There has been attack on Muslims through a book named, “Prophet of Doom : Islam’s Terrorist Dogma in Muhammad’s Own Words”.
The book reviews are available on,
enotalone.com/books/0971448124.html
www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ tg/detail/-/0971448124?v=glance
But we are Muslims, we have nothing to worry, I assure you insha Allah, we will counter attack on this on similar grounds, with more solid proofs.
And insha Allah I will myself be the first one to give you all the good news.
i cant fail to notice that like all others who wish to mock Islam, this guy/guys also quote tabari without caring that tabari has been declared as an unreliable author from muslims from centuries....
EVALUATING RELIABILITY OF ISLAMIC SOURCES, THE QURAN AND THE HADITH.
The alleged revelation Sequence of the Quranic Suras is, the order in which Muhammad allegedly told his followers that he received this messages from his Allah. The compiled order of the quran is, the way the quran has been allegedly put together. The alleged compilation order is different from the alleged revealed order. A question arises, why should one use two different orders for the content of the very same book? Is it not a recipe for confusion under the circumstances in which the quran was allegedly revealed?
The first 86 suras that were allegedly revealed to Muhammad in Makkah in first thirteen years of his mission are as follows.
1=Revelation order and 96=compilation order.
The rest 28 of the suras were revealed after Muhammad moved to Madina in the final ten years of his life.
1 or 87) 2
2 or 88 ) 8
3 or 89) 3
4 or 90) 33
5 or 91) 60
6 or 92) 4
7 or 93) 99
8 or 94) 57
9 or 95) 47
10 or 96) 13
11 or 97) 55
12 or 98 ) 76
13 or 99) 65
14 or 100) 98
15 or 101) 59
16 or 102) 24
17 or 103) 22
18 or 104) 63
19 or 105) 58
20 or 106) 49
21 or 107) 66
22 or 108 ) 64
23 or 109) 61
24 or 110) 62
25 or 111) 48
26 or 112) 5
27 or 113) 9
28 or 114) 110
The revelation sequence of quranic sura is given in almost all fundamental tafaseer books with quite a bit of variations. Showing clearly that the source of these revelations are not the same nor have they been preserved properly or there ought not to be any such variations contradicting each other.
Coming to the question regarding the sources of the quran. I think the quran borrows very much from the jewish and christian sources. In fact hadith and tafaseer books contain various stories regarding so called ISRAILIAATS ie hadith reports that are thought of as jewish forgeries or concoctions.
However the problem is that muslims accept that the quran does contain information like that of bible because the bible too was revealed by Allah but has been corrupted here and there. So where there is similarity between the two, there is no dispute but where there are differences, they are due to errors in the bible according to muslims instead of the other way round.
From my point of view, all allegedly divine books are manmade and the quran got at least some of its information from the jewish and christian sources eg idea of one god, satan, heaven, hell, stories of jewish prophets etc etc etc. I have this point of view because the existence of islamic or for that matter god of any allegedly heavenly appointed religion is impossible for its followers to prove. The need for proof on the other hand is absolute, for religion is not a theory nor an assumptuous philosophical concept but a heavenly revealed fact as for as the followers of the religion are concerned.
It is also important to note that not only there was no fixed recorded chronological order of the quran but that there was never any fixed compilation order either. Hence we find in islamic sources information showing a great deal of variations and conflicts.
In books like AL-itqaan by Suyooty, several centuries back we find evidences wherein they clearly tell us that people used to have qurans with different sura and verse orders eg ibn masood, abu moosa, ubaee bin ka’b etc etc etc.
So later most muslims accepted the compilation order that was given to the quran as imposed by Uthman bin Affaan the forth caliph of islam after Muhammad. Uthman was also son in law of muhammad by virtue of marrying two of his daughters, one after the other. According to available evidences in sunni and shia books, he ordered destruction of all other variant copies of the quran in the then islamic kingdom or if you like islamic state. Though we still have some variations in the structure and the text of the quran that is explained by scholars in various way, none of which is sufficiently convincing. So now we have quranic copies with differences like different verse numberings etc ie some quranic copies divide the quran into 6666 verses the while other divide the same text to 6238 verses and yet others yet more differently. Not only that but the variation in actual texts are still around as recorded in the fundamental tafaseer books. Could I suggest following links that might be of some help.
http://www.quran.org.uk/ieb_quran_collection.htm
http://www.quran.org.uk/ieb_quran_alteration.htm
http://www.quran.org.uk/ieb_quran_preserved.htm
http://www.youngmuslims.ca/online_library/books/ulum_al_quran/index.htm
http://www.19.org/english/articles/asadi2.htm
http://www.al-islam.org/ghadir/books.asp?s=death&tl=0&view=o
http://www.islamic-paths.org/Articles/cat.asp?iCat=313&iChannel=1&nChannel=Articles
http://www.islamic-paths.org/Home/English/Quran/History/Old_Manuscripts.htm#The%20Codex%20of%20
To further evidence my assumption here is the commentary of Mawlana Maududi on revelational order of the quran. Please read it for yourself to see how perfect information we have on revelation order of the quranic suras and verses. So that you could become aware of how baseless is the claim of muslims that so and so has misinterpreted the quran ie out of its context, for suras and verses have their definite order and reason for their revelation and muslims have their perfect record eg click on link no 13), 14) or 15) etc etc below to see what I mean. If muslims themselves are confused and in conflict about it then how can they accuse others for misinterpreting the quran?
Please note carefully, that allaama modudi is not making up things himself rather he is quoting from original sources of islam.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by armughal: *
tabari has been declared as an unreliable author from muslims from centuries....
