The Qur'an: A Book Full of Conjecture and Doubt

Source: Answering Muslims

Posted by Anthony Rogers

"Jesus ressurecting [sic] and dying on the cross is a mere legend. The people who 'saw' him THOUGHT they saw him, but it was someone who looked similar to him, . There;s [sic] no evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus (as), and the Quran refutes that, and the Quran has plenty of evidence on its side." - Muslim Kangaroo (See here [the link is dead])

No doubt Kangaroo has the following passage of the Qur’an in mind here:

And their saying: Surely we have killed the Messiah, Isa son of Marium, the messenger of Allah; and they did not kill him nor did they crucify him, but it appeared to them so (like Isa) and most surely those who differ therein are only in a doubt about it; they have no knowledge respecting it, but only follow a conjecture, and they killed him not for sure. S. 4:157 Shakir

As will be shown, only in a kangaroo court would the verdict come down against the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus in favor of the Qur’anic account of what happened. (For a good example of just such a court, see here.)

What Muslims "see" in the Quran and THINK is a refutation is actually just a bad argument substituted for and made to appear like a good one. Actually, it doesn't really bear much of a resemblance to a good argument; at best all we can say about it is that it is an apparently good enough counterfeit for many people to be convinced (read: deceived) by it. In fact, this passage doesn’t even represent an argument at all; it is simply a claim that contradicts what the Bible and history say about these matters. So calling it a refutation isn’t even accurate.

It has been said on this blog before (see here), but it bears repeating, especially in the context of a discussion of Surah 4:157, every time that we think of the "refutation" supposedly given in the Qur'an the one thing we should be struck with above all else is how many errors the author(s) of the Qur'an were able to make in such a short space, and Muslims really should be encouraged to add this to the list of evidences of the supernatural authorship of the Qur’an, for surely no one person could make so many mistakes AND yet still manage to dupe so many people. A supernatural being is clearly involved with both the composition and reception of the Qur’an; unfortunately, that being is most certainly not God, but is merely a being that masquerades like Him or an angel that pretends to have been sent by Him. This being made it appear to the author(s) of the Qur’an (and those who follow him/her/them) that the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ are mere legends, but they are really only following a satanically inspired conjecture. This point will be made in a myriad of ways over the course of several posts, beginning with the following:

1. This verse represents the Jews as boasting: "We killed the Messiah…."

Contrariwise, the speech attributed to the Jews here is a clear error. The Jewish leaders wanted Jesus crucified precisely because they rejected His claim to be the Messiah, for no Jew would boast of killing the Messiah.

All the author(s) of the Qur'an would have had to do here to accurately reflect what the Jews would or could have said along these lines given their actual beliefs is either drop the word “Messiah”, as the following (mis)translations of the Qur’an, likely out of a recognition of the problem that exists in the Arabic text, do:

and their statement that they murdered Jesus, son of Mary, the Messenger of God, when, in fact, they could not have murdered him or crucified him. They, in fact, murdered someone else by mistake. Even those who disputed (the question of whether or not Jesus was murdered) did not have a shred of evidence. All that they knew about it was mere conjecture. They certainly could not have murdered Jesus. S. 4:157 Muhammad Sarwar

They [proudly] spread a rumor that: “We killed Jesus, son of Mary.” For sure they did neither kill Jesus nor crucify him. Their wishful thinking has created so much confusion in account of the lack of [historical] proof for their saying. Know for sure that they did not kill him. S. 4:157 Bijan Moeinian

Or, add words to the effect that they killed Jesus for His CLAIM to be the Messiah. Indeed, this is exactly the sort of thing the Jews did do in opposition to the sign made by the Romans which called Jesus "the King of the Jews". In protest, the Jews clamored for the sign to be changed so it would read that He SAID He was/is the King of the Jews.

