Islam's So-called "Signs"

[Eucharisted]

Islam is supposed to have signs to verify its claims. Here are two websites that list these so-called “signs”:

islamawareness.net/Prophecies/
answering-christianity.com/quran.htm (open in FireFox with No Script + Adblock)

 

[trophybearer]

Wow, so before the end of the world people will be doing naughty things and not be so nice to each other? There might even be a war where people get hurt? I can’t believe Islam could predict such a thing! It must be the true faith!

 

[Byzantine_Wolf]

Typical stuff, really. Nothing of use unless you want to score points from your own side. One example:

The author of The Quran also prophesised that The Quran itself would remain intact (unaltered) through time –

“Absolutely, we have revealed the reminder (The Quran), and, absolutely, we will preserve it.” (The Quran, 15:9)

• since its revelation more than 1400 years ago, the original Quran is still fully preserved and intact as it was when it was first revealed (as I have discussed in the Introduction).

I don’t see how you can just this since there are no original manuscripts (I only say this because Muslims use this against Christians regarding the Bible). Also, there are textual variants within the Koran that are sourced to various companions of the prophets, so it’s not exactly “intact” or “as it was when it was first revealed.”

Also the Answering Christianity guy is, well, he’s of poor taste any way. I think him and Nadir Ahmed are buddies, though I could be wrong. Either way, he’s not of good moral character compared to some Muslim apologists like Shabir Ali.

 

[staffsgt7]

Typical stuff, really. Nothing of use unless you want to score points from your own side. One example:

I don’t see how you can just this since there are no original manuscripts (I only say this because Muslims use this against Christians regarding the Bible). Also, there are textual variants within the Koran that are sourced to various companions of the prophets, so it’s not exactly “intact” or “as it was when it was first revealed.”

Also the Answering Christianity guy is, well, he’s of poor taste any way. I think him and Nadir Ahmed are buddies, though I could be wrong. Either way, he’s not of good moral character compared to some Muslim apologists like Shabir Ali.

I thought some goats at parts of it since some of it was written on palm leaves. And that they ate it during Mohammed’s lifetime so there are parts that never made it into the Koran. I might be wrong, but it says something about that in their hadith. (I cannot remember which one(s).)

I think it is all a bunch of ballyhoo that they tell their followers so as to make them think it is all what they say it is and to not question it.

 

[Cluny]

Here’s a sign of Islam.

The founder was a pedophile. Any grown man who has sex with a 9 year old girl is, by definition, a pedophile.

Catholic priests were deposed and jailed for this behavior. What would happen to Mohammed were he alive today?

 

[trophybearer]

Here’s a sign of Islam.

The founder was a pedophile. Any grown man who has sex with a 9 year old girl is, by definition, a pedophile.

Catholic priests were deposed and jailed for this behavior. What would happen to Mohammed were he alive today?

Oh, were it any muslim but Mohammed they would kill the girl he raped for bringing “dishonor” on her family. If it were actually Mohammed, they would likely offer their 5 year old as well!

 

[dzheremi]

Muslims like to point to the rising number of conversions among Westerners as another “sign” of Islam’s supposed “truth”, but I think it bears witness to the ultimate weakeness of the Islamic belief system when we look at just what happens in those places around the world that are not so free, where perhaps people have little but their faith to rely on. After all, a cushy Westerner who might leave nominal Christianity for Islam could just as easily leave Islam for something else (and this does happen quite a lot, as numerous examples on this very board show).

In Somalia, which is as close to a state (and I use “state” as losely as possible here) united ONLY by Islam as I can think of, what did the “al-Shabab” Islamic fighters do almost immediately upon capturing the town of Kismayu? They destroyed Kismayu’s Roman Catholic Church, which had not been used in over 20 years as not a single Christian lives anywhere in the city. They also destroyed graves of respected citizens of Kismayu, some of which had been there for centuries.

Kinda reminds you of how a similar group of nutcases destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan to prevent “polytheism” among Afghans, despite there not being any Buddhists in Afghanistan for centuries.

Islam is the religion of the spiritually and morally weak, constantly picking fights among themselves and with outsiders to try to prove how strong they are. It is sad and most unconvincing.

 

[ZAKI]

Here’s a sign of Islam.

