ISLAM
ISN’T TRUE
MUSLIM
APOLOGETICS REFUTED
In the book, What Everyone Should Know about Islam and Muslims, by
Suzanne Haneef we are presented with a dubious
apologetic for Islam, specifically the Koran.
She gives a list of thirteen laws which she feels are evidence for the
Koran being true and really from God.
The first law is that the deliverer of God’s message should be proven to
be completely truthful in all his dealings and be virtually sinless.
This is dishonest in the case of Muhammad who gave
the world the Koran for he gave this book which had such a morality that it
wouldn't have taken much of an effort to keep it for it was as low as Hell’s
gates. It permitted polygamy and murder
under the guise of holy war and bigotry.
Its rules about lying being wrong and forbidden by God conflict with other rules
such as not harming other good Muslims. The Koran does not tell
us what to do leaving it impossible to be sure if anybody is a sinner.
Muhammad was a sinner if sinners exist.
The doctrine of sin presupposes that you must sacrifice yourself for the
best interests of others and Muhammad did not do the best for much of his
life. Did he raise a fortune for the
poor?
Muhammad claimed
that the Bible had been corrupted by heretics because it did not agree with
him. He had no evidence that the Bible
had been rewritten to destroy its teaching.
That is what slanderers do, accuse without evidence.
Also, the sinister prophet Moses and others are held to be prophets of
God but not as important as Muhammad but still prophets all the same. The scriptures which are lost through being
corrupted and which originally came from them are stated to be infallible in
the Koran. But these figures were
sinners. Why would the apostates who
polluted the Bible say they were sinners if they were not for the apostates
wanted their false revelation to be taken as a revelation from God and the
revelation is more persuasive when it comes from sinless or near sinless
people? What use is it for the Koran to
call them prophets when sinlessness is so important
and when we don’t know if they were really sinless? Muhammad was telling us to see the prophets
as he said they should be seen which makes him the only real prophet in all of
this though he said he had their backing in doctrinal matters. The dishonesty is shocking. There are too many things we don’t know for
sure about Muhammad and there are so many records lost so we cannot say he is
sinless.
The second law is that the scripture should be exactly as God wants it to
be, with not a word left out or anything inserted.
There is no evidence that the Koran is the same as it was when it was
first received. It probably was not the
same for it was compiled and edited after his death. The errors in it and the fact that many
portions are repetitions suggest that the editing was not well done. This proves that it
enjoyed no such protection from error.
Some Sunni Muslims at the start believed that Ali had the manuscript of
the Koran as it was from God and that that it was lost forever and that the
Koran that has existed then and to this day has not been preserved totally accurately.
That should teach them not to kill anybody because the Koran says they
should kill. It should warn them
to keep their religion within reason.
She has a nerve using the argument that preservation of the scriptures
will always happen if the scriptures are true when she says the New Testament
and the Old Testament were originally inspired but have been drastically
changed by heretics. There is no
evidence that such interference took place either.
Law four is that there should be no contradiction in the book. The book says that God is fair and then that
he hates those who are unable to believe.
What you genuinely think is what you genuinely think and can never be
morally bad though it can harm. The harm
isn’t intended to be evil.
The book contradicts reason on several points
Law five is that it should not say anything that it in conflict with true
science.
The sixth law is that the book should claim to be reasonable and not
command stupidity or superstition.
But it can be proved that the book does command these vices.
The seventh law is that the book needs to have great spiritual insight
into morality to be truly from God.
The Koran commands that God comes first for it wants adulterers stoned to
death and religious wars. But you are
surer that you exist than that others do and more sure that others exist than
that God exists therefore making God the main thing in your life and the reason
why you help others is criminal. Jailing
an adulterer is better than killing them.
This proves that the Koran is evil for commanding the killing and that
its spiritual insight is worse than superficial.
The Humanist’s The Gospel according to Atheism contains teachings
that the Koran never even thought of so she is assuming she knows it all
here. The Koran would be more into
inspiration and self-help if it were really the word of God.
Law eight says
that a book is not inspired by the Lord if it says he does something that it
bad or makes a God of a creature.
