Islam's Dark Past; Part IV

Continuing from Part III

The oldest surviving Qur'an fragments were discovered by accident in 1972, during the restoration of the Mosque of Sana'a in Yemen. Workers found a paper grave between the mosque's inner and outer roofs. While it looked to be an unappealing pile of old parchment in Arabic, fused together over the millennia, and gnawed at by rats and insects, it was really a stash containing Qur'ans. Seven years later, the curator of the mosque managed to interest a German scholar in the discovery.

The best investigative study of the Sana'a find was conducted by Toby Lester. Writing for the Atlantic Monthly, he reports: "Some of the parchment pages from the paper grave seem to date back to the eighth century, making them the oldest Qur'ans in existence. What's more, some of these fragments reveal intriguing aberrations from the standard text - devastating in that Muslims are told that the Qur'an, as it has reached us today, is the perfect and unchanging Word of God - letter for letter how he wrote it."

The first scholar to examine the Yemeni fragments was Gerd Puin, a specialist in Arabic calligraphy and Qur'anic paleography. His inspection revealed unconventional verse orderings, textual variations, and artistic embellishments. Scripture was written in a rare and early Hijaz Arabic script. And newer scripts were very clearly written over earlier, worn-out versions. Therefore, the text evolved. It wasn't simply revealed in its entirety to the prophet Muhammad in the early seventh century, as alleged.

More than 15,000 sheets of the Yemeni Qur'an's have been flattened, cleaned, treated, sorted, and assembled. They await further examination in Yemen's House of Manuscripts. Yet that is something Islamic authorities seem unwilling to allow. Puin suggests, "They want to keep this thing low-profile, as we do, although for different reasons."

Puin, and his colleague Graf von Bothmer, an Islamic historian, have published short essays on what they discovered. They continue to feel that when the Yemeni authorities realize the implications of the find, they will refuse further access. Von Bothmer, however, in 1997 shot 35,000 microfilm pictures of the fragments, and has brought the pictures back to Germany. The texts will soon be scrutinized and the findings published freely - a prospect that pleases Puin. "So many Muslims have this belief that everything between the two covers of the Qur'an is Allah's unaltered word. They like to quote the textual work that shows that the Bible has a history and did not fall straight out of the sky, but until now the Qur'an has been out of this discussion. The only way to break through this wall is to prove that the Qur'an has a history too. The Sana'a fragments will help us accomplish this."

In his article on the Yemeni fragments, Toby Lester quoted many of the same scholars Jay Smith referenced in his Cambridge debate. A second perspective on their insights, and what this find might mean for Islam, is important as we are navigating perilous waters. One such expert was Andrew Rippin, a professor of religious studies at the University of Calgary, and a man at the forefront of Qur'anic studies. He said, "The impact of the Yemeni manuscripts is still to be felt. Their variant readings and verse orders are all very significant. Everybody agrees on that. These manuscripts say that the early history of the Qur'anic text is much more of an open question than most have suspected. The text was less stable, and therefore had less authority, than has been claimed."

Stephen Humphreys, a professor of Islamic studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, says, "To historicize the Qur'an would in effect delegitimize the whole experience of the Muslim community. The Qur'an is the charter for the community, the document that called it into existence. If the Qur'an is a historical document, then the whole Islamic struggle of fourteen centuries is effectively meaningless."

The Encyclopedia of Islam says: "The closest analogue in Christian belief to the role of the Qur'an in Islam is not the Bible, but Yahshua. If Yahshua is the Word of God made flesh, the Qur'an is the Word of God made text." Questioning its sanctity or authority is thus considered an outright attack on Islam.

The prospect of a Muslim backlash has not completely deterred the critical and historical study of the Qur'an. In 1996 the Qur'anic scholar Günter Lüling wrote in The Journal of Higher Criticism: "The wide extent to which both the text of the Qur'an and the official Muslim account of Islamic origins have been distorted has been unsuspectingly accepted by Western Islamicists until now." In 1994, the journal Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam published a study by Yehuda Nevo of the Hebrew University, detailing seventh- and eighth-century religious inscriptions on stones in the Negev Desert. Dr. Nevo said, "These pose considerable problems for the traditional Muslim account of the history of Islam." That same year, and in the same journal, Patricia Crone, a historian of early Islam currently based at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, published an article in which she argued that elucidating problematic passages in the Qur'anic text is only possible by "abandoning the conventional account of how the Qur'an was born."

