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Jan, 25, 2003
Aziz
Assalam
I hope you will be reading this e-mail and I hope
that this will in some way be alternative to the ones you usually receive.
Mostly complaints of angry Muslims feeling insulted by the contents of
your site. Occasionally attempts of apologists of Islam trying to
destroy your view of Islam and to find fallacies in your understanding of
Islam. Maybe you have had to revise some of your standpoints after being
presented by acceptable arguments from your opponents, certainly nobody is
perfect but in an ongoing process of evolution in his abilities. You
insist that you hold the truth in your hands, you insist to know the
reality about Islam, how it really is, how it absolutely is! You are
declaring Islam to be the untruth and this with a "I know the
absolute truth"-attitude.
Please do not get me wrong, I do not want to accuse
you of something, but if I haven't perceived your attitude correctly then
please accept my sincere apologies. What I want to say is that no matter
how knowledgeable and intelligent a person is he will always only have a
relative understanding of the
Truth, meaning that it may some time be proven
contradictory. This is the nature of man. Unless you are divinely guided
by a supreme being or unless you're this being itself you won't be able to
present the absolute Truth to others, so that it may become absolutely
clear and irrefutable to them.
You write on your page where you challenge all
Muslims: "For more than a year our challenge to the Muslims and the
Muslim apologists has not been met. Many Muslims have come forth hiding
their real identity behind a penname and disputed our claims. As it is
clear from the following list, their arguments have all been refuted.
Getting tired of waiting for the big fish, we decided to invite the more
famous apologists of Islam and challenge them to defend their views."
If you are truly tired of finding someone who has the
competence and the
ability of defending his perspective of Islam, then I
would like to recommend you an intellectual scholar, with whom you would
love to debate. His name is "Moiz Amjad" and here are his
details (presented on his own website www.understanding-islam.com):
http://www.understanding-islam.com/related/moizamjad.asp
I would do everything to at least convince you that
he is worth your time, he is an expert in his field, qualified enough to
even challenge all your fundamental conceptions of Islam. I can imagine
how many people are emailing you and requesting you to go to this and that
site, but I honestly promise you that you won't regret it if you read his
answers on different questions which have already been posted there by
visitors.
At first maybe you'd like to review some of
his
counter-arguments on the criticisms on the Qur'an:
Here
you are able to post your questions (only
Mondays):
I would be very thankful if you responded me as soon
as possible.
May Peace be with you!
Aziz
Dear Aziz
Thank you for your polite
letter. It sure was much different from what I am used to receive.
You asked me to look into Mr.
Moiz Amjad’s website and challenge him to discuss with me. I looked into
his site just because you are such a gentleman and I could not refuse your
request. The page I read is about the controversy in the Quran that in one
place says the creation took place in 6 days and in another place says it
took place in 8 days.
Sura 7:54, 10:3, 11:7, and
25:59 clearly say that God created "the heavens and the earth"
in six days. But in Sura 41:9-12 we are given another number.
Say: Is it
that ye deny Him Who created the earth in TWO
Days And do ye join equals with Him? He is
the Lord of (all) the Worlds.
He set on
the (earth), mountains standing firm, high above it, and bestowed
blessings on the earth, and measure therein all things
to give them nourishment
in due proportion, in FOUR Days in
accordance with (the needs of) those who seek (Sustenance).
Moreover He comprehended in His design the sky, and it had been (as)
smoke: He said to it and to the earth: "Come ye together, willingly
or unwillingly." They said: "We do come (together), in
willing obedience." So He completed them as seven firmaments in TWO
Days,
--
Sura 41:9-12 (Yusuf Ali)
Here
is how Mr. Amjad tried to solve this problem.
Mr. Amjad tries to get out of
this obvious contradiction by saying that 8 actually means 6. Here is his
explanation.
The Qur'an in these verses was
actually saying that the basic structure of the earth was created in two
(2) days. Later on, mountains, seas and other paraphernalia required for
the sustenance of living organisms on this basic structure of the earth
were designed and created. And all this work (including the creation of
the earth and the designing and provision of the paraphernalia) was
completed in a total of four (4) days. After this, the skies were modeled
and seven heavens were created in two (2) days. Thus the total time
involved in the creation of the earth and the heavens totalled to six (6)
days -- not eight (8) days.
Here Mr. Amjad is trying to
convince the reader that the first 2 days of the creation of the Earth is
part of the 4 days when Allah set up the mountains and gave it sustenance.
In this way he tries to get rid of the first 2 days and he is so impressed
with his “discovery” that he claims to have fallen in prostration to
thank his Lord. But this is just not so.
Looks like Mr. Amjad thanked
his Lord for nothing because his finding is based on denials and not
facts. The Quran after saying that Allah created the Earth in 2 days says
(verse 10): He set on it, mountains and bestowed blessings in 4
days.
It is very clear, that the
creation of the Earth precedes the providing sustenance and these are two
different and consecutive events.
He says that even a
two-year-old child knows that 2 + 4 + 2 = 8 and therefore Muhammad could
not have made such mistake. No one is saying that Muhammad did not know
how to add these simple numbers. But he uttered the verses of the Quran
during 23 years. That is enough time for a liar to forget what he said
before. So at one time he said the creation took place in 6 days and a few
years later he forgot and said it took 8 days. Liars have bad memories.
And this is the explanation of this controversy.
Now let us put aside the
numbers and take a look at the absurdity of this claim. According to the
above verses the Earth is created first, the mountains and sustenance are
given next and it is only at last that the firmaments are created.
