Divinity
of Quran
By Syed Kamran Mirza
Quran is anything but a divine book! When I myself read Quran---my
intention was to search something or anything that was impossible for
human beings to think, know, formulate, or imagine in the 7th century
period. But to my utter surprise, I could not find a single statement,
or fact in the Quran which could not be said/think/formulate/imagine by
human beings. This statement is true for all religious books, not just
Quran.
Quran: (Q.4:82
): “Do they not consider the Qur’an? Had it been from any other than
Allah, they would surely have found therein much discrepancy.”
Discrepancy? There are plenty of discrepancies in Quran. One can find
numerous discrepancies, inconsistencies, contradictions, scientific
errors, full of redundancies, lack of any chronology etc throughout the
entire Qur’an. We read in the elementary class the famous poem:
“Apanere bora vole bora shay noy, loke jare bora vole bora shay hoy”.
Self proclamation of greatness is never valid, but when other people say
good then it really becomes good. Just because, Quran itself claimed
that it is free of any discrepancy, that does not mean it is free of any
discrepancy. It is to be judged nonbiased by it’s contents only.
My several previous articles on Qur’an, Hadiths and some historical
happenings such as: Adoption in Islam, Prophet’s marriage,
Embryological development of human, Sword of Mercy etc. have very well
postulated various facts which I consider mostly proven much reflections
much of what was going on in the mind of the man who composed it. We
have been talking about self-serving Quranic revelations, such as,
sending Ayats: to prohibit adoption in Islam to justify marrying
(scandalous) adapted son’s divorced wife, marrying six year old Ayesha,
(revealing Sahi Hadiths to justify) ; Ayats to prohibit/control the
movements of disciples in the prophet’s house; and insisting/luring
the followers to fight/kill in order to get prophet’s intention
fulfilled, Ayats to subdue Prophet’s own wive’s rebellion by giving
threat of mass divorce etc. Do we need to search for the reflections in
Quran? Human reflections are every where in the Quran.
These are pure human reflections on the so called divine orders.
Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) wanted to establish a new religion and he had to
overcome any obstacles/resistance on his path and he needed strength to
fight those obstacles to get the success. And so he brought revelations
to lure/insist people to fight and kill for his cause. If he was an
omnipotent human being, probably he would not have to ask people to
kill.
Erroneous Historical Facts:
Stating historical facts is not impossible for human beings. History
is the thing of the past and mankind so far discovered/learned lots of
amazing past of this planet. Mankind’s quest of knowing our past can
reach millions of years and it does not take divinity to know the past.
Of course, knowing future could take a divine help, because mankind
hardly can predict the future (except weather forecast) very accurately.
For example, take these case of Dhul-Qarnayn and Embryology:
Dhul-qarnayn: This is historical past happened not far from Arab and
again this historical statement is seriously erroneous. This
Dhul-Qarnayn history (Quran:18:83-98) is said to be about Alexander the
Great who came from the north (Macedonia). Quran amazingly claims that
Alexander the Great was a righteous man (Muslim), even though, history
tells us that, Alexander was a licentious, belligerent, idolatrous and
claimed to be the son of Amun, the God of Egypt. And Quran amazingly
stated that, the Alexander was the one who reached the west point of
flat earth where sun set down in a well of muddy water, and also he
reached the point of east end of the earth where he saw sun was rising.
Quran mentioned (Quran: 19:28, 66:12, 3:35) Mary (Mother of Jesus) as
the sister of Aaron and Moses and the daughter of Imran. This is a grave
error of the history. Virgin Mary the mother of Jesus had no brother
named Aaron and Mary born almost 1500 hundreds years after the Moses and
Aaron was born.
Therefore, stating “historical past” is not impossible for
mankind. Of course, sometimes people may record wrong history such as
the case of Mary. People get them from various story tellers,
archeological ruins, records of the past, historical installations etc.
Most of the historical stories in the Quran are believed to be
originated from Old testaments, book of Zoroastrian, and other local
myths and heretical Arab’s stories. Most of all, knowing the past
history was never impossible for human beings of any ages. But we can
see, the above two samples of historical past in Qur’an were not true
or accurate. If it was from divine source, one could expect it to be
true and accurate. Modern human beings can discover/ know the history of
millions of years old with much accuracy with out the help of divine
power. Mankind discovered very accurately our fossilized pasts and
discovered the existed past of the extinct Dinosaurs which ruled the
earth 65 million years ago. Existence of the Dinosaur is not an
imagination, it is a reality today. This is a great historical fact
which Allah even did not remember to mention in any of the Holy books.
Embryology in Quran: There is no embryological science presented in
the Quran, which was not know at the time of 6th or 7th century period.
In fact, most of the embryological science described in Quran was known
to this world well before the time of Quranic compilation. Quranic
description very well fits the embryological descriptions of Hippocrates,
Aristotle and Galenic (from 5th century B.C. to 4th century A.D.)
period. It is irrelevant to ask how Muhammad could have known or found
this knowledge. But it is important to note that this much of
embryological knowledge was available/prevailing at that time of the
world. Most importantly, embryological knowledge presented in the
Quran,and ancient Greeks (Hippocrates, Aristotle) and Galenic period was
scientifically incorrect compared to the modern scientific knowledge.
Quite obviously, had there been this knowledge of embryology came from
divine source, there could be no error fond in them today or even after
millions of years.
In my article, “Ambiguity of Human Embryology-Science #2”, I have
mentioned how embryological knowledge in Quran was borrowed from ancient
Greek ideas. As for example, Quran stated, “ We created man from
clotted blood” (Zammat rakta theke manush baniechi) was the same
erroneous idea of Hippocrates who thought, human embryo develops by
mixing menstrual blood with semen. Truth of the matter is, nothing can
grow from clotted blood.
What could be then convincing revelation to consider Divinity?
Revelations which could be considered purely divine are: had there
been statement/prediction/foretold in Quran—such as, existence of
Dinosaurs, human beings will fly in the sky like a bird, mankind will
land in the moon, diseases are caused by living organisms, human beings
will conquer new lands to the other side of the ocean or at least earth
is round and not flat and it is not the sun moves/travels for appointed
times but it is the earth moves around the Sun etc etc.
THEN, NOBODY WOULD RAISE ANY DOUBT OR WOULD HAVE ASKED ANY QUESTION
ABOUT THE DIVINENESS OF THE HOLY QURAN TO DAY.
|