Patricia Crone collaborated on a book with Michael Cook, called Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World. They claim that the Qur'an came into being later than is now believed. "There is no hard evidence for the existence of a Qur'an in any form before the last decade of the seventh century, and that only includes inconsistent and sparse quotations from inside the Dome of the Rock." Hagarism, however, came under immediate attack from Muslims for its heavy reliance on hostile, non-Islamic sources.

Gerd Puin says, "My idea is that the Qur'an is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not understood even at the time of Muhammad. Many may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information."

Crone agrees: "The Qur'an is a scripture with a history like any other, except we don't know this history and tend to provoke howls of protest when we study it. Nobody would mind the howls if they came from Westerners, but Westerners feel deferential when the howls come from other people. Muslims shout: 'Who are you to tamper with our legacy?'"

Personally, I share William Muir's perspective. Many consider Muir to be Islam's foremost scholar. He contends: "The Qur'an is the most stubborn enemy of Civilization, Liberty, and Truth which the world has yet known."

But Muslims would rather be indoctrinated than investigate. The truth frightens them, as do facts and rational thought. They routinely reject all non-Islamic study of the Qur'an. Unable to refute the assault on their holy books with facts, history, or reason they simply assail the messengers of news they do not want to hear.

An Egyptian doctor who edited Prophet of Doom explained: "Their response is psychological. It is what you'd expect from someone who has been told that their religion is a delusion. The revelation triggers a defense mechanism of anger. This is what I faced every time I tried to discuss Islam with them. Our only hope is that Muslims learn to contain their anger and then make use of their minds. But I'm afraid that will not be tolerated by those who benefit from imposing Islam. If Islam suddenly disappears, Muslim clerics and kings, dictators and terrorists, would lose their power and funding. A million Islamic clergy, dictators, and terrorists would instantly be out of work."

Here is an example of how they respond. In 1987, in the Muslim World Book Review, an Islamic apologist, Parvez Manzoor, wrote: "The Western enterprise of Qur'anic studies is a project born of spite, bred in frustration and nourished by vengeance. The Western man, coordinating the powers of the State, Church and Academia [now there's a delusional thought], launched his most determined assault on the citadel of Muslim faith with arrogance, reckless rationalism, and a world-domineering fantasy of sectarian fanaticism, joined in an unholy conspiracy to dislodge the Muslim Scripture from its firmly entrenched position as the epitome of authenticity and moral unassailability. The ultimate trophy that the Western man sought by his daredevil venture was the Muslim mind itself. [Yes, we would like to open it.] In order to rid the West forever of the 'problem' of Islam, Muslim consciousness must be made to despair of the cognitive certainty of the Divine message revealed to the Prophet. Only a Muslim confounded of the historical authenticity or doctrinal autonomy of the Qur'anic revelation would abdicate his universal mission and hence pose no challenge to the global domination of the West. Such, at least, seems to have been the tacit, if not the explicit, rationale of the assault on the Qur'an."

These boys have a vivid imagination. Like their prophet and god, they see conspiratorial plots being hatched everywhere. And nowhere is there a word of reason to refute any adverse claim. Muslims are so used to lying and being lied to they have become paranoid and delusional. It is part of their every day life, the perceived cause of all their troubles. If Western doctors inoculated Muslim children against disease, imams preach that they are infecting them with HIV. When Americans deliver food to feed starving families, the clerics claim the food is drugged so as to make Muslims barren. When it doesn't rain, it's a CIA plot. It's pathetic. Yet to believe a scheme as deceptive and delusional as Islam one's mind has to be corroded, so it's not surprising.

But in a way, Manzoor was right. The motivation for exposing the Qur'an (at least mine) was "spite, bred in frustration and nourished by vengeance." The spiteful and frustrated vengeance of the 9/11 terrorists motivated me to learn why Muslims were killing us. And Manzoor was also correct in displaying his panicked paranoia over the Qur'an. By showing it to be a fraud, the curse of Islam can be removed from the world. But then, alas, Manzoor and clerics like him would have to get a real job.

Another Muslim scholar, Abu Zaid, protests: "The Qur'an is a literary text, and the only way to understand, explain, and analyze it is through a literary approach. This is essentially a theological issue." While Zaid may not like Prophet of Doom, that was precisely the approach I took - analyzing the Qur'an based upon what it said theologically. But free speech is not tolerated in Islam, nor are contrarian views. In 1995 Abu Zaid was officially branded an apostate, a ruling that was upheld by Egypt's highest court. Yet Zaid steadfastly maintains that he is a pious Muslim.

