Miracles of the Qur'an (part 1)

About a year ago, a friend gave me something to read entitled "Miracle of the Qur'an" by Gary Miller, a Muslim convert. It was absolutely amazing and so I thought I'd post parts of it on here.

"Some years ago, the story came to us in Toronto about a man who was in the merchant marine and made his living on the sea. A Muslim gave him a translation of the Qur'an to read. The merchant marine knew nothing about the history of Islam but was interested in reading the Qur'an. When he finished reading it, he brought it back to the Muslim and asked, "This Muhammed, was he a sailor?" He was impressed at how accurately the Qur'an describes a storm on a sea. When he was told, "No as a matter of fact, Muhammed lived in the desert," that was enough for him. He embraced Islam on the spot. He was so impressed with the Qur'an's description because he had been in a storm on the sea, and he knew that whoever had written that description had also been in a storm on the sea. The description of "a wave, over it a wave, over it clouds" was not what someone imagining a storm on a sea to be like would have written; rather, it was written by someone who knew what a storm on the sea was like. This is one example of how the Qur'an is not tied to a certain place and time. Certainly, the scientific ideas expressed in it also do not seem to originate from the desert fourteen centuries ago."


"Many centuries before the onset of Muhammed's Prophethood, there was a well-known theory of atomism advanced by the Greek philosopher, Democritus. He and the people who came after him assumed that matter consists of tiny, indestructible, indivisible particles called atoms. The Arabs too, used to deal in the same concept; in fact, the Arabic word dharrah commonly referred to the smallest particle known to man. Now, modern science has discovered that this smallest unit of matter (i.e., the atom, which has all of the same properties as its element) can be split into its component parts. This is a new idea, a development of the last century; yet, interestingly enough, this information had already been documented in the Qur'an which states:

" He [i.e., Allah] is aware of an atom's weight in the heavens and on the earth and even anything smaller than that..."

Undoubtedly, fourteen centuries ago that statement would have looked unusual, even to an Arab. For him, the dharrah was the smallest thing there was. Indeed, this is proof, that the Qur'an is not outdated."


"If one assumes that the Qur'an is the product of a man's mind, then one would expect it to reflect some of what was going on in the mind of the man who "composed" it. In fact, certain encyclopedias and various books clam that the Qur'an was the product of hallucinations that Muhammed underwent. If these claims are true - if it indeed originated from some psychological problems in Muhammed's mind - then evidence of this would be apparent in the Qur'an. Is there such evidence? In order to determine whether or not there is, one must first identify what things would have been going on in his mind at that time and then search for these thoughts and reflections in the Qur'an.

It is common knowledge that Muhammad had a very difficult life. All of his daughters died before him except one, and he had a wife of several years who was dear and important to him, who not only proceeded him in death at a very critical period of his life. As a matter of fact, she must have been quite a woman because when the first revelation came to him, he ran home to her afraid. Certainly, even today one would have a hard time trying to find an Arab who would tell you, "I was so afraid that I ran home to my wife." They just aren't that way. Yet Muhammed felt comfortable enough with his wife to be able to do that. That's how influential and strong woman she was. Although these examples are only a few of the subjects that would have been on Muhammed's mind, they are sufficient in intensity to prove my point. The Qur'an does not mention any of these things - not the death of his children, not the death of his beloved companion and wife, not his fear of the initial revelations, which he so beautifully shared with his wife - nothing; yet, these topics must have hurt him, bothered him, and caused him pain and grief during periods of his psychological reflections, then these subjects, as well as others, would be prevalent or at least mentioned throughout."

I love how logical Miller is - the whole piece was written in order to logically and categorically prove that the Qur'an is of divine origin and not written by man. Instead of attacking anyone who claims this, he is using pure logic (in a very POLITE manner) to show that it is impossible that the Qur'an is man-made. More Muslims should use this approach, instead of going red in the face and shouting about "infidels" and "going to hell". This is not going to convince anyone to convert to, let alone respect, Islam.

I'll be posting more soon!

qur'an and woman

I just finished reading Amina Wadud's book, "Qur'an and Woman: Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective", one of the few interpretations of the Qur'an done by a female that is widely available. She made a lot of amazing points but I'll only mention a few here.

I believe the Qur'an adapts to the context of the modern woman as smoothly as it adapted to the original Muslim community fourteen centuries ago. Any interpretations which narrowly apply the Qur'anic guidelines to literal mimics of the original community do an injustice to the text. No community will ever be exactly like another. Therefore no community can be a duplicate of that original community. The Qur'an never states this as a goal. Rather, the goal has been to emulate certain key principles of human development: justice, equity, harmony, moral responsibility, spiritual awareness, and development. Where these general characteristics exist, whether in the first Muslim community or in present and future communities, the goal of the Qur'an for society has been reached.

I love the message she's giving her: to focus on general characteristics of the Qur'an (some call it the spirit of the Qur'an) instead of only obsessing about specifics. Many Muslims today focus on dressing and living like the Prophet and his family/companions. Should this be something modern Islamic communities aim for? Or should we recognize that every community is different and the Qur'an is made for this diversity?

If readers of the Qur'an have assumed in any manner that men are superior to women intellectually, spiritually, ontologically, etc.; that men are "in charge of women"; that men are natural leaders; that men should "rule" the family and get obedience from women; that women do not have to participate and contribute in order to maintain the family and society or that her participation is marginal; then those readers will interpret the Qur'an in accordance with those assumptions.

In a previous post about interpreting the Qur'an, I mentioned that each person interprets the Qur'an according to their pre-existing beliefs and world view. Thus the assumptions Wadud mentions will influence someone reading the text.

I will post more from this book soon.

interpreting the qur'an

I recently bought a translation of the Qur'an by Tarif Khalidi. It is definitely the best translation I've ever read, because I feel like he focuses on translating concepts rather than word for word. Anyway, in his introduction he writes:

If we turn back to the questions posed above, we might argue that a knowledge of, say, conditions in pre-Islamic Arabia would clearly enahce contextual understanding of the Qur'an. But the very allusiveness of the text, its impersonality, its meta-historical tone, seems almost deliberately to de-emphasize context, and to address its audience or readers in a grammatical tense that I have elsewhere called 'the eternal present tense'. Yes, the Qur'an explicitly recognizes the danger of a wilfully perverted reading of the text, but if approached in a pious frame of mind, or what today we might call sympathy, interpretation must in theory be limitless, since God alone is its perfect interpreter. Thus, of all sacred texts, the Qur'an is perhaps the one that most self-consciously invites its readers to engage with it exegtically.

Relating it to my last post, I feel like every individual is bound to have their own interpretation of the Qur'an. Is this wrong? Is there one correct interpretation? I don't think so, because as Khalidi points out, that perfect interpretation is God's alone. We all read the Qur'an with certain ideas already in place, which probably explains why interpretations of it have varied to drastically. As Reza Aslan pointed out, someone looking for gender inequality in the Qur'an will find it, and likewise someone looking for gender equality will find it. Our preconcieved notions, prejudices, and stereotypes will undoubtedly reflect in our reading of the Qur'an. So should we then trust sheikhs and scholars instead of or alongside ourseleves? Aren't they human too, with their own prejudices and stereotypes? A sheikh who was brought up in a strict patriarchal society may not see gender equality in the Qur'an. If he does not believe that women and men are equal, would he interpret any verses in the Qur'an as saying that?
I feel like I do not have enough knowledge of history, arabic language, sunna, and hadith to interpret the Qur'an as well as it should be interpreted. On the other hand, I don't trust authority figures in Islam, because of how many of them have abused this power. I wonder what the solution will be?