sheep, for their makeup is all the same. Also, if we follow the scientific line of thought our end is also meaningless, we just die and that’s it. This is true for each individual person. The amazing achievements of the scientist to the advancement of human thinking, the on-going research of bio-medicine to find the cure for cancer, the efforts of the politician to establish justice and peace in the world, all these come to nothing. Even if human beings were to exist forever, the mere infinite duration of our lives would not make them any more meaningful, there would still be no ultimate significance.

Existentialists such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus understood the meaningless reality of life in absence of acknowledging the intention of our existence. This is why Sartre wrote of the “nausea” of existence and Camus saw life as absurd indicating that the universe has no meaning at all. The German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argued in clear concise pronouncements that the world and human history does not have any meaning, any rational order or aim. Nietzsche argued that there is only a mindless chaos, a directionless world tending towards no end.

If we found the intention of our existence, thereby giving our lives ultimate meaning, and we were to achieve and complete what was intended – that would indeed be true success. In contrast to this type of thinking someone may contend by stating that this whole discussion assumes that some metaphysical entity created the whole universe with some sort of purpose. This is true, but by removing this assumption we will only be presuming atheism to be true. Additionally, the logical conclusion of atheism is that our very existence is pointless, which is a conclusion not many atheists would like to follow through due to it being at odds with our innate nature and psychological disposition. So the following questions naturally follow, what is the intention of our existence, and what outlook would make sense of our continuous search for ultimate meaning and success?

http://www.hamzatzortzis.com/?page_id=89

Purpose

“So where are you going?” Qur’an 81: 26
“Our Lord! You have not created all this without purpose” Qur’an 3: 190
“God did not create all these without a true purpose; He explains His signs to those who understand.” Qur’an 10: 5

The Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who inspired two of the 20th century’s principal philosophical movements, once said, “I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.” Wittgenstein did not have the answer to the perennial question of what is humanity’s purpose, but he did indicate that there must be one, even if the answer could not be discovered intuitively. However, it can be argued that the assumption that there is a purpose may be false, and if it is false, then there is nothing to be bothered about, and we should all just carry on living. As Albert Camus, the French Algerian philosopher and journalist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, explained “You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life”. Camus’ point is not ontological, it doesn’t probe into the nature of reality, and his concern seems to be an existential one, meaning that the important thing is how life works for you, the life of individual; regardless of any truth behind existence. So in light of this we must ask: is it reasonable to believe we have a purpose?

To answer this, take the following points into consideration:

You are probably reading this in your bedroom sitting on your chair, and you are definitely wearing some clothes. So I ask you a question: for what purpose? Why are you wearing the clothes and what purpose does the chair fulfill? Since these are rhetorical questions you don’t have to answer, because we all know the answer. The chair’s purpose is to allow us to sit down by supporting our weight, and our clothes fulfill the purpose of keeping us warm, hiding our unclothedness and making us look good! Now from your bedroom let me transport you to a forest somewhere in the world, now this forest obviously has trees and on a particular tree there is a moth. This moth is on this tree drinking its sap, underneath that moth there is another moth and its role is somewhat bizarre, it drinks the excrement of the first moth. This is because the first moth almost instantaneously removes its waste while drinking the sap. You are probably thinking where I am going with this, well; firstly let us discuss what the purpose of the second moth is. Its purpose is to clean up the excrement of the first moth in order to prevent it trickling down the tree so that ants, and other insects, would not be encouraged to travel up the trail and in consequence eat the first moth. So in simple terms the second moth is the first moth’s insurance policy!

Now take this into consideration, you probably didn’t know anything about this moth three minutes ago, in fact if moth genocide were to occur, you wouldn’t really care – well most of you anyway. However, we attribute purpose to such an insignificant creature, and coming back to our clothes and the chair, which are inanimate objects with no emotional and mental faculties, we attribute purpose to these too! Still, we do not attribute purpose to our own existence? Is this not absurd?