Abu Zaid sought to refute the charges of apostasy, but in the face of death threats and relentless public harassment he fled Cairo for Holland, calling the affair: "a macabre farce." Sheikh Youssef Badri, the cleric whose preaching inspired much of the opposition to Zaid, was ecstatic. "We are not terrorists; we have not used bullets or machine guns, but we have stopped an enemy of Islam from poking fun at our religion.... No one will even dare to think about harming Islam again." Sorry sheikh, not everyone is so easily dissuaded.

"Abu Zaid seems to have been justified in fearing for his life and fleeing. In 1992 the Egyptian journalist Farag Foda was assassinated by Islamists for criticizing Egypt's [terrorist organization called the] Muslim Brotherhood. In 1994 the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed for writing an allegorical novel, structured like the Qur'an, but presenting 'heretical' conceptions of Allah and Muhammad." Algerian Mohammed Arkoun, a professor emeritus of Islamic Thought at the University of Paris, said: "Deviating from the orthodox interpretation of the Qur'an is a very sensitive business with serious implications. Millions refer to the Qur'an to explain their actions and to justify their aspirations." And therein lies the problem.

I agree with Lester: "Despite its repeated assertions to the contrary, the Qur'an is extremely difficult for contemporary readers - even highly educated speakers of Arabic - to understand. It makes dramatic shifts in style, voice, and subject matter from verse to verse. It assumes a familiarity with language, stories, and events that seem to have been lost even to the earliest Muslims, which is typical of a text that initially evolved through oral tradition. Its inconsistencies are easy to find: Allah is referred to in the first and third person in the same sentence; divergent versions of the same story are repeated at different points in the text; and divine rulings contradict one another. The Qur'an, anticipating this criticism, defends itself by asserting the right to abrogate its own message: 'Allah blots out or confirms what He pleases.'" Every independent scholastic review of the Qur'an gives Allah failing marks.

Toby Lester went on to write: "As Muslims came into contact with literate people during the eighth century, the wars of conquest were accompanied by theological challenges, in which Christians and others latched on to the confusing literary state of the Qur'an as proof of its human origins. So Muslim scholars found themselves fastidiously cataloguing the problematic aspects of Allah's Book. These include: incomprehensible vocabulary, omitted words, foreign words, grammatical incongruities, contradictions, historical inaccuracies, scientific errors, and deviant texts. Yet for complicated political reasons, the official Islamic doctrine became that of i'jaz, or the 'inimitability' of the Qur'an. As a result, 'Allah's Book' is recited in Religious Arabic by Muslims worldwide, the overwhelming majority of whom do not understand any form of the language." Rather than defend the Qur'an rationally and objectively, they hide under the cover of an arcane language virtually no one understands.

After studying the Yemenite parchments, Gerd Puin speaks with disdain about the traditional willingness, on the part of Muslim and Western scholars, to accept the conventional understanding: "The Qur'an claims for itself that it is 'mubeen,' or clear, but if you just look at it, you will see that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn't make sense. Many Muslims will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Qur'anic text is just incomprehensible. This is what has caused the traditional anxiety regarding translation. If the Qur'an is not comprehensible, if it can't even be understood in Arabic, then it's not translatable into any language. That is why Muslims are afraid. Since the Qur'an claims repeatedly to be clear but is not - there is an obvious and serious contradiction. Something else must be going on." You would have to search long and hard for a better summary of the Qur'an from a more knowledgeable source.

Stephen Humphreys, writing in Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry, concisely presented the nature of the historical vacuum surrounding the formation of Islam. "If our goal is to comprehend the way in which Muslims of the late 8th and 9th centuries understood the origins of their society, then we are very well off indeed. But if our aim is to find out what really happened in terms of reliably documented answers about the first century of Islamic society, then we are in trouble."

In his Atlantic Monthly article, Toby Lester reported: "The person who, more than anyone, has shaken up Qur'anic studies in the past few decades is John Wansbrough, formerly of the University of London. Puin is 're-reading him now' as he prepares to analyze the Yemeni fragments. Patricia Crone says that she and Michael Cook 'did not say much about the Qur'an in Hagarism that was not based on Wansbrough.' Anybody engaged in the critical study of the Qur'an must contend with Wansbrough's two main works - Qur'anic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation and The Sectarian Milieu: Content and Composition of Islamic Salvation History.