The ninth law is that it has to say that God alone must be worshipped.
Neither law is observed by the Koran for its God is obnoxious and
unworthy of even a nice thought.
And the law is silly in itself. If
you can prove God which you cannot do then it would be natural to expect the
book to command the worship of only one God.
But if the book gives no proof and the Koran doesn’t then the law is
meaningless for there could be billions of gods.
The tenth law is that the true scripture will stress fraternity among
people and equality and will not ask its devotees to walk over others.
When the Koran gives no convincing reasons for believing in Allah and
then orders us to treat him as THE being in our life how could it really be
concerned about human brotherhood? It
wants each person degraded before God by blind faith.
Law eleven says that the true scripture will not accuse God’s prophets of
being sinners.
Any book could manage that rule.
The Bible accuses the prophets of being sinners and why would
interpolators put that in? We will see
soon that the Koran does accuse though it does not see it as accusing.
Law twelve says that the writing of the true scripture should be a masterpiece inferring that
God would show off. Muslims think the Koran is a
masterpiece so it is God's word. A masterpiece is not needed!
Masterpieces are not appreciated by most people anyway. The book need only be intelligible and clear and readable. But if it did need to be a masterpiece, it would be no reason for
believing in the Koran for Muhammad who could not write depended on other
people to record his revelations. The Koran
can be as beautiful as it needs to be but when it repeats stuff the way it does
then what is the point in God being eloquent to show which book is his when he
forgets that it is important not to waste ink and time? That shows that the beauty is human in
origin. It is not a professional
masterpiece. Muhammad could not have
done such a great job for he was dull in many things so he must have been a
fraud when others had to improve the text for the sake of the alleged
eloquence.
The author says that the speech of Muhammad is not like the language of
the Koran (page 28). But would the
records and traditions of the sayings of Muhammad be word for word exactly what
Muhammad said? Of
course not when they were edited and rewritten. And certainly not after a
hundred years when his life story was put together.
The Koran refutes this law itself when it has the jinn and the Devil in
it. They could inspire a masterpiece or
restructure a man’s brain so that his subconscious mind could come to the fore
and do it for it is smarter than the conscious mind.
Law thirteen states that if the book contains knowledge that could only
have come from a creator God who knows all things it must be proof though not an essential one.
One would expect it to be the most important proof.
She says that the Koran teaches that all things came from water and that
was miraculous knowledge. The Koran must
mean that all creatures were made from water in the same way that clay was
turned into Adam in Genesis. But science
cannot prove that water was miraculously transmuted. She thinks it means all things evolved from
water creatures which is what science says. But notice that the Koran does not say by
water alone. There could be other
elements involved so it fails to impress.
She even says that when the Koran describes the baby developing in the
womb that it is miraculous knowledge.
That is nonsense for every mother knows that babies grow inside the
womb. The Koran says that a drop of
sperm becomes a clot which becomes a lump and the lump is made into bone (all
of it!) which is then wrapped in flesh.
She says this drop is semen (page 29).
The egg is not mentioned so there is no miracle in any of this! And the ancients knew that babies grow in the
womb and could have derived it the way the Koran did without miraculous
knowledge.
The real test of a true prophet according to Deuteronomy 18 is that the
prophet must not necessarily be sinless but that he must be extremely honest
and truthful for God would not speak through anybody that would tell or tells something
even only the once that is supposed to be from God and which is not from God at
all. This implies that we will be able
to know if the prophet was this kind of man.
But we do not know this of Moses or Muhammad for we are missing the
first-hand witness of those who knew them best and intimately. Deuteronomy 18 also implies that a false
prophet can make loads of predictions that come true but even one error shows that he is
not speaking for God at all so miracles prove nothing according to this
chapter. But at the same time, it is
better to do miracles for it shows you should get attention but not necessarily
faith. A real prophet will always do
miracles. Muhammad did none. He made no predictions of the future that are
convincing evidence that he was able to see the future by the power of
God. The only prediction he made is a
vague prophecy in Sura 30:1-4 about Rome that had to
be fulfilled eventually for it was an educated guess – a prophet making
predictions like that is no better than a fortune-teller and definitely a
fake. When a prophet has to be accurate
in everything he says that is supposed to be inspired by God it follows that it
is only right that the prophet make predictions and not be accepted until the
prophecies have all come true (this automatically excludes Isaiah and Ezekiel
who made prophecies that have not been all fulfilled yet from the Bible
canon). For if a man making one false
prophecy in the name of God is enough to take away any right to authority from
him then a man who makes none and claims to be God’s mouthpiece is worse. The Jews and Christians did not insert
Deuteronomy 18 as a forgery into God's word for it makes good sense and would only have made it harder for
their false prophets, who allegedly rewrote the Bible, to succeed.