This is enough for us to know
that Muhammad knew nothing of what he was talking about. The Earth
being a spec of dust in this universe is only 4.5 billion years old while
the age of the universe is estimated to be 15 billion years. So the
firmament predates the creation of the Earth at least by 10 billion years,
and was not created after the Earth and after plantations appears on the
Earth. Muhammad used to think that Earth is flat and above it is a
dome like a bowl covering a plate. He thought that the Sun and the Moon
are lamps that are attached to the dome of the sky. Of course when you
build a room the roof and the lamps come at the end. That is why he puts
the creation of the firmament at last and gives it only 2 days. Why
concern ourselves with the numbers when we have such grotesque error in
those verses?
He speaks of 7 layers of
heaven. What is this? This is just the thinking of cavemen. The sky does
not have 7 layers. It is clear that he was talking just nonsense.
For more on this subject please
visit Answering Islam
In this link you can see
that the theory of considering the 2 days creation of the Earth as part of
the 4 days of providing substance on it was actually suggested by other
Islamic scholars including Yusuf Ali and they were already proven wrong
before Mr. Amjad declare it as his own “discovery” and fall in
prostration.
Anyway, if you still think that
Mr. Amjad can meet the challenge that I presented to the Muslims, please
tell him I am ready. I can bet that he will find an excuse and would not
show up. Someone said Mr. Harun Yahya would answer me. He even wrote to Mr,
Harun Yahya and sent me a copy of his acceptance. Well this is
almost 8 or 9 months ago and I am still waiting.
I can assure you that those
Muslims who have a name and want to protect their names will not come
forward. But if they come we will be more than delighted to discuss with
them and should they manage to prove us wrong I will stick to my end of
the bargain and will remove this site.
Please contact Mr. Amjad and
tell his we are ready. Send me a copy of your invitation to him so I can
publish it and it becomes a public and official invitation. If he says we
are unimportant you know that he is just being afraid. Our site is 25
times more popular than his and so this should not be an excuse. If he
refused to debate, write to someone else until you find someone who is
willing to debate. If no one dares to show up, please ask yourself what
are you doing wasting your life with a cult that has no answers to logical
arguments. All Islam is good for is to advance through violence. But even
Nazism could do that. If the world had not stopped Hitler he would
have conquered the world. Are Muslims capable to refute my claims through
reason?
Sincerely yours
Ali Sina
Aziz
Assalam
At first I want to say that I am extremely sorry for not being able
to write an immediate reply to your email.
After having read your criticisms on the article,"Six or Eight
Days of Creation" written by Moiz Amjad I have confronted
him with your review and asked him kindly to analyze your arguments.
Here
is you can view his response:
Regards,
Aziz
Dear Aziz
Thank you for sending to me Mr. Amjad’s
response. As it is clear Mr. Amjad is trying to convince himself that the
2 days that it took to create the Earth is part of the 4 days that it took
to create the mountains and other things. To do so Mr. Amjad insists that
“thumma” in Arabic, which is equivalent to “then” in English does
not indicate sequence and order of events. To prove his point he quotes
examples in English and in Arabic where “then” and “thumma” do not
indicate sequence of events but mean:
“and”, “plus”, “in addition”, “furthermore”,
“also” “moreover”, “therefore”, “in that case”, etc.
That is true! “Then” and “thumma”
could mean all those things. However in all these examples that “then”
and “thumma” do not indicate sequence of events, TIME is not the
subject matter. But when TIME is the subject matter, both “then” and
“thumma” invariably indicate sequence of events. So if I say I framed
a house in one month THEN I completed it in 6 months that “then”
indicates sequence and should be translated as after that, next,
afterward, subsequently, followed by, etc.
If I had said, “I framed a house in one month AND finished it in
6 months, then that could be also interpreted as if the one month of
framing is part of the 6 months of completing the house. However the Quran
does not say “Wa” (and), it says “thumma”, which means “then”
and that can only be interpreted as sequence of time.
If I tell you that this morning I woke up,
then I took a shower and shaved, then I had breakfast, then I went to my
office. You have no doubt about the sequence of events. I could not have
gone to my office or showered before waking up. The “then” makes it
clear which event precedes which. But when I said I took shower and shaved
you don’t know which one I did first because I did not use “then”. I
could have shaven before, at the time that I was showering or after that.
That sequence of events is not clear. In all other cases, there is no
doubt which event took place first and which one took next.
In the Quran verse 41:9-12 we have a
series of events that are separated from each other by “thumma”. Since
those verses describe the time that took each event, that “thumma”
indicates sequence of events and nothing else.
This is such a simple mater that I am even surprised why we should
argue about it.
Anyway, Mr. Amjad not only failed to
acknowledge his error, he avoided altogether the most important part of my
response that had nothing to do with numbers and grammar but with science
and logic.
The Quran says that the creation of the
Earth precedes the creation of the heavens (or the firmaments). We know
absolutely that is not the case. The Earth is part of this universe and
the part could not have been created before the whole. The big bang that
gave birth to this universe took place billions of year prior to the
formation of our Sun and our Earth. This is the most obvious error of this
verse. Mr. Amjad completely ignores this point and does not even mention
it. Although he is good in giving some absurd answers to any question for
the sake of just having said something, can he explain this difficulty? It
would be fun to watch him waddle out of this quagmire.
Kind regards
Ali Sina
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