"Wansbrough applied the entire arsenal of 'instruments and techniques of Biblical scholarship - form, source, and redaction criticism - to the text.' He concluded: 'The Qur'an evolved only gradually in the eighth century, during a long period of oral transmission when Jewish and Christian sects were arguing volubly with one another well to the north of Mecca and Medina, in what are now parts of Syria, Jordan, Israel, and Iraq. The reason that no Islamic source material from the first century or so of Islam has survived,' Wansbrough said, 'is that it never existed.' Wansbrough's theories have been contagious in scholarly circles, but Muslims have found them deeply offensive. Parvez Manzoor has described Wansbrough and others as 'a naked outburst of psychopathic vandalism.'" Another messenger lies wounded by Islam's intolerant tongue while his facts lay undisputed.

The hostility experienced was not unique. One of his most famous predecessors was a prominent Egyptian government minister, and university professor, Taha Hussein. He is considered by many Muslims to be the Dean of Arabic Studies. "Hussein devoted himself to understanding pre-Islamic Arabian poetry and ended up concluding that much of that body of work had been fabricated well after the establishment of Islam in order to lend outside support to Qur'anic mythology." This confirms that the Qur'an's vocabulary was defined and its grammar was established by fabricated sources.

Recently, the Iranian journalist and diplomat Ali Dashti, in his Twenty Three Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Muhammad, took his fellow Muslims to task for not questioning the traditional accounts of Muhammad's life, much of which he called "myth-making and miracle-mongering." Ali is right. What's more, it's obvious.

Lester explains: "Such work has not come without cost, however: Taha Hussein, like Nasr Abu Zaid, was declared an apostate in Egypt; Ali Dashti died mysteriously just after the 1979 Iranian revolution. Muslims interested in challenging doctrine must tread carefully. 'I would like to get the Qur'an out of this prison,' Abu Zaid has said of the prevailing Islamic hostility, 'so that it becomes productive for our culture, which is now being strangled.' Yet the majority of Muslims are unlikely to question the orthodox approach to the Qur'an and Islamic history." There is something distasteful about being killed, I suppose.

The first thing Muslims would discover by exposing the Qur'an to rational, historic, scientific, and linguistic scrutiny is that Arabic didn't exist when the Qur'an was allegedly scribed by the Pen on Heavenly Tablets. Scholars have determined that written Arabic evolved relatively recently from Aramaic by way of Syriac. The earliest trace of Syriac turned Arabic is found, ever so appropriately, on a gravestone. The earliest document is the Qur'an itself.

By way of background, the Aramaic and Syriac languages had fewer consonants than Arabic; so, during the 7th century new letters were created by adding dots to existing ones in order to avoid ambiguities. Diacritics indicating short vowels were introduced, but they are only used so that the Qur'an can be recited. There are two types of written Arabic. Classical or Religious Arabic is the language of the Qur'an. It differs from Modern Standard Arabic in style and vocabulary, much of which is archaic - antiquated beyond understanding.

Arabic inscriptions were virtually unknown prior to the birth of Islam in the seventh century. The Nabataeans, living in modern-day Jordan, wrote with a highly cursive Aramaic alphabet that some believe eventually evolved into Classical Arabic. The first inscriptions in what could be called an Arabic alphabet are also found in Jordan. They were carved by Syriac Christians. Scholars suggest that a range of inscriptions in northern Arabia, datable to the fifth century A.D., exhibit a group of dialects which may be the ancestors of Arabic as we know it, although they cannot be termed Arabic any more than Anglo-Saxon could be termed English. The dialects of pre-Islamic South Arabia are a separate language within the Semitic family, and are not in any sense ancestors of the Qur'anic language.

As evidence that written Arabic was unknown in Mecca during Muhammad's lifetime, Ishaq, the first to write on behalf of Islam, tells us: Ishaq: 85 "The Quraysh found in the corner [of the Ka'aba's foundation] a writing in Syriac. They could not understand it until a Jew read it for them. It read: 'I am Allah the Lord of Mecca. I created it on the day that I created heaven and earth and formed the sun and moon.'" This was "found" as the crumbling Ka'aba stones were being restacked. The Tradition is the final Sunnah event prior to Muhammad's battle with the cave-dwelling spirit that became the Qur'an's initial revelation. Yet no Arab could read the script from which written Arabic was derived and Allah's "Book" was allegedly written. As always, the Islamic scripture does a better job destroying Islam than does any scholar.