Therefore when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out, and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Pavement, but in Hebrew, Gabbatha. Now it was the day of preparation for the Passover; it was about the sixth hour And he said to the Jews, "Behold, your King!" So they cried out, "Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him!" Pilate said to them, "Shall I crucify your King?" The chief priests answered, "We have no king but Caesar." So he then handed Him over to them to be crucified. They took Jesus, therefore, and He went out, bearing His own cross, to the place called the Place of a Skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha. There they crucified Him, and with Him two other men, one on either side, and Jesus in between. Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It was written, "JESUS THE NAZARENE, THE KING OF THE JEWS." Therefore many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, Latin and in Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews were saying to Pilate, "Do not write, 'The King of the Jews'; but that He said, 'I am King of the Jews.'" Pilate answered, "What I have written I have written." (John 19:13-22)

Muslims Get Terrible News… Could Mean The Devestating End Of Their Religion

Photo Source: FoxNews (Questions swirl around ancient Koran, which may predate Muhammad)

Source: Conservative Tribune

Fragments of scripts, written on animal hides and hidden inside of a Quran, were tested to determine their age, and the results indicated a strong likelihood that they predated the Prophet Muhammad — which could mean all of Muhammad’s words were little more than political propaganda.

The manuscripts were part of the Suras — chapters 18-20 of the Quran — found in a manuscript at the University of Birmingham in July and carbon dated by experts at the University of Oxford.

Those tests determined that the Suras were written sometime between 568 and 645. Dates given for the Prophet Muhammad are usually between 570 and 632.

Tom Holland, a historian, said the find “destabilizes, to put it mildly, the idea that we can know anything with certainty about how the Quran emerged — and that in turn has implications for the history of Muhammad and the Companions.”

Keith Small of the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library said that the manuscripts could devastate the religion.

“Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven,” he suggested.

As expected, even though scientists used highly specialized equipment to carbon date the document, Muslim scholars around the world have disputed the claim and have designed their own convenient stories which attempt to counter the scientist’s test results.

Apparently, instead of accepting the fact that they might possibly be inaccurate about the origins of their most sacred words, they’d rather choose to live blissfully ignorant and continue on as if nothing happened

PATHEOS: Carbon dating suggest Koran is older than Mohammed, because Islam is nonsense

Source: Patheos

In what seems like a regular occurrence in the modern world, more scientific evidence suggests that yet another religion is based on absolute nonsense.

Islamic scholars overwhelmingly claim that the Islamic Prophet Muhammad lived between 570 and 632 A.D. Yet carbon dating of a fragment from a Koran kept at a library in Birmingham suggests that the book was produced between 568 and 645 A.D.

That places the Koran as being written during Mohammed’s childhood or even before his birth. Throwing a huge wrench in the story that the Koran was dictated by Mohammed himself.

“According to Muslim tradition, the Prophet Muhammad received the revelations that form the Qur’an, the scripture of Islam, between the years AD 610 and 632, the year of his death,” said Professor David Thomas, Professor of Christianity and Islam and Nadir Dinshaw Professor of Interreligious Relations at the University of Birmingham.

“At this time, the divine message was not compiled into the book form in which it appears today. Instead, the revelations were preserved in ‘the memories of men.’ Parts of it had also been written down on parchment, stone, palm leaves and the shoulder blades of camels,” Thomas said. “Caliph Abu Bakr, the first leader of the Muslim community after Muhammad, ordered the collection of all Qur’anic material in the form of a book. The final, authoritative written form was completed and fixed under the direction of the third leader, Caliph Uthman, in about AD 650.”

Of course, Islamic scholars and apologists are disputing the findings and claiming that carbon dating is not accurate enough. But not all scholars agree.

“It destabilizes, to put it mildly, the idea that we can know anything with certainty about how the Koran emerged — and that in turn has implications for the historicity of Mohammed and the Companions [his followers],” said Tom Holland, the author of In The Shadow of the Sword.

Keith Small, of Oxford’s Bodleian Library says this finding lends evidence to what many believed to be true, that Mohammed and his followers pieced together the Koran from writings found around that time in order to push their political agenda.

