As of last night I am somewhat dismayed at the fact that, no
matter how many times I proclaim the same truths to people, there will always
be those who are vastly more concerned with my delivery style than they are
that I am actually speaking the truth. No matter how much I try to temper the
truth with solemnity, humor or compassion, the authoritative nature of the
Truth itself is indigestible to these people. They hear it and either don't fully understand it or they just refuse to accept it.
Sorry folks, I refuse to dilute the truth at the cost of
losing pieces of it in a quagmire of political-correctness and namby-pambyism.
You know what you get from me because I refuse to mince words. Part of the
clarity of the Scriptures is its authority and directness. Where I see direct
contradiction to Scripture you can be assured that I will call that error out
in a manner compelled by the Spirit and correct it.
If it be a rebuke in love, so be it. We’re are called to
discern the truth through adherence to Scripture, not through our emotions or
what we think we’re hearing. Our emotions and thinking have been twisted by The
Fall and cannot be trusted detached from Scripture, not even for a moment
without risk of going completely rogue almost instantly. We are always being
held accountable either by direct measure to God’s word, by God himself or by our
immediate brethren present when we speak.
I believe this is at the core of many problems in our churches.
(1) Too many people are too easily offended. We must often
divest ourselves of the entitlement mentality that allows us to be offended. If
we offend easily it assumes (a) we believe we are right separate from Scripture
and (b) It assumes we are ‘above’ the fray. In other words we must give up our
right to say that we shouldn’t be allowed to be offended. If we are clearly wrong,
we need correction and if that correction offends, than that person is not
wise. Sin is clouding their vision. The Bible clearly states these facts in
Proverbs.
(2) Too many churches water-down their Scriptural teachings
(or change or abandon them completely) so not to offend. Please understand the
reason people are offended by the authoritative truth of Scripture is their
sin. Sin in both thinking and action. Their minds and bodies are both at enmity
with God. This cannot happen without the risk of losing the Gospel message completely.
Bottom-line: We must never forget that the Devil and the
powers and principalities walk into (infiltrate) our churches each and every
day. If we do not figure out when, how and where, we allow them to set up shop
and squat without our permission and without identifying them. In this manner
these dirtbag gain a foothold. Once they establish that presence in either our
lives, families or churches…they are virtually impossible to dislodge because their
putrefying claws dig in deep.
**Sigh** Feeling exceptionally disappointed today.
The Qur’an,
Allah’s supposed final revelation, according to Islam, is transcendent, and
consequently, beyond the capacity for conjecture, or criticism. What this means
is that the Qur'an which we possess today is and has always been final and
pure, which prohibits any possibility for verification or falsification of the
text…even though I can prove it is in error which I just did.
There are
known variations of the Qur’an that are theologically contradicting to other
Qur'an even though Uthman ibn Affan attempted to have nearly all the extant
copies destroyed. The official stance of Islam is that the extant copies are
either invalid or forgeries even though most Muslim scholars will acknowledge
their existence and validity and claim to true Islamic truth. What the hadith
show is that because of infighting in the first century after Muhammad's death,
there was no written copies of the Qur'an immediately following Muhammad's
passing but once they were written, two major versions existed within 100 years
and they were radically different. Although there was a concerted effort to
destroy the radically different extant copies were….That is why the printing of
the Qur'an is now controlled governmentally. The last official printing that I
am aware of is Egyptian from 1924.
We also know
from Islamic documented accounts in the Hadith that some pieces of the Qur'an
were lost because some of the sole people that remembered them were killed in
skirmishes and battles following Muhammad's death. That is why extant copies
were collected and made into the Qur'an by later leaders. When those that
collected them tried to corroborate the texts and unify them there were a few
that refused and they were summarily beaten to get them to try and give them
up.
Furthermore
there are Islamic palimpsest that exist that have distinct variations between
earlier writings that have left indentations but were erased right on the
vellum and the text on the face of the palimpsest. There is hard empirical and
obvious editing under black light or ultraviolet light. Not corrections...but rather
intentional editing or redaction. It was either done to cover and inconsistency
or correct a previous error. Considering the Qur’an is supposed to be the
eternal inerrant word of Allah, there is an inherent problem here for Muslims.