It is surprising that Islam can be so popular when it sees miracles as everything that happens everyday and not just as spectacular events (page 50, The Case Against God). The Muslims regard any attempt to put God on trial and see if his goodness can be reconciled with the existence of evil and suffering as shocking and impious for that is not Islam which means submission to God (page 51, ibid). Their stance denies that we should look at human suffering before we think about deciding to believe in God. If we are inadvertently condoning human suffering by believing in God and praising him then we have a right to know. We are evil if we deny we have such a right.
LIES OF THE KORAN
The version of the Koran we are using is published by Penguin and N.J. Dawood (
The book boasts that it is infallible (98:1).
Sura 1:
The Koran claims
to be infallible and perfect. Yet in
10:106 we read that if a verse is cancelled it will be replaced by a better or
a similar one! That is good if you
regret making a doctrine for you can then change it. But the omnipotent Allah who wrote the Koran
could surely do better than that! The
same verse has the cheek to then say that God has power over all things! It refutes the argument that the Koran must
be of God when it is a masterpiece for God would have the intelligence to get
it right the first time.
In 2:142 we learn
that Muslims were told to turn to
2:178 commands retaliation in bloodshed and
decrees a slave for a slave and a free person for a free person. A fine was allowed as the only punishment if
the relatives forgave the killer. It
says that retaliation is for protecting yourself. That is bunkum for fines are no deterrent
when you want to kill a member of a forgiving family. This evil law allows you to make money out of
the murder of your relative. It is
mercenary.
Sura 2:180 makes it a duty to make your will out to family. That is a disgraceful rule. And there is no reason to assume that God is
making this rule for people who have poor families so it is a general rule.
2:190 says that Muslims must fight for the sake of God against
aggressors. They are not to attack them
first and are to kill them wherever they find them. They are to battle on until idolatry is
obliterated and Islam is the only religion.
Obviously, this is saying that if a foreign army attacks a Muslim area
the Muslims have the right to slaughter all who will not convert to Islam in
that country. It is silly if God only
permits this genocide when Muslims are attacked. If the attack is the excuse for it and a
terrible one at that then why not do away with it?
It is also disgusting that the fighting is to be done for the sake of
God. A principle like that only gives
people more to go to war over as if we have not got too much as it is.
2:257 says that nobody must be forced in religion. The Koran does not see that it forces people
to obey God in many things – for example, your hand is to be cut off if you are
a thief so it attempts to compel you not to steal. It sees a choice between God and execution as
a real choice. The verse does not prove
that Muslims can believe in live and let live.
What the verse condemns is any deliberate forcing of a person to be a
Muslim in such a way that the only result will be them pretending to be a
Muslim and since their heart is not in Islam or its faith they are not
Muslims. But if you force a Muslim to
stay a Muslim and not to disobey the faith why not force a person to become
one? The contradiction is plain. And the Islamic reply that it is different for the
Muslim for he knows that Islam is true is a cop-out.
2:269 says that it is good to give alms in public but better to give them
in private which will atone for sins.
But with some imagination it is easy to find ways in which all giving is
secret. The Koran fails to see that
public charity must be sinful – an important error. And it even says that the good act of public
charity cannot make up for sins! The
doctrine of atonement here is nightmarish for you will never be able to do
enough to atone when sin deserves everlasting torment according to the Koran’s
dreadful God. The atoning is really evil
for it is like throwing God some scraps from the banquet table.