The founder was a pedophile. Any grown man who has sex with a 9 year old girl is, by definition, a pedophile.

Catholic priests were deposed and jailed for this behavior. What would happen to Mohammed were he alive today?

Oh, were it any muslim but Mohammed they would kill the girl he raped for bringing “dishonor” on her family. If it were actually Mohammed, they would likely offer their 5 year old as well!

it’s funny how many times this has been explained…even by ur own fellow christians-really pathetic…there is no point trying to explain something simple which some can not grasp

wasalam

 

[Byzantine_Wolf]

I thought some goats at parts of it since some of it was written on palm leaves. And that they ate it during Mohammed’s lifetime so there are parts that never made it into the Koran. I might be wrong, but it says something about that in their hadith. (I cannot remember which one(s).)

I think it is all a bunch of ballyhoo that they tell their followers so as to make them think it is all what they say it is and to not question it.

Well some verses from the Koran they only had one source for, so really they have no textual comparison to make compared to the Dead Sea Scrolls or the tens of thousands of manuscripts of the NT.

Narrated Zaid bin Thabit:
Abu Bakr sent for me and said, “You used to write the Divine Revelations for Allah’s Apostle : So you should search for (the Qur’an and collect) it.” I started searching for the Qur’an till I found the last two Verses of Surat At-Tauba with Abi Khuzaima Al-Ansari and I could not find these Verses with anybody other than him. (They were): “Verily there has come unto you an Apostle (Muhammad) from amongst yourselves. It grieves him that you should receive any injury or difficulty …” (S. 9:128-129) [Sahih Bukhari Volume 6, Book 61, Number 511]

On top of this, Uthman, one of the early leaders of Islam, had most of the manuscripts of the Koran burned.

So 'Uthman sent a message to Hafsa saying, “Send us the manuscripts of the Qur’an so that we may compile the Qur’anic materials in perfect copies and return the manuscripts to you.” Hafsa sent it to 'Uthman. 'Uthman then ordered Zaid bin Thabit, 'Abdullah bin AzZubair, Said bin Al-As and 'AbdurRahman bin Harith bin Hisham to rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies. 'Uthman said to the three Quraishi men, “In case you disagree with Zaid bin Thabit on any point in the Qur’an, then write it in the dialect of Quraish, the Qur’an was revealed in their tongue.” They did so, and when they had written many copies, 'Uthman returned the original manuscripts to Hafsa. 'Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur’anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt… [Sahih al-Bukhari Volume 6, Book 61, Number 510; emphasis mine]

And, as I said, there are textual variants sourced to some of Mohammad’s companions:

In some Qira’ahs, like that of Ubayy ibn Ka’ab, occur also the words “and he is a father of them”, which imply his spiritual relationship and connection with the words “and his wives are their mothers”. [Abdullah Yusuf Ali, *The Meaning of the Holy Quran, 11th edition, Note #3674]

As well as some grammatical variants between the texts:

Notice that in the usual Arabic texts (that is, according to the Qira’ah of Hafs) the word qala is here and in 21:112 below, as well as in 23:112, spelt differently from the usual spelling of the word in other places (eg., in 20:125-126). Qul is the reading of the Basrah Qira’ah, meaning, “Say thou” in the imperative. [Abdullah Yusuf Ali, *The Meaning of the Holy Quran, 11th edition, Note #2666]

The Hafs reading is “Qala”, “He will say”. This follows the Kufah Qira’ah. The Basrah Qira’ah reads “Qul”, “Say” (in the imperative). [Abdullah Yusuf Ali,* The Meaning of the Holy Quran, 11th edition, Note #2948]

Now here’s the thing: I am willing, as a Christian, to be consistent. I acknowledge that there are textual variants in the Bible, but that most of these are by and large inconsequential and mostly grammatical (Lee Strobel’s book The Case for the Real Jesus has a great section on this). I am therefore willing to say that minor sentence changes or grammatical variants within the Koran are no big deal as well - again, because I am willing to be consistent and apply the same standards to the Koran as I do the Bible. The problem is that you don’t often see this from the Muslim side - they either ignore the variants in the Koran (as this website does) or they play double standards between the Bible and the Koran. What you get therefore is an argument of “The Koran we have today is the same Koran they had back then!”, which rests on very weak ground.