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Who declared him unreliable? Any details please? His Qur'an commentary is one of the most famous and exhaustive.
All this is to disprove the muslim claim that they have perfect record about the origin of islam. One can see that the quran is the most important thing as far as muslims are concerned yet most if not all vitally important information about the quran is either missing or is unclear and disputed between muslims themselves.
The purpose of looking at religious information in a critical way is merely to know the truth about it. By knowing truth we will save ourselves from falling victim to islamists as well as we will be better able to help ourselves seeing islam for what it really is ie just a matter of faith, nothing wtitten on the stone.
To continue what I was saying concerning the state of the quran, muslims also claim that they know the quran by heart by millions. One will find them saying, the quran has been preserved through being committed to memory right from the beginning of its revelation. We are told that the prophet himself got it copied through various scribes and kept it safe.
However, if we read what Mawlana modudi states in his tafseer as in the links provided, one cannot fail to realise that if the quran had been so preserved as muslims claim then such discrepancies as are clear to see would not be possible. The failure of preservation of order of revelation and the order of compilation clearly show neither memorising nor writing down of the quran has helped muslims preserve it perfectly or that such means were not employed at all at the time but may have been introduced much later. If people forgot and so confused the order of the suras and verses then who knows what we have today is original quran that muhammad left behind or was it the reconstruction by his earlier followers? If the prophet left the quran in tact with his followers then what was it that Abubakar did to the quran and if it was originally assembled by Abubakar the first caliph then what was it that uthman did to the quran? Moreover, why did uthman order the burning of all the rest of the quranic copies that differed with the ones that were prepared by his order?
This also shows that all hadith records are also unreliable to say the least. For example, one will find false hadith reports in al-bukhari as well as al-kafi etc- if this is how the best authors of these best hadith books have been collecting hadith reports then what chance is there that people before them took any better care whatsoever as regard preserving hadith reports or the quran? Thus all hadith collections by anyone are suspect or are of suspicious origin, so it would seem that islam has no real basis whatsoever and to claim such would only discredit muslims themselves.
To add insult to injury, who knows the narrators of ahadith were reliable or not and those who think they were or that they were not how reliable they themselves were? Do we have perfect records of all people from the time of muhammad to date who have been talking about each other to prove their reliability? That is what is really needed if one could realise what I am saying.
Let say that my grandson says something about my great grandfather to a friend and demands to be believed and his friend asks him to prove it that what he is saying is true, how can he prove it to him beyond any reasonable doubt? If he says my father's grandfather was very reliable person so he said it, does that prove it? No, because the chain of narrators has to be reliable through and through not just a couple of links of it. Remember, a chain is as strong as its weakest link. So my grandfather was a reliable person according to my grandson means absolutely nothing till we are told who says that my grand father was really a reliable person. It does not stop there rather we need to know the reliability of this person also who says my grandfather was a reliable person. Now we also need to know who says that this person himself was reliable person who is talking about reliability of my grandfather. Can you see what I am getting at? This is what I mean ie we end up with unending chains of narrators of chains of narrators, of narators and so on. This is practically impossible situation for proving a claim. This is why there is no possibility of anyone ever being able to prove anything about islam or any other allegedly divine religion. It is because if you cannot prove the reliability of original sources of islam then you cannot trust anything that is attributed to these sources.
Another point to note is the so called miraculous nature of the quranic text. The disputes that arose during the collection of the quran clearly show that one could not know just from the text that it is the quranic text or not. This is why people could not distinguish what was the quran and what was not the quran. The burning of the variant qurans by uthman is proof of the fact that the quranic text is not miraculous because if it was such unique, such messing up would not and could not have occurred. If something is said to be unique then it would stand out automatically leaving no room for being mixed up. If we have a situation whereby a shining diamond is mixed up in the pebbles, we would have no problem in picking it out, would we?
Since the problems arose regarding the quranic text during its collection is a proof indeed that the quran is not the word of god. Moreover, if a muslim scholar does not know the quran by heart and we give him two verses, one from the quran and other recontructed, he would not be able to tell the difference. This is why when a hafiz of the quran recites the quran from his memory during traweeh(=extra part of night prayer during the month of ramadhan) and gets stuck somewhere in his recitation and there is no other hafiz(=the person who has comitted the whole quran to his memory) around but only ulema(=muslim scholars) they cannot correct him. It is just muslim imagination that the quran is miraculous and it is not their own fault but so they are indoctrinated by their ulema and mushaaikh=religious teachers.
Thus my critical examination of islamic sources leads me to conclude that islam has no basis whatsoever as a religion appointed by an almighty God.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by MMughal: *
The alleged revelation Sequence of the Quranic Suras is, the order in which Muhammad allegedly told his followers that he received this messages from his Allah. The compiled order of the quran is, the way the quran has been allegedly put together. The alleged compilation order is different from the alleged revealed order. A question arises, why should one use two different orders for the content of the very same book? Is it not a recipe for confusion under the circumstances in which the quran was allegedly revealed?
[/QUOTE]
Allegedly you are doing nothing more than copying-and-pasting age old arguments already addressed, and probably with very little understanding at that... allegedly that is.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by MMughal: *
Can you see what I am getting at?
[/QUOTE]
I can see your knickers are all in a twist...
Thanks for your comments, gupguppy, allegedly that is,lol.
i didnt even fully read the kufr statements in the above posts....what can you accomplish with bashing islam mmughal? even if you make every single muslim convinced by these arguments and make him kafir, allah's power and grace will not be reduced by one inch, and he will fill hell with all the kuffar
^ Amen.