The Koran says that we may give a debtor who can’t pay us more time but
that it is better to let him keep what he owes (2:80). This is the stupid doctrine that morality is
rules and not what maximises good. The
doctrine of slaves and zombies! The
debtor should have made sure he could pay back before he asked for the
money. In certain circumstances the
Koran would be right but nothing is said about circumstances here and it says
it means a man who gets more time meaning a man who says he will be able to pay
and needs more time.
Sura
The Koran considers idolatry or the adoration of other Gods to be a most
grievous sin which he will not pardon though he pardons all other sins (
In
The Koran prohibits Muslims from having a friendship with Jews or
Christians for whoever befriends them will leave Islam (
5:90 forbids wine and gambling and games of chance.
In 6:8, Muhammad struggles to give an explanation for why no angel was sent down to shoulder some of his burden which was to oversee and promote Islam. His explanation is that if God had done that then the people would have had no excuse for rejecting Islam and their fate in Hell would have been sealed for remaining sceptical. The miracle would prove it. That is a lie for the Devil can appear as an angel of God and there can be no miracle great enough to convince everybody. And if the angel, we are told, looked like an ordinary man it would only confuse the people. Nonsense. The message should be able to stand up for itself anyway. And God doesn't really know how we will react. He cannot know a future or past that will never happen or never happened.
6:164 commands the Muslim to believe that all he does should be done only
for God. A being whose existence is not
as certain as that of yourself or other people is put before you and them!
God decreed that
one fifth of the spoils of war belong to God, Muhammad and those who are poor (
Zul-qarnain is Alexander the Great and he is reported to
have found the sun at the edge of the flat world and found it in a spring of
dirty water. Presumably when the water
was too dirty that was when night fell (Sura 18 Kahf) vs. 85-86).
CONTRADICTIONS IN THE KORAN
The Koran says it has no contradictions in it for it came from Allah (Sura 4:82)
Yet to use some of the contradictions in Contradictions in the Qur’an, Difficulties in the Qur’an, it does have contradictions.
Sura 70:4 says a day for Allah is 50,000 of our earthly years and Sura 22:47 says it is 1,000 of our years.
Sura 7:157 has Allah telling Moses what is in the Gospels more than a
thousand of years before they were written.
Muslims say that he can do that for he knows the future. But the law of simplicity says it is a
mistake. You can’t assume that all
anachronisms are miracles for then you will be able to date nothing.
The Koran says in one place that anybody who slanders the chastity of an
innocent woman can be pardoned by Allah (24:5) and later it says this is
unforgivable (24:23). Muslims say if it
is not repented it cannot be pardoned and if it is repented it will be forgiven
and that is the solution ignoring the fact that the Koran does not say it just
means in the second case that the sin will not be pardoned if it is not
repented. Repentance is not mentioned.
See how the Muslims solve their contradictions just like the believers in Christianity do. With ingenuity like that and such craftiness the only fruit can be complete confusion as to what religion is true. God would want things kept simple for the seeker and so would carefully make sure his inspired word would not need contrived solutions to contradictions for he would be as clear as newly washed crystal.
The contradictions are rationalised away. This is doing conjuring tricks with facts to cover up the errors.
THE HYPOCRISY OF MUSLIM FAITH
Christianity and Judaism pretend they are not religions of blind
faith which is an admission that such faith is not desirable or good. Islam
does not give a toss. The second largest
world religion and it has a jigsaw puzzle of conjectures instead of a
theology! That should warn us about
putting our faith in religion.
Muhammad did no miracles to prove that he was a prophet. Though Jesus presented miracles as evidence
and that was a mistake or trick it was not as bad as doing absolutely NOTHING!
So this religion of Islam cuts the hands off thieves, persecutes those who try to
make converts from it, tramples upon women and murders adulterers by stoning
them to death and for what? For
assumptions! Their courts tell them that
you need to be very sure of being right before you can do things like that and
they cannot be even half sure.
Their scripture the Koran, has not taken in this attitude.
Sura 1 says that unbelievers will be punished and that warning them is no
good for God has sealed them to exclude the truth from their minds. He causes their unbelief.