Believing that we have no purpose is not only irrational, it is practically problematic because it presents an indication that a lot of the things we have achieved as humans beings most probably would not have happened as many of the people who have accomplished amazing achievements, including the discovery of penicillin, would not have had the drive to attain what they did. This is because these very people had a purpose driven approach to life, without which we would be just like animals obeying our instincts, in other words chemical robots wondering around waiting for the battery acid to dry up! The realities of a purposeless existence was also highlighted by the Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who claimed that the world is bankrupt and there is no reason to rejoice in its existence, he even argued that it would be better if it did not exist and questioned whether suicide was a plausible solution.

So why is it irrational? Well, it is irrational because if everything complex and designed that we discover seems to have a purpose, including the insignificant moth, as well as the things we develop and create, then it logically follows that we have a purpose too. To deny this would be tantamount of believing in things without any evidence, as there is no evidence to say we have no purpose, on the contrary we have evidence to say that things have a purpose and we can infer that about ourselves too. Even scientists indicate that it is irrational to assert that our universe is impersonal and the product of blind chance. Interestingly they have explained that the physical processes in the universe have some sort of purpose, for instance the Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle described the universe with the attributes of God, and the physicists Zeldovich and Novikov asked why did nature choose to create this universe instead of another?

Finally, we can argue that without a purpose we do not really have a deeper profound meaning to our life. For instance if we take the logical conclusion of an apathetic scientific view on our existence, we are on a sinking ship. This ship is called the universe, because according to scientists the universe is going to suffer a heat death, and one day the Sun will destroy the earth. Therefore this ship is going to sink, so I ask you, what is the point of reshuffling the deck chairs or giving a glass of milk to the old lady? As Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the Russian writer and essayist said, “Without some goal and some effort to reach it, no one can live.”

Various contentions can follow from this discussion; firstly a purposeless worldview gives us more freedom to create purpose for ourselves. To further explain, some existentialists have argued that our life is actually based on nothing, and from this nothingness we can create a new realm of possibility for our lives, and therefore create purpose for ourselves. This philosophy rests on the idea that everything is meaningless and that we should create a new language for ourselves in order to live fulfilling lives. The flaw with this approach is that it uses meaning to claim meaninglessness; it also represents a self-delusion as they deny purpose but create one for themselves. Additionally it implies that there are no objective moral values and truths because an ontological foundation is absent. This is counter-intuitive and opposes our cross-cultural consensus of our moral thinking. The philosophy of war is a good example to show this type of moral consensus, for 2,500 years there was a cross-cultural agreement that poisons should not be used in war, even if you were being defeated. Although in practice people did not always conform, but they did however agree to this rule.

Another contention includes the evolutionist’s stance that our purpose is to propagate our DNA, as Richard Dawkins in his publication ‘The Selfish Gene’ states that our bodies have been developed to do just that. The problem with this analysis is that it relegates our existence to a random accident via a lengthy biological process, in essence the value of our life loses its meaning and morality is relegated to individual taste, as Michael Ruse a Philosopher of Science states,

“Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth… Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory.” T

he evolutionary perspective creates more problems than it solves as it cannot provide an adequate explanation for consciousness and the presence of our rational faculties. Taking consciousness as an example, how can a subjective immaterial reality come from a material substance? Consciousness is not a physical thing; it is not contained in any cell or biological structure. The most unchallenged and intuitive reality is that we are all aware, but we cannot describe or explain what this awareness is. One thing that we can be sure of is that consciousness cannot be explained biologically or chemically, the main reason for this is that evolution doesn’t discover consciousness; it’s actually the other way round. For evolution to try and explain the truth of consciousness would be tantamount to arguing in a circle! Even scientists recognise this, the physicist Gerald Schroeder points out that there is no real difference between a heap of sand and the brain of an Einstein. If those advocating a physical explanation for consciousness, bigger questions would need answering such as ‘how can certain bits of matter suddenly create a new reality that has no resemblance to matter?’

So if consciousness cannot be explained physically then the next question must be asked, ‘how did it come to be?’ The history of the universe indicates that consciousness just spontaneously arose and language emerged without any evolutionary forerunner. Even the neo-atheists have failed to come to terms with the nature of consciousness or its source, because no physical explanation is coherent enough to convince. Even the neo-atheist Richard Dawkins admits defeat concerning consciousness, he states “We don’t know. We don’t understand it.”

