By Syed Kamran Mirza

Quran is anything but a divine book! When I myself read Quran---my intention was to search something or anything that was impossible for human beings to think, know, formulate, or imagine in the 7th century period. But to my utter surprise, I could not find a single statement, or fact in the Quran which could not be said/think/formulate/imagine by human beings. This statement is true for all religious books, not just Quran.

Quran: (Q.4:82 ): “Do they not consider the Qur’an? Had it been from any other than Allah, they would surely have found therein much discrepancy.”

Discrepancy? There are plenty of discrepancies in Quran. One can find numerous discrepancies, inconsistencies, contradictions, scientific errors, full of redundancies, lack of any chronology etc throughout the entire Qur’an. We read in the elementary class the famous poem: “Apanere bora vole bora shay noy, loke jare bora vole bora shay hoy”. Self proclamation of greatness is never valid, but when other people say good then it really becomes good. Just because, Quran itself claimed that it is free of any discrepancy, that does not mean it is free of any discrepancy. It is to be judged nonbiased by it’s contents only.

My several previous articles on Qur’an, Hadiths and some historical happenings such as: Adoption in Islam, Prophet’s marriage, Embryological development of human, Sword of Mercy etc. have very well postulated various facts which I consider mostly proven much reflections much of what was going on in the mind of the man who composed it. We have been talking about self-serving Quranic revelations, such as, sending Ayats: to prohibit adoption in Islam to justify marrying (scandalous) adapted son’s divorced wife, marrying six year old Ayesha, (revealing Sahi Hadiths to justify) ; Ayats to prohibit/control the movements of disciples in the prophet’s house; and insisting/luring the followers to fight/kill in order to get prophet’s intention fulfilled, Ayats to subdue Prophet’s own wive’s rebellion by giving threat of mass divorce etc. Do we need to search for the reflections in Quran? Human reflections are every where in the Quran.

These are pure human reflections on the so called divine orders. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) wanted to establish a new religion and he had to overcome any obstacles/resistance on his path and he needed strength to fight those obstacles to get the success. And so he brought revelations to lure/insist people to fight and kill for his cause. If he was an omnipotent human being, probably he would not have to ask people to kill.

Erroneous Historical Facts:

Stating historical facts is not impossible for human beings. History is the thing of the past and mankind so far discovered/learned lots of amazing past of this planet. Mankind’s quest of knowing our past can reach millions of years and it does not take divinity to know the past. Of course, knowing future could take a divine help, because mankind hardly can predict the future (except weather forecast) very accurately. For example, take these case of Dhul-Qarnayn and Embryology:

Dhul-qarnayn: This is historical past happened not far from Arab and again this historical statement is seriously erroneous. This Dhul-Qarnayn history (Quran:18:83-98) is said to be about Alexander the Great who came from the north (Macedonia). Quran amazingly claims that Alexander the Great was a righteous man (Muslim), even though, history tells us that, Alexander was a licentious, belligerent, idolatrous and claimed to be the son of Amun, the God of Egypt. And Quran amazingly stated that, the Alexander was the one who reached the west point of flat earth where sun set down in a well of muddy water, and also he reached the point of east end of the earth where he saw sun was rising.

Quran mentioned (Quran: 19:28, 66:12, 3:35) Mary (Mother of Jesus) as the sister of Aaron and Moses and the daughter of Imran. This is a grave error of the history. Virgin Mary the mother of Jesus had no brother named Aaron and Mary born almost 1500 hundreds years after the Moses and Aaron was born.

Therefore, stating “historical past” is not impossible for mankind. Of course, sometimes people may record wrong history such as the case of Mary. People get them from various story tellers, archeological ruins, records of the past, historical installations etc. Most of the historical stories in the Quran are believed to be originated from Old testaments, book of Zoroastrian, and other local myths and heretical Arab’s stories. Most of all, knowing the past history was never impossible for human beings of any ages. But we can see, the above two samples of historical past in Qur’an were not true or accurate. If it was from divine source, one could expect it to be true and accurate. Modern human beings can discover/ know the history of millions of years old with much accuracy with out the help of divine power. Mankind discovered very accurately our fossilized pasts and discovered the existed past of the extinct Dinosaurs which ruled the earth 65 million years ago. Existence of the Dinosaur is not an imagination, it is a reality today. This is a great historical fact which Allah even did not remember to mention in any of the Holy books.

Embryology in Quran: There is no embryological science presented in the Quran, which was not know at the time of 6th or 7th century period. In fact, most of the embryological science described in Quran was known to this world well before the time of Quranic compilation. Quranic description very well fits the embryological descriptions of Hippocrates, Aristotle and Galenic (from 5th century B.C. to 4th century A.D.) period. It is irrelevant to ask how Muhammad could have known or found this knowledge. But it is important to note that this much of embryological knowledge was available/prevailing at that time of the world. Most importantly, embryological knowledge presented in the Quran,and ancient Greeks (Hippocrates, Aristotle) and Galenic period was scientifically incorrect compared to the modern scientific knowledge. Quite obviously, had there been this knowledge of embryology came from divine source, there could be no error fond in them today or even after millions of years.

In my article, “Ambiguity of Human Embryology-Science #2”, I have mentioned how embryological knowledge in Quran was borrowed from ancient Greek ideas. As for example, Quran stated, “ We created man from clotted blood” (Zammat rakta theke manush baniechi) was the same erroneous idea of Hippocrates who thought, human embryo develops by mixing menstrual blood with semen. Truth of the matter is, nothing can grow from clotted blood.

What could be then convincing revelation to consider Divinity?

Revelations which could be considered purely divine are: had there been statement/prediction/foretold in Quran—such as, existence of Dinosaurs, human beings will fly in the sky like a bird, mankind will land in the moon, diseases are caused by living organisms, human beings will conquer new lands to the other side of the ocean or at least earth is round and not flat and it is not the sun moves/travels for appointed times but it is the earth moves around the Sun etc etc.

THEN, NOBODY WOULD RAISE ANY DOUBT OR WOULD HAVE ASKED ANY QUESTION ABOUT THE DIVINENESS OF THE HOLY QURAN TO DAY.