Muslims and their defenders (page
177, The Light Shineth in Darkness) would say
that God is too good to do such a thing and that people blind themselves so God
takes the grace away from them because they do not want it. People blind themselves and God who holds all
things in being causes them to do so by keeping them in existence so that they
can freely do it so God does it in that sense but it is not his fault.
But wait. The Koran has not even
said yet that God is creator. And this
is the start of the book for it says that this book is not to be doubted in the
first line. That means there is no
reason for taking the nice interpretation so the nasty one that says that God
deliberately makes people disbelieve so that he can punish is correct. Further evidence for this is, is in the fact
that there was no need to say they were hardened by God. The verse is about hardening not
creating - beings harden themselves. The verse teaches
predestination, the notion that God makes some people choose salvation and
others damnation. Now why would anybody
write a book that says God did something bad while meaning something different
when they could say that it was people not him?
Islam may deny the Christian slander that babies are born guilty of sin
on account of Adam (page 20, Understanding Islam) but it replaces it
with predestination which is not any better.
The religion says that it is because man is not God who is supreme and
upon whom all things depend that man has to be predestined and to deny
predestination is to say that God does not know the future (page 14, Understanding
Islam). The Koran teaches that these
reasons for predestination are correct (Understanding Islam, page
68). But when God is outside time he can
know the future because it is present to him and not because he programs what
it will be like. And God holding all
things in being is compatible with the view that God has made some beings
freely able to go against him. He gives
them freedom but he does not program their choices.
God could offer us grace and light that we refuse to see but that does not
mean he should remove them if we refuse them.
This is not against our freedom. Better to
give light to a person so that nobody can say it might have been your fault if
they never change. Once the light is
removed it is not their fault if they disbelieve and do wrong but if the light
is there and they won’t look it is their fault.
When any book says that God cuts off grace it means it.
The Islamic God cannot be trusted.
The Moslem cannot really believe God for God might be deluding him. Islam does not like self-righteous hypocrisy
but yet the Moslem will end up saying: “I am good and holy therefore Allah
would not deceive me. He will only blind
me if I want to be blinded”. With all
our faults we could not say such a thing!
Allah commanded humility.
When faith is not a revelation from God to the Muslim or something that
God causes in him or her the Muslim is believing Muhammad and not God. He or she is looking at God the way Muhammad
tells him or her to look and is not looking for God as he is.
The pagans are taken to task for believing in guesses for which there is
no evidence (6:148). But the Muslims are
doing the same thing. They have no
evidence that the Koran is from God and that Muhammad was a prophet just like
the pagans only assume that their scriptures and prophets have divine
authority. The Koran commands many things
that reason cannot support or which are above reason so the Muslim cannot
contend that his book is from God for reason says so and that is all it says
stands the test of reason.
Sunni Muslims believe that they may go to Hell for a while and Muhammad
will pray for them to God so that they will be released sooner. This implies that one prayer by Muhammad is
not enough though quality is better than quantity. This also implies that God is imperfect and
needs to be influenced by Muhammad to do the right thing which is
blasphemy. The canonical prayers which
are said towards the Kaaba are the most important
practice in Islam (page 15, Understanding Islam). Understanding that one prayer is enough this
is ridiculous. It denigrates the fact
that there are better works. It
denigrates good works.
THE KORAN AND WOMEN
Islam is infamous for its derogatory attitude towards women. It gets it from the book it says is the word
of God – the Koran.
The Koran lays it down that a woman can only inherit half of what a man
would inherit (
It is mad how the book forbids marrying your
foster mother saying that this is what God wills (
If
a man marries a slave girl and she commits adultery she is given half the
punishment a free woman would get for that (
MORE PROBLEMS
The Koran seems
to be a book dictated by God from Heaven to Muhammad. The book was complied from bits of text
written on just about everything including palm leaves. Many of those who knew what the prophet
revealed were dead soon after him and Zaid who was
the secretary of Muhammad had to set about getting the records and testimonies
together to create the Koran. This
haphazard way of preserving the word of God is an admission of failure. God would not be so careless. How do we know that a word was not changed or
a sentence expanded here and there and wasn’t the so-called final version
intended to silence anybody who said that this was a variant or a corruption? Read page 15 of An Introduction to Asian
Religions. God went to the trouble
of writing the book on a tablet in Heaven to show its permanence and yet he had
the earthly version put together so haphazardly. And yet this book contains much clumsy
repetition which betrays a human origin and that there was indeed much
confusion about the text.