In conclusion there are more reasons to believe that we have a deeper purpose rather than the other options of purposelessness and the cold valueless propagation of our DNA. Realising that we have a purpose is the best explanation via the inferences we make concerning the universe and the things around us. Even the Scottish Philosopher David Hume was attributed of saying “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence”, so in this case, it would be wiser to conclude that human beings must have a purpose, and let us not forget that itnourishes us with a more significant explanation for our existence.However, the following question naturally arises: what is our purpose?

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Copy and Paste Spambot  , I am not sure who beats the other , between you and LagosShia in copy and paste spamming.

At least Sweetnecta and Deols etc ( bless them ) try to explain issues in their own words and understanding.

My oh my , you guys sure rely not on your scriptures but the various , chaotic and muddled conflicting interpretations by your Imams.

You can paste the entire www here, but the fact remains that Jesus Christ is the WAY , the TRUTH and the LIFE.

There is no name under heaven by which a man can be saved but by the  name of Christ Jesus.

Always remember that Jesus Christ is risen and one day Muhammad will bow at his feet like everyone else will and give account for his propagation of gross falsehood and mischievous deception.

Death

“Every soul is certain to taste death.” Qur’an 21: 35
“Death will overtake you no matter where you may be” Qur’an 4: 78

Death is something we as living beings do not enjoy thinking about. It creates the realisation within us that all of the attachments we have built in this world are no longer going to be. Significantly, it awakens us to the brutal fact that we will no longer exist on the planet. There have been many philosophies on death, for example thinkers discussed that death is an interruption to life, like sleep or a disease, only permanent. Others explained that death is to be considered as part of life, something which every person has to come to terms with in order to live well; part of what is involved in accepting our finitude. Some thinkers claimed death is to be considered as a transition from this life to an afterlife, the eternal life of bliss or pain.

Whatever our views on death are, one thing we can all agree on is that it is something that we do not think about enough. This may sound morbid but there is a profound value of reflecting on death, it brings about the actualisation that we are all human beings with a short life. Our egos will no longer seem that important, our attachments and desires to the material world are put into perspective, and our lives are questioned; all of which is a source of great benefit, as the 11h century Theologian and Philosopher al-Ghazali said, “…in the recollection of death there is reward and merit.” Contemplating about death provokes thought and give us that window in our lives to really reflect on the ephemeral nature of our existence.

In light of death, how should we view life? What does it tell us about the importance we attach to things, and how does it deliver meaning to our existence? If we view life through the lenses of death we seem to be in an emotional and intellectual space where we can really assess our situation on this planet. How did I come to be? What should I be doing here? Where am I going? Death is the driving force behind these critical questions, because the moment we recognise that this life is short and that we will breathe our last one day, puts everything into perspective.

So let us reflect on death; imagine you are here one minute and the next you are no more. You have probably experienced loved ones that have passed away; how did you feel? Was there not a sense of loneliness, emptiness and lack of attachment to the things we used to take so seriously? Now if you were to taste death right now, as every human being will, what would that mean to you? What would you want to have done differently if you were given the chance to go back? What thoughts and ideas would you take more seriously? And what would your outlook be if you could re-live your life once experiencing the tragic reality of death?

The sad thing about death is that we can’t go back to change our perspectives, or to think about life, or to challenge our outlook and detach ourselves from the empty nature of worldly life. The good thingthough, something that we can begin to do is to take the brave step to deeply reflect on death, and best of all we could make all of these changes now, right this minute.

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Thinking

“…for those who reflect.” Qur’an 10: 24
“…and he taught Adam the names of everything…” Qur’an 2: 31
“Do they not use their minds?” Qur’an 6: 32
“Do they not reflect within themselves?” Qur’an 30: 8

How should we think? How can we understand the world around us? What methods should we use to gain a true understanding of the world? These questions have puzzled the minds of many great thinkers throughout history. Our human tradition is full of debates and discussions trying to find answers. The likes of al-Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyya, Locke, Hume and Kant, and many others have tried to provide answers to shed light on the perennial debate concerning our understanding of the world. Some of these thinkers, such as Locke, claimed that our knowledge of the world is limited to our perceptions only, in other words knowledge is dependent on our sense experience, also known as a posteriori in epistemology, which forms the empiricist tradition in philosophy.