“This would radically alter the edifice of Islamic tradition and the history of the rise of Islam in late Near Eastern antiquity would have to be completely revised, somehow accounting for another book of scripture coming into existence 50 to 100 years before, and then also explaining how this was co-opted into what became the entity of Islam by around AD700,” Small said.

While the findings are sure to upset Muslims around the world, in reality it places the Koran next to the other fictional holy books of the world’s religions, by giving solid evidence that the story of Mohammed and the creation of the Koran is officially bullshit.

Who wrote the Muslim "holy" book called Qur'an?

Before you say the Quran is a "word of God" READ these!

• Quran - from Wikipedia
• History of the Quran - from Wikipedia
• Criticism of the Quran - from Wikipedia
• Historical Errors of the Quran - from Answering Islam
• Contradictions in the Quran - from Answering Islam
• Criticism of Islam - from Wikipedia
• Criticism of Muhammad - from Wikipedia
• Islamic Terrorism - from Wikipedia

Who wrote Quran?: Muslims be ready!

By Sister Alicia

Muslims say that Bible is not the word of God because it has no known author or that most of the books of the Bible say, "author - unknown". But careful study of the Bible suggests that there are many evidences which indicate that the writers of the Bible were prophets and apostles themselves. For example the first five books of the Bible were written by Moses.

Moses writes instructions for the kings of Israel in Deu 17:18-20, "Also it shall be, when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write for himself a copy of this law in a book, from the one before the priests, the Levites. And it shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God and be careful to observe all the words of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted above his brethren, that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right hand or to the left, and that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he and his children in the midst of Israel."

Joshua confirms that there were written Laws with them which was given by God to Moses. In Joshua 1:7-8, "Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go. This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success."

Further we read that Joshua made an altar of the LORD God as it was written in the Book of the Law of Moses in Josh 8:30-31, "Now Joshua built an altar to the LORD God of Israel in Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the LORD had commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the Book of the Law of Moses: "an altar of whole stones over which no man has wielded an iron tool." And they offered on it burnt offerings to the LORD, and sacrificed peace offerings."

Joshua also made a copy of the Book of Law when they reached the promised land as we read in Josh 8:32, "And there, in the presence of the children of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written."

Further it was confirmed in 2 Chr 17:9 So they taught in Judah, and had the Book of the Law of the LORD with them." And throughout the Bible we read about the confirmation that Bible was written by prophets and apostles who had direct contact with God.

Now the question is, who wrote Quran or who was the author of Quran?

Hadith tells us that Muhammad was illiterate and was unable to read or write. So of course Muhammad did not write Quran. Muslims claim that Muhammad dictated the whole Quran to his followers and many of them memorized the Quranic verses word by word and later they wrote it down. The bottom line is that no one knows for sure who wrote the Quran.

After the death of Muhammad there was a time when Uthman the third Caliph of Islam ordered to burn all the copies of Quran except one. It was believed that there were variations in text and recitation practice of Quran at that time and so Uthman took this step. According to Quran and Hadith, Muhammad was the last prophet of Islam. So Uthman was not a prophet and we do not know whether he kept the valid and original Quran or destroyed it? We also do not know how he determined which one was the correct version of Quran?

Muslims claim that Quran was directly given by Allah and Sheikh Ahmed Deedat the Muslim Scholar and other Muslims have claimed that Quran is the word of God because it was written in first person speech unlike Bible, where third person speech is used. But the very first chapter of Quran is written in the third person speech.

Surah 1:1-7. "In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful. Praise be to Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds; Most Gracious, Most Merciful; Master of the Day of Judgment. Thee do we worship, and Thine aid we seek. Show us the straight way, The way of those on whom Thou hast bestowed Thy Grace, those whose (portion) is not wrath, and who go not astray."

This is not the only one example but there are many Surahs which are written in third person speech. So if we take the word of Muslim Scholars, Quran is not the word of God.