In The Varieties
of Religious Experience we read that Muhammad sometimes heard ringing like
a bell which caused something to come over him, other times he talked to the
angel face to face – though nobody saw the angel but him and the angel often
changed itself to look like it was somebody else, other times he had dreams in
which things were revealed to him and other times he saw God in disguise (page
461). This bears the hallmarks of
credulity and mental disorder. “Perhaps
he mistook things for God in disguise like Abraham did when he saw God in the
form of three men. It is possible for a
man to give reasonably intelligent revelations and be gullible about the
visions that verify his thoughts,” we are told.
But if you think a man talking to you is an apparition of God then how
could your revelations be reliable? The
whole point of revelations is having them come from a reliable source.
The Koran warns
against letting error thrive and seeks to eradicate error and yet in Sura 4:88 the Muslim is forbidden to try and guide a person
who Allah has led astray. God is said to
addala in many Koranic
verses. This is translated as lead
astray or draw into evil but some say it means let one be drawn into evil (page
177, The Light Shineth in Darkness). They say that God cuts the light of truth and
his grace from the person who does not want to know. But how is the person supposed to change when
he does that? The person is abandoned
because he wants to abandon God. But if
the person wants to abandon God the person needs grace and light to rebel
against and get up God’s nose.
The Koran
indulges in a spot of apologetics in Jonah or Sura
10. There God inspires the argument that
he must exist for the change of day to night and night to day is a sign of the
existence of God. One would need a
better sign than that though it says that everything in heaven and earth is a
sign but we are taking issue with the book on this one. Something could change from dark to light
without a God. The prophet says in the Sura that if he invented the Koran himself why can’t
anybody come along with a Sura they have written
themselves that is as good as his. But
if you read the book you can see that anybody can meet this challenge. The Koran says in this chapter that it
explains the Jewish and Christian scriptures and confirms them. That is dishonest when it maintains that they
have been altered.
A man with
Muhammad’s guile would never have challenged anybody to write a Sura as good as one of his especially when a Sura can just be a few lines. Faked miracles and crafty prophecies that he
ensured were fulfilled would have been a cleverer option if he wanted to make a
the best impact he could. False
revelations some of which Muhammad never made but which were falsely attributed
to him have been woven into the Koran.
No fulfilled prophecies or evidence is given that the Koran is the word
of God apart from the testimony and visions of Muhammad. All the early sources say that Muhammad was
the only witness. A man mentioned in one
obscure Hadith or tradition met a man with Muhammad
who Muhammad said was Gabriel the angel.
But still there is only Muhammad’s word for it that it was Gabriel. We still have only one witness to the
apparitions. Three people who testified
that they had dreams and visions and brought out a new and more reasonable
version of the Koran would be more credible.
This man expects his followers to kill and maim over one man’s
doctrines - his. The evidence for the Jesus
story which Islam rejects and has a different story is better than that for
Islam. Muhammad was not the apostle of
God in succession to Jesus that he said he was.
The Koran attributes miracles to Jesus such as raising the dead. Muhammad was his superior and worked
none. How bizarre!
The Hadith which is used to verify the Koran is
full of absurd doctrines and admits that Muhammad was a sinner and generally
proves that he was a false prophet. So
it fails to verify that he was a true Prophet.
It is a fact that long ago Uthman got all the
different versions of the Koran he could grab burnt and one was kept and is the
basis of the modern Koran. A book called
The Collection of the Qur’an by John Burton
gives proof that the Koran was corrupted according to the traditions in the Hadith and shows how Islamic tradition has severe conflicts
regarding how the Koran came to be. Most
of the people who knew Muhammad opposed Uthman and
what he did indicating that the present book is corrupted. The book was corrupt the from the first time
it was written down because it mixed up stories from the Old Testament. For example, it says Israel got the Ark back
when Allah chose Saul as king though the Bible says they had it back long
before that. Corrupted memories led to
the corruption. Muslims accuse the Jews
of having falsified parts of the Old Testament and used that excuse to justify
believing the Koran and not the Bible but what reason would the Jews have had
for doing that? None.