Locke argued that our minds were a blank sheet, a tabula rasa, waiting to be written on by experience. Other thinkers like Leibniz argued, in his ‘Nouveax Essais sur l’entendement humain’, that as human beings we have innate concepts and ideas that are necessary to understand the world around us, known as a priori in epistemology, which means that knowledge can be gained independent of sense experience, and forms the rationalist tradition in philosophy. Leibniz’s view seems to be a stronger position as it is makes more sense, however some philosophers and scientists deny this and claim that you can’t think of examples of things we can know independent of our sense experience. This is not true; take the following examples into consideration:

• Circles have no corners.
• 4+4 = 8.
• Time is irreversible.
• Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
• The whole is greater than its half (just eat half an apple!)
• Causality

Let’s take causality as an example to illustrate that we can’t just rely on sense experience. Causality can be known without experience because we bring it to all our experience, rather than our experience bringing it to us. It is like wearing yellow-tinted glasses, everything looks yellow not because of anything out there in the world, but because of the glasses through which we are looking at everything. The contention that this is just an assumption is not true because without causality we would not be able to have the concept of the real world, and we would not understand our sense experience. Take the following example into consideration; imagine you are looking at the White House in Washington DC. Your eyes may wonder to the door, across the pillars, then to the roof and finally over to the front lawn. Now contrast this to another experience, you are on the river Thames in London and you see a boat floating past. What dictates the order in which you had these experiences? When you looked at the White House you had a choice to see the door first and then the pillars and so on. However with the boat you had no choice as the front of the boat was the first to appear.

The point to take here is that you would not have been able to make the distinction that some experiences are ordered by yourself and others are ordered independently, unless we had the innate idea of causality. In absence of causality our experience would be very different from the way it is. It would be a single sequence of experiences only: one thing after another.

So it seems that the correct way of forming conclusions is by using our innate ideas and the experiences of the world around us, in other words using rational thought or what some people call reason. Just relying on our experience of the material world would not be sufficient as a method of thinking as it would not be able to confirm political truths, moral truths, mathematical truths, logical truths, and let’s not forget to mention a fundamental truth like causality.

Though we can understand the world around us using rational thought, how can we formulate an argument or verify our conclusions? Well, this lies in the study of logic which essentially means the principles of reasoning, with particular emphasis on the structure of our arguments.

Let’s illustrate the use of logic in the following example: if our friend Mary says “John is coming to dinner tonight”, and David says “Mary is not coming to dinner tonight”. Is what they say consistent? Well, logic would tell us that if they are referring to the same person and the same day then no, their statements would not be consistent. However if they are referring to a different person or a different day then yes their statements would be consistent.

So let’s combine the two processes. John says “Whatever begins to exist has a cause and the universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a cause”. Now from a logical perspective it is a valid argument as the last statement “therefore the universe has a cause” logically follows from the first two statements. But this doesn’t mean it is rational or reasonable. In order to find out that it is reasonable we would have to investigate using our innate ideas and our sense experience to see if the first two statements are true. If they are, then the conclusion will not only be a valid argument but it would also be a sound argument.

Just relying on empiricism would not give us an answer as it would lead us to suspend judgment on whether the universe has a cause or not because it cannot be sensed. However this would be equivalent of denying the existence of your great great great great great great great Grandmother, because there is no empirical evidence for her existence. You may argue “but I wouldn’t be here today!”, that is true, but that would using rational thought to form that conclusion, as you would have deduced that you must have had a great great great great great great great grandmother as all human beings must have had a grandmother in order to exist.

This is how all of us should start to think about life and the universe, so we could form the right conclusions using valid arguments.

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World-view

“But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. And God Knows, while you know not.” Qur’an 2:216

Live and let live, don’t harm others and you’ll be fine. This makes sense, right? Even to the point that it shouldn’t be questioned. But why is this? Why do we automatically accept some ideas and reject others? Why do certain viewpoints seem agreeable to us yet we disagree with others, all without really thinking about them?