Here's the bottom line: Arabic, especially in written form, is a recent phenomenon linguistically. Not only wasn't it one of man's earliest languages, it was derived from a language that predated it by 3,000 years. There is no evidence that written Arabic existed in Mecca when the Qur'an was handed down. Therefore, it couldn't have been the language of Allah if, as the Qur'an and Hadith attest, written scrolls were given to Adam, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus prior to the time written Arabic was conceived. And that would make Allah a liar and the Qur'an a fraud.

There is more you should know about the difference between the Classical Arabic of the Qur'an and the language spoken by Arabs today. First, there is a wide gap between written Arabic and all varieties of the spoken language. The spoken dialects aren't used in writing. The modern colloquial dialects are not mutually intelligible. In nations where Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) is used, speakers must learn a local colloquial Arabic dialect to communicate as their native language and then gain a greater or lesser fluency with MSA as an educated and commercial language.

Second, there are major differences between Modern Standard Arabic and Religious Arabic. Classical Arabic only survives in some questionable poetry and in the Qur'an. Being schooled in MSA does not prepare a student to understand the Qur'an, as its form of Arabic is substantially different than MSA and massively different than spoken dialects. For example, Muslims are required to take classes called Tagweed, every year for ten years just to learn how to recite the Qur'an. But even then, they don't know what the words mean. The situation is similar to contemporary Italian and Latin. Being literate in one does not make one literate in the other.

The biggest differences between Religious and Standard Arabic are word order, grammar, and vocabulary. Classical Arabic is always verb-subject-object, rather than the more familiar subject-verb-object. If someone aims to learn Arabic he or she would have to learn MSA, Classical, and at least one local dialect. To make matters worse, Arabic has a wicked property - diglossia - a phenomenon in which two forms of one language are used side by side. One variety is formal; the other is mostly oral.

This brings us to a shocking conclusion. Less than three percent of the world's population speaks Arabic, and almost all of them need to have the Qur'an translated into MSA before they can understand it. Thus the Islamic apologists who scream that the Qur'an must remain in Religious Arabic are saying that they only want an infinitesimal fraction of three percent of the world's population to understand it. Fortunately, you know why.

The Qur'anic headaches get worse, not better. During the Qur'an's first century, the emerging Arabic alphabet did not have diacritical points, and letters were omitted. The text Uthman canonized, if this actually occurred, was a bare consonantal text with no marks to show verse endings, to distinguish consonants, or vowels. Without them it is impossible to comprehend the intended meaning of the text. In the introduction to his translation of the Qur'an, Dawood said, "Owing to the fact that the Kufic script in which the eighth and ninth century Qur'ans were originally written contained no indication of vowels or diacritical points, variant readings are recognized by Muslims as of equal authority."

For example, without the diacritical points the following words would be indistinguishable: repent, plant, house, girl, and abide, as are rich and stupid. There are thousands of Arabic words like these in which the meaning changes depending upon the placement of the diacritical marks. Yet the Qur'an was neither revealed nor initially scribed with these designations. Thus men had to guess as to what Allah was trying to say. The Qur'an cannot be letter for letter as Allah revealed it, because without the diacritical points and vowels, the identity of most letters is missing.

The principles of sound Arabic demand that words have diacritical points and their letters should be written in complete form. It is inconceivable that God would have revealed a book in such an inferior condition. To demonstrate the magnitude of this problem, try to establish the meaning of the following sentences extracted from this page with vowels removed along with one out of every five consonants and punctuation: ltrs r ssng h smlst pncpls snd rc lngg mnd tt wrd hv dctcl pts nd hr ltrs shd be wttn n mplt fm t s nmprhnbl th gd wl hv rvd bk n ch n nrr cndn t. Now, imagine trying to do this without having an intelligible text right before your eyes. Then, to equate this challenge to deciphering the Qur'an, remove every fifth word and replace some of those that remain with an unknown vocabulary. This is what you would have left: r ssng h adgh snd rc lngg tt wrd hv dctcl nd hr ltrs shd be n mplt fm @$%&*! th wl hv rvd bk n ch n nrr cndn. Try to make sense of that.

Our Muslim brethren claim the eloquence of the Qur'an, the supremacy of its language and the beauty of its expression, is conclusive evidence that it was revealed by Allah. "Forget the content," they say. "The inimitability of the Qur'an lies in its stylistic use of the Arabic language." Yet how can this be if there are so many omissions and errors pertaining to acceptable principles of style, literary expression, and grammatical rules? We even find many words that don't have any meaning whatsoever and aren't found in any language. Simply stated: much of the vocabulary no one understands, and much of the text is oblique, obscure, and senseless.