In 1972 in a grave in
A friend of Muhammad’s once said he knew a Sura
or chapter of the Koran that he had been forgotten and even he could only
remember a line out of it. His name was
Abu Musa al-Ash’ari and he
was an authority on the Holy Book.
The Koran says that God sometimes
does away with verses to replace them with better ones. Muslims say it means the Old and New
Testaments though the book explicitly says it confirms these works (Sura 3:3). And wouldn't
describe them as verses! The Koran was always concerned very much about
the verses format. It bothers the Muslims that God would write the Koran
and cancel verses in it and change them. The Koran
would have trouble confirming books that it declares to be falsified! How could the book mean them when the context
shows it is probably referring to its own deleted verses? Cancelling verses suggests that the book has
a human origin. A scripture should have
an origin that is different from any other book. In that, the Mormons were right with regard
to the Book of Mormon which allegedly came from a miraculous source.
The information in those last few paragraphs has been taken from web
sites listed below and it shows how the Hadith or
tradition states that verses have been dropped from the Koran.
WHO IS THIS ALLAH?
This book is a Christian analysis of Islam and is essential reading for
Humanists who want to learn about Islam.
It reminds us that the Koran claims that nobody has any business
questioning its doctrine (page 13) and gives references that show this (Sura 6:92;3:7;43:3,4).
Everything in it is written on a tablet in Heaven and was sent down (Sura 53:4).
The book contradicts itself on whether it came by the Holy Spirit or
angels or Allah or just the Angel Gabriel and most Muslim translators are not
sure who gave the book and wrote it (page 16).
It is believed by many scholars that the book was not in existence when
Muhammad died and was pieced together from parchments and memory (page
17). The man who may have been the
author though he is presented as the final editor is Zaid
ibn Thabit. We know that there is no evidence that the Quran existed as we now have it in the seventh or eighth
centuries. We have no Qurans from that period or even pieces of any import. The Muslim claim that what we have now is the
word of God is just based on circular reasoning.
When Muhammad wrote that there was to be no compulsion in religion it was
when he hadn’t a big enough army to compel people to convert so that is the
context of this saying (page 22) which has unjustifiably been used to argue
that Islam favours religious freedom. He
was only saying that there was to be no compulsion because there could be
none. When he had enough men he
persecuted those who disagreed with him most bitterly and made God condone this
behaviour in the Koran. Understanding
Islam confesses that polytheists and idolaters were forced to convert to
Islam (page 28) and says this fact is overlooked when people condemn Islam for
converting with the sword as if this were a good thing.
The Koran claims that God hates those who lose their Muslim faith and he
loves those who fight wars to spread Islam in obedience to Sura
61:4 (page 101, Who is This Allah?).
The Koran quarrels with itself on whether if God made the world in a
flash or two days or six days and on whether a day with God is a thousand years
or 50,000 years (page 118, Who is This Allah?).
The Koran says that Jesus’ death took place only in appearance meaning
that some deception took place (page 120).
If God had really written the Koran he had no need to make this
controversial statement. He would know
that the gospels being first would have to come first especially in such a
major claim. It could be that Jesus was
believed to have vacated his body for the crucifixion so that it was just a
shell that died but then the Koran would have made mention of the
resurrection. It had nothing to lose by
testifying that it happened. I believe
the Koran is assuming that Jesus did not die but a substitute did.
Vaqqidi and other historians have found that Allah was one of hundreds of
heathen gods adored before the time of Muhammad so he just picked Allah out and
fused him with the Jewish God and so the result is a hybrid idolatrous false
God (page 138). Documents from before
the time of the prophet prove this assertion and even the Koran says that Allah
was the greatest of the pagan gods (Sura 6:109). Muhammad’s father Abdullah means slave of
Allah and he had his name since his own birth.