The irony is
this. Most knowledgeable Islamic scholars and Imam are very aware of these
issues. The Islamic commoner is not. Yet the official line is that the Qur’an
as the perfect revelation of Allah is maintained…even when it is known there
are redactions. What then are we to do with the problems which do exist in the
Qur'an? If it is such a transcendent book, as Muslims claim, then it should
stand up to any criticism. Yet, what are we to do with the many contradictions,
the factual errors and bizarre claims it makes?
One of my
largest proofs that the Qur’an and therefore Islam is in error and
contradictory is not in any particular verse but encompasses the entire Qur’an
as a holistic whole. It is the claims that Islam makes about the Qur’an as a
whole that are illogical. In the end my apologetic against the Qur’an
(ironically and literally) comes down to an issue of semantics. Although
semantics in most situations is petty stuff, when it comes to the revealed word
or supposed revelation of a god, it becomes critical. It is critical because it
is solely through words that the Islamic god chose to reveal himself to the
Muslim. [[This in contrast to Christianity and the true God who chose to reveal
himself through His Word and His Son in what is called Special Revelation
(which Islam denies)]]. I digress….on with the post.
The Arabic
word Qur'an is derived from the root qara'a, which means “to read” or “to
recite.” This was the command which the angel Gabriel supposedly asked Muhammad
three times to do when he confronted him in July or August 610 A.D. in the Hira
cave, situated three miles north-east of Mecca (Mishkat IV p.354). According to
Muslims the Qur'an is the final revelation from Allah. In Arabic the Qur'an is
also referred to as Al-Kitab (the book), Al-furqan (the distinction),
Al-mas'haf (the scroll), and Al-dhikr (the warning), as well as other names.
Islam will claim the Qur'an is an exact word-for-word copy of God's final
revelation, which is on the original tablets that have always existed in
heaven. The original language of the Qur’an in Heaven is therefore Arabic. This
of course begs the question: How can an eternal document that has always
existed exist in a derivative form of other Semitic languages? Tablets which I
might add have never been created but in actuality are divine and transcendent.
Therefore
that which is divine in Islam is therefore limited to a finite language which
clearly draws on preexisting Semitic norms of language. People always ask me to
prove the contradictions of the Islamic belief system. Well, here’s another one
to chew on. It is logically and chronologically untenable to support this
Islamic claim about the Qur’an and the Arabic language needing to be the only
language used to write the Qur’an (due to its supposed divine nature). Muslims
continue to believe that the exact Arabic words which we find in the Qur'an are
those which exist eternally on the original stone tablets, in heaven since
eternity past. This, according to them, makes the Qur'an of ultimate importance
as it derives from the “Mother of books” (Dura 43:3-4). This claim is clearly
untenable and easily proven false as I do below.
Islam makes
a claim to the “pure” nature of the Arabic that the Qur’an is written in hence
the need to only translate it in Arabic. Arthur Jeffery, in his book Foreign
Vocabulary of the Qur’an gathered some 300 pages documenting over one-hundred
(non-Arabic) words, many of which had to have been used in pre-Qur'anic Arabic
(Jeffery 1938, p79). One must wonder why these words were borrowed, as it puts
doubt on whether “Allah's language” was sufficient enough to explain and reveal
all that Allah had intended.
Some of
these words in the Qur’an? Egyptian words: Pharaoh, in the Qur'an 84 times.
Acadian words: Adam and Eden which are repeated 24 times. Assyrian words:
Abraham. The correct Arabic equivalent would be Abu Raheem. Persian words:
Haroot and Maroot are Persian names for angels. Sirat meaning “the path” has
the Arabic equivalent, Altareeq. Hoor meaning “disciple” has the Arabic
equivalent, Tilmeeth. Jinn meaning “good or evil demons” has the Arabic
equivalent, Ruh. Firdaus meaning “the highest or seventh heaven" has the
Arabic equivalent, Jannah. Hebrew words: Heber, Sakinah, Maoon, Taurat,
Jehannim, Tufan (deluge) are all Hebrew. Greek words: Injil, which means
“gospel” was borrowed, yet it has the Arabic equivalent Bisharah. Iblis is not
Arabic, but a corruption of the Greek word Diabolos …and the list goes on.