The answer lies in the concept of a world-view. A world-view is a philosophy of living that enables us to make sense of life and our daily experiences. The world-view we adopt affects the way we process ideas, and allows us to understand society and our place in it. A world-view is important in particular association with our society today – this is because the contemporary world has had a huge effect on human psychology. We seem unable to deal with the unpredictable changes and increased complexity of life – subsequently stress, uncertainty and frustration become common and our minds are overloaded with information. A world-view is the framework that ties all of this together, and allows us to understand life’s complexity and unpredictability, it helps us make the critical decisions that will shape our future and our own selves, and it aids us in providing a picture of the whole.

World-views vary and can range from being shallow to comprehensive. A shallow world-view is one that just gives us the framework to react to day-to-day experiences, such as work and friendships. This type of world-view is usually formed via our previous experiences in life and it develops by creating templates of understanding the world by contemplating on our history with it. This type of world-view is problematic as it obstructs us from progression by maintaining an inflexible fixation on the past, with no possibility of viewing the world in a positive or different way that will enable our transformation. It is limited in its scope as it becomes only as comprehensive as your experiences, and individually our experiences are very limited.

A comprehensive world-view, as discussed by the philosopher Leo Apostel, encompasses everything in life and it includes various components, for instance it provides a model for the world by answering the basic question “who are we?” In addition it provides an explanation usually answering “why is the world the way it is?” and “where did we come from?” Another important part of a comprehensive world-view includes extrapolating from the past into the future to answer the question “where are we going?” It should endeavour to answer “what is good and what is evil?”, in other words to include morality and ethics, while giving us a sense of purpose, direction and goals for our actions. Additionally, the answer to the question “what for?” may help us to understand the real meaning of life and a comprehensive world-view must answer “how should we act?” thereby helping us to solve practical problems. Lastly a comprehensive world-view should answer the question “what is true and what is false?”, this is equivalent to what in philosophy is called “epistemology” or “the theory of knowledge”, therefore it would allow us to distinguish between what is correct and what is incorrect.

To give you a practical example of how world-views affect our outlook on life, take the following scenario into consideration: there is a boat in the middle of an ocean full of passengers. The captain is faced with a dilemma, 30 people out of the total 300 passengers have to be thrown off the boat to drown for the majority to survive. Now, imagine you are the captain, what would you do? Well, if you considered yourself a humanist for example, adopting the humanist world-view, you would throw, and therefore kill, 30 passengers in order for the majority to live. This sounds reasonable, right? For a humanist this may be a plausible solution, as a key humanist value is the preservation of life, as our life is all there is to experience and we have no purpose other than the one we create for ourselves.

Now say you were someone who adopted the Islamic world-view, you would not throw anyone off the boat and would leave the consequences to follow naturally. This may result in everyone dying, however it would not be due to your own actions. This solution to the dilemma is due to the fact that the Islamic world-view perceives the fulfillment of our purpose as a key value – which is to worship God and therefore to be moral. This is justified as the person adopting the Islamic world-view would argue that if our existence is to worship God and in order to preserve our existence we have to break our purpose for existing, then what is the point of our existence in the first place?

From the above scenario we see that for one situation there are various possible outcomes all of which are dictated by the world-view that someone adopts. Therefore it can be concluded that the only way to know if any approach is right, the underlying world-view must be scrutinised to find out if it is correct or not. In other words, and in the case of the scenario, the following question must be asked “are the foundations for humanism truer that the foundations for Islam?” Instead of discussing the actions, or fruits, of a world-view the basis for the actions should be challenged and validated. So the world-view that is more correct or has stronger intellectual foundations should be the one to adopt.

This is why when looking into Islam the primary focus should not be an assessment of women’s rights, clothing and on instances sensationalized by the media, because the assessment of these will be biased and skewed in line with your existing world-view. But rather, the intellectual foundations of any world-view should be assessed for its truth, and the one with greater reasons to believe in its truth should be the world-view to adopt, because it will be in line with the principle of: whatever comes from truth is true.

So let the journey begin.