Allah was al-Ilah who was the moon god of
Muhammad’s tribe (page 37, In Defence of the Faith) and led to the
crescent moon becoming the symbol of Islam.
We have the records of eyewitnesses that Muhammad’s visions made him foam
at the mouth and the muscles of his face contort and gave him ringing in the
ears and terrible headaches (page 167).
It turns out that Khadija tested the spirit
inspiring Muhammad and concluded that it was a good spirit but her tests have
little worth when she was into visiting fortune-tellers (page 169).
CONCLUSION
The evidence for the Koran being God's word is poor. The mere fact that this book expects so much obedience of people and orders many evil and bigoted things to be done in the name of God and can't convince us that it is God's word clearly tells us that it is NOT God's word.
BOOKS CONSULTED
An Introduction to Asian Religions, E G Parrinder,
SPCK,
Answering Islam, The Crescent in Light of the Cross,
Concise Guide to Today’s Religions, Josh Mc Dowell and Don Stewart,
Scripture Press, Bucks, 1988
God Is Not Great, The Case Against Religion,
Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic Books,
In Defence of the Faith, Dave Hunt, Harvest House,
Islam,
Christianity’s Greatest Challenge, Misc.
International Publications,
Muhammad: A Western Attempt to Understand Islam, Karen Armstrong, Victor Gollancz Ltd,
Muhammad in the Bible, Prof ‘Abdu ‘L-Ahad Dawud,
Religion of Peace? Why Christianity is and Islam Isn't, Robert Spencer, Regnery Publishing Inc, Washington, 2007 - a curious book in that it simply doesn't mention how Christian Scriptures incited believers, eg Calvinists, to attack and destroy other believers who were thought to be heretics and doesn't mention the infallible decrees of the Roman Catholic Church commanding the violent destruction of heretics but wants to give the impression that unlike the Koran, the Christian Scriptures and the Christian religion do not make calls for religious violence
Studies on Islam, Jack Budd,
The Case Against God, Gerald Priestland,
Collins, Fount Paperbacks,
The Collection of the Qur’an, John
Burton,
The Curate’s Diary, October 2001, No 199, Arklow,
Co Wicklow
The Light Shineth in Darkness, Udo Schaefer, George Ronald,
The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James, Fount,
The Wordsworth Dictionary of Beliefs and Religions, Wordsworth Editions
Ltd,
The World’s Religions, Lion, Herts, 1982
Understanding Islam, Frithjof Schuon, Mandala Books, Unwin Books,
What Everyone Should Know About Islam and Muslims, Suzanne Haneef, Kazi Publications,
Who is This Allah? GJO Moshaym,
Why I am not a Muslim, Ibn Warraq,
Prometheus Books,
Why I Became a Christian, Sultan Muhammed Paul,
Gospel Literature Service,
THE WEB – these sites have been consulted in
my research
The site I want attention drawn to is Answering Islam Home Page. It’s strength is that it proves that the Quran is just a human book with errors and that the current
Quran is not the one that Muhammad would have said is
the word of God while it gives Muslim theologians and scholars a hearing. The Koran is not the word of God made text.
http://answering-islam.org/index.html
The Missing Chapters of the Quran
http://answering-islam.org/Gilchrist/Jam/chap4.html
The Early Surviving Quran Manuscripts
www.answering-islam.org/Gilchrist/Jam/chap7.html
What is the Koran?
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/99jan/koran.htm
Christians Refute Islam
http://www.muhammadanism.org/default.htm
Abrogations, Allegations, and Alterations in Islam by
Contradictions in the Quran
http://answering-islam.org/Quran/Contra
This site replies to Islamic rebuttals to its assertion that the Quran is just a human document
The Muslim Threat by Bible Theology Ministries
www.christiandoctrine.net/doctrine/outlines/outline_00046_the_muslim_threat_web.htm
Errors in the Quran
http://www.souldevice.org/quran2.htm
Islam’s Prophet, The Test for a Prophet
http://www.souldevice.org/islamprophet.htm
Truth Unchanged, Texts Unchanging? The Text of the Bible and the Text of
the Quran
http://www.um-islam.nm.ru/chad.htm