But even so, the eloquence of any book cannot be an evidence of the greatness of the scripture or proof that it was revealed by God. What must be important to God in communicating to man is not manifest in style, but substance - the power, truth, clarity, and usefulness of the revelation. And this is where the Qur'an fails so miserably.

Speaking of style over substance, in his Comprehensive Commentary on the Qur'an, E.M. Wherry, wrote: "Though it be written in prose, the Qur'an's sentences generally conclude in a long continued rhyme. And for the sake of rhyme the sense of what is being communicated is often interrupted. Unnecessary repetitions too frequently made, appear still more ridiculous in a translation, where the ornament, such as it is, for whose sake they were made, cannot be perceived. However, the Arabians are so mightily delighted with this jingling, that they employ it in their most elaborate compositions, which they also embellish with frequent passages of, and allusions to, the Qur'an. It is probable the harmony of expression which the Arabians find in the Qur'an considerably contributes to making them relish the doctrine and efficacy of argument which, had they been nakedly proposed without this rhetorical dress, might not have so easily prevailed." He is saying that Muhammad's militants, like Hitler's minions, were stupefied. Beguiled by a twist of phrase, they were unable to see the base and vile nature of the words themselves. The Qur'an is Islam's equivalent of rap music.

Stealing a page from Mein Kampf, Wherry concludes: "Very extraordinary effects are related to the power of words well chosen and artfully placed, whose power can ravish or amaze. Wherefore much has been ascribed to the best orators. He must have a very bad ear who is not uncommonly moved with the very cadence of a well-turned sentence; and Muhammad seems not to have been ignorant of the enthusiastic operation of rhetoric on the minds of men. For this reason he has not only employed his utmost skill in reciting his pretend revelations. The sublimity of style might seem worthy of the majesty of that being whom he gave out to be the author of them as he tried to imitate the prophetic manner of the Old Covenant. Yet it was only in the art of oratory wherein he succeeded, strangely captivating the minds of his audience. Some thought it the effect of witchcraft and enchantment, as the Qur'an itself so often complains."

Wherry's conclusion squares quite nicely with Muhammad's confessions: Bukhari: V6B60N662 "Allah's Apostle said, 'Some eloquent speech is as effective as magic.'" Bukhari: V9B87N127 "The Prophet said, 'I have been given the keys of eloquent speech and given victory with terror so the treasures of the earth were given to me.'"

The Qur'an is like a Christmas tree. Decorated in its holiday finery it appears beautiful, but the tree is dead. Worse, everything it stands for is pagan, even Satanic. The festival, its date, tree, ornaments, and exchange of presents all date back to the time when they were used to celebrate Lucifer's birthday. Trimmings can be deceiving. (The Messiah was born on the Feast of the Tabernacles, in September.) The Winter Solstice was the birthday of Tammuz, the Babylonian sun god - and all sun gods thereafter. Lucifer wasn't called the Morning Star for nothing.

But the ornamentation of the Qur'an was only superficial. The document is severely flawed. Jalal al-Suyuti dedicated a hundred pages of his Itqan to explain the difficult vocabulary. Under the title "Foreign Words of the Qur'an," he suggests that Religious Arabic is incomprehensible. "No one can have a comprehensive knowledge of the language except the Prophet." (Itqan II: p 106)

Jalal al-Suyuti states: "Muhammad's Companions, in whose dialect the Qur'an was given, failed to understand the meaning of many words, and thus they said nothing about them. When Bakr was asked about the Qur'anic statement "and fruits and fodder," he said, "What sky would cover me or what land would carry me if I say what I do not know about the book of Allah?" Umar read the same text from the rostrum, then said, "This fruit we know, but what is fodder?" Then he was asked about the Qur'anic text in chapter 13 discussing Mary and he had no response. Ibn Abbas [the most prolific source of Islamic Hadith] said that he did not know the meanings of Qur'an verses like 69:36, 9:114, and 18:9." Suyuti suggests that only Muhammad knew what they meant. Ibn Warraq in his scholastic anthologies on Islam compiled thick tomes of linguistic analysis of the Qur'an's hopelessly incoherent condition.

Continues on Part V

Sources:

http://prophetofdoom.net/Prophet_of_Doom_Appendix_Islams_Dark_Past.Islam
http://prophetofdoom.net/pdf/Prophet_of_Doom_Appendix_Islams_Dark_Past.pdf

IHS