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Jazakallahu khair thaba1234.
It would seem as if my fellow Christians have exhausted their bags of tricks against Muslim. Nonetheless I pray Allah guides the Christians who have been asking genuine questions so far.

Op

1. If you met a muslim who had been the victim of terrorist attacks from radical organizations such as boko haram, what would you tell them.

2. If you met a christian who was a victim of the same, what would you tell him or her.

Short answer, please. Using your own words and not too many Quranic quotations.

Also, apart from the " they are not muslims" argument.

tpia@:

Op

1. If you met a muslim who had been the victim of terrorist attacks from radical organizations such as boko haram, what would you tell them.

2. If you met a christian who was a victim of the same, what would you tell him or her.

Short answer, please. Using your own words and not too many Quranic quotations.

Also, apart from the " they are not muslims" argument.

I never use the 'they are not muslim' argument. Anyone who says he is a muslim, is a muslim. Only Allah can judge.

Your question is a difficult one, because you can't really understand how a person feels until you have been in their shoes. So i will respond based on my limited   understanding of their situation.

1. For the muslim, I would remind him that our prophet(SAW) faced a lot more in his lifetime and remained steadfast. This is to help him put whatever pain, he is going through in perspective. I will remind him about how the muslims fought under Ali (RA) against the earliest extremists and how modern extremism is a fairly recent phenomenon,and how we must try to rid the menace from our Nation. Most importantly, i will try to show emphathy and encourage him to patience. I will quote the Quran verses, that are translated as

Be sure we shall test you with something of fear and hunger, some loss in goods or lives or the fruits [of your toil], but give glad tidings to those who
patiently persevere, Who say, when afflicted with calamity: "To Allah We belong, and to Him is our return":- They are those on whom [Descend] blessings from Allah, and Mercy, and they are the ones that receive guidance.(Surah 2:155-157)

2. For the non-muslim, I would also try to show emphathy. I understand he probably hates muslims now,  Even the most liberal person can have his views changed by something like that. I would just try to have a heart-to-heart discussion with him and try my best according to my limited knowledge to respond to his questions.

Thanks.

Thanks.

Will think about your answers.

CAN GOD HAVE FREEWILL IF HE KNOWS EVERYTHING

In Islamic theology God is ‘All-Knowing’ and His will is always fulfilled. As a result people have questioned “Can God really have free will if He knows everything? Especially since that His knowledge includes things that He will do? And if He knows what He will do, doesn’t that make His actions dependent on His foreknowledge? Therefore He has no free will?”

The answer to this question is quite straight forward. The questioner has equated knowledge of the future with the cause of future events. For example if I know my daughter is going to wake up a 7:00 am tomorrow morning, and when the morning comes she does wake up at that time (usually having a good pull at my beard!), what caused her to wake up? It surely isn’t my knowledge of the fact that she will wake up at the time; rather it’s her biological ‘clock’ – not to forget that it is also due to the fact that she is hungry or wants to play! Similarly if I know I will lift 140 kilos bench press when I go to the gym tomorrow does that mean that my knowledge of being able to lift that amount made me do it? No, the fact is that my choice of going to the gym, including my physiological make up, has caused me to be able to lift that weight, and not the knowledge of the fact that I can.

So God’s foreknowledge of future events, including His own actions, doesn’t mean that His knowledge caused Him to act in a certain way. For example, the fact that He created the world and placed human beings as vicegerents on it doesn’t mean His foreknowledge of it forced him to do it. Also God’s foreknowledge of the fact that He will enter people in paradise doesn’t make Him do it, rather His mercy and love is the reason. This is eloquently summarised in The Creed of Imam Al-Tahawi,

“He guides, protects, and preserves whomever He wills by His grace. And He misguides, forsakes, and afflicts whomever He wills by justice…God has always known the total number of those who will enter paradise and those who will enter the fire. Nothing is added to or subtracted from that number.”

So His guidance will not manifest itself because He knows who would be guided, rather it is due to His grace, and God doesn’t contradict His nature. In summary foreknowledge doesn’t equal causality.

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Faith and Reason: Friends or Foes? Hamza Andreas Tzortzis

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