Date: 4/29/2004
...........History of the Koran = Proof of Fraud
In the introduction to his book on the Koran, the author N.J. Dawood, himself a Muslim, notes that "For Muslims it (the Koran) is the infallible word of God, a transcript of a Tablet preserved in heaven, revealed to the prophet Mohamad by the Angel Gabriel. Except in the opening verses and some few passages in which the Prophet or the Angel speaks in the first person, the speaker throughout is God............ At the Kaba, the Meccans worshipped not only Allah, the Supreme Semitic God, but also a number of female deities whom they regarded as the daughter of Allah ............ According to Muslim tradition one night in Ramadhan, about the year 610, as he was asleep or in a trance, the Angel Gabriel came to him and said 'Recite'. He replied 'what shall I recite ?' The order was repeated three times, until the angel himself said 'Recite the name of your Lord who created man from clots of blood'. (Koran means recital). God speaks in the first person plural which often changes to the first person singular or the 3rd person singular in the course of the same sentence. 'Recite. 'Your Lord is the most beautiful one, who by the pen taught man what he did not know'? ......When he awake, these words, we are told, seemed to be 'inscribed upon his heart'...... Mohamed, who disclaimed the power to perform miracles, firmly believed that he was the messenger of God sent forth to confirm previous scriptures. The Koran accused the Jews of corrupting the scriptures, and the Christians of worshipping Jesus as the Son of God...... The Koranic revelations followed each other at brief intervals and were at first committed to memory by professional remembrancers. During Mohamed's lifetime verses were written on palm leaves, stones and any material that came to hand. Their collection was completed during the Caliphate of Omar, the 2nd Caliph, and an authorized version was established during the Caliphate of Othman, his successor (644-56)... the chapters were arranged generally in order of length, the longest coming first and the shortest last ...... The Koran contains many statements which, if not recognized as altogether obscure, lead themselves to more than one interpretation ...... About the cryptic Arabic letters which head certain chapters of the Koran ...... various theories have been put forward by Muslim and Western scholars to explain their meaning but none of them is satisfactory ...... No one knows what they stand for.
Traditional commentators dismiss them by saying Allah alone knows what he means by these letters".'
That in short is a general history of the Koran. Let us now critically examine it.
(1) The statement that the Koran is the infallible word of God is untenable since the Koran contains numerous letters, words and statements which nobody understands.
(2) Since the Koran was ostensibly given out in Arabic it was obviously intended only for the Arabs and not for anybody else since Arabic was not a universal language.
(3) It is known that Mohamed could neither read nor write. If then he used to sit alone in a dark cave meditating who used to take down the long passages inspired in his mind ?
(4) It is said that such inspired passages were written down (by whom ?) on brick, stone, wall, or on any surface with anything. If that is so, Arabic scribbling scratched Footnote- (1) Pp. 9-10. Introduction to the book-THE KORAN, by N. J. Dawood, Penguin Classics, 4th revised edition, 1974.
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on such rough and nondescript surfaces with crude devices would never be decipherable.
(5) How was such heterogeneous material, scattered over different places and left to the mercy of the weather and intruders, ever collected together ? What guarantee was there that all such written record was collected together and nothing was left out and nothing was added ?
(6) How can such a heterogeneous record namely, tile, brick, stone and plaster of vastly varying sizes be ever kept together for 20 years ? It will all look like junk and debris and get mixed up with other junk and debris.
(7) Why did Allah make Mohamed a vehicle or medium for the transmission of such a voluminous text when Allah knew that Mohamed could neither read nor write ? Or at least why did not Allah turn Mohamed into a great scholar-scribe overnight and provide him with good stationery which could be properly filed ? (8) Since the present Koran took shape at the time of the third Caliph i e. 20 years after Mohamed's death it is apparent that the Koran did not exist during Mohamed's own time and that therefore, the Koran as it is now compiled isn't the one Mohamed on earth heard from heaven.
(9) In any case since the Koran is not arranged in the order in which it was delivered but has been manhandled and its chapters have been serialized lengthwise from the longest to the shortest obviously the present Koran upsets Allah's own order and therefore does not have Allah's authority, sanction or consent in the least. Things certified pure are invariably certified as 'untouched by hand'. In the case of the Koran it is all mixed up by several human hands violating Allah's own order and therefore the entire text has been messed up by ordinary Muslim mortals. Profuse adulteration must also be presumed.
(10) How could the heterogeneous debris of brick, tile and stone bearing the Koranic record be preserved in its proper order for two or three decades ? Which was the place in which it was stored ? If there was any such store it should have been famous as a place of sacred pilgrimage. But there isn't any such.
(11) How could such scratched, etched and scribbled record be readable after three decades ? The writing if there was any or whatever it was could never be decipherable after 20 years. The writing would absolutely vanish due to sandstorms, rain and shine or get totally garbled. Moreover, the Arabic script is of a type which can never withstand such weather-beating. The entire import of its message can change if the outlines of Arabic lettering change even slightly. Moreover, with crude scratching, scribbling and etching no profound, lengthy, spiritual text can ever be recorded in the Arabic or any script.
(12) And one very important and penetrating objection is that if the Koran is the transcript of a tablet in heaven (as it is claimed to be) and was delivered in a particular sequence what right did the compilers, 20 years later, have to change the entire order and put any chapter anywhere ? That was a flagrant violation of the sequence meant for the Koran by both Allah and his messenger, Mohamed.
Once the Koran has been so mixed and messed up in violation of its sequence in the heavenly tablet what validity, relevance and sanctity can the present Koran have ? Obviously none. Does not the recitation of a jumbled up and manhandled Koran constitute an insult to Allah and Mohamed ?
Yet another facet of the sane issue is that if the wording and the chapters of the Koran are such as to make no difference to anybody even if read or recited in any sequence.
That implies that the subject-matter of the Koran does not deal with any step by step, logical argument where every succeeding statement proceeds from the preceding one. This indicates that the successors to Mohamed have treated the Koran as a rubble-bubble conglomt rate of a wording all jumbled up in a bundle. One wonders how true Muslims do not repudiate such a Koran and brand its compilers as Kafirs !
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