What about the claims that the divine hand is shown in the text by the number of times certain words are used, for example the words day and night both apparently appear 365 times, the word week 52 times, … Are these sort of phenomena found in other works of literature?
There are two recent posts that give web sites, and I’ll repeat one of them:
answering-islam.org/authors/masihiyyen/numerical_miracles_309.html where the author goes into the details to refute these claims.
However, let’s look at the broader picture for a second. To answer one question, yes, similar numeralogical claims have been made about the Bible–I won’t give references, but they are easily found online. Books have been written about this. But all these claims have all been dismissed (quite properly!) as nonsense. And of course if you go to poetry, you have all sorts of playing around (intentionally) with words–for example, poems only containing words with certain letters, or using a certain number of words, etc. So if there are things like that in the Qur’an, they’re not unique. It’s common.
Second, most people have no real concept of probability. Youtube is awash with videos of seemingly “impossible” things. You turn enough cameras on for long enough, and they will capture all sorts of improbable stuff. Or take a look at coincidence in your own life. A lot of people take coincidences as “signs” or something mystical. They’re coincidences, nothing more. For example, when I have traveled to Europe, I invariably run into people I know. It’s gotten to the point where I actually expect to meet people in the most unlikely places. So if you are looking for, say, a certain phrase to occur x number of times, quite often it will–nothing mystical, just pure chance.
Third, these claims about the Qur’an are fallacious. It’s the “Texas Sharpshooter” fallacy. It works like this: a guy drives along and notices a barn with a bullseye drawn on it, and he sees a bunch of shots clustered together in the bullseye. “What a good shot that guy must have been!” he says to himself. But of course what the guy did was shoot a bunch of bullets, and then paint the bullseye afterwards so that the shots appeared in the bullseye. The same with the mathematical claims for the Qur’an. Count up enough types of things, and sure enough, you can paint yourself a bullseye. For example, look for the word “angel” or “day,” etc.–but of course if the numbers don’t add up, just keep counting other words until you find some that do! I personally have better things to do.
Fourth. It all depends on definitions. What is a “word”? If you know Arabic, you’ll immediately see there are a host of problems. Is a “word” the singular? Do you include plural forms? Do you include (for nouns) endings that designate “my,” “her,” “his,” etc.? Is “the book” (written as “one word” in Arabic) counted as “book” without the “the”? You can go on and on. I hope I have given enough examples so that you can see that counting becomes very subjective and very flexible. If something doesn’t fit one way, change the rules and it might fit the other way. And the same goes for the meaning of a word: there are several different words for “day,” for example. So which do you count?
As far as I know two of the biggest advocates of this numeralogical approach are Rashad Khalifa (see Wikipedia) and Shabir Ally. Rashad wrote a bunch of books on the subject and did a nice translation of the Qur’an into English. For Rashad, the number “19” was the key number. He’s generally considered beyond the pale of orthodox Islam, and most Muslims distance themselves from him. One of the suras didn’t fit neatly into his theory, so he solved the problem by simply saying certain verses weren’t authentic and shouldn’t count. In other words, if it didn’t fit his pattern, he MADE it fit! He was assassinated (or murdered, if you like) in 1990, in, of all places, Tucson, where he founded a mosque. Shabir Ally (see Youtube and Wikipedia) is a current advocate of numerology in the Qur’an, and in one youtube video credits the “mathematical miracles” for his faith in Islam.
No scholar of the Qur’an takes these claims seriously, and no one has bothered to take the time to refute them. Just like no scholar has tried to refute the claim that aliens built the Pyramids.
As for the broader claim (in the Qur’an itself) that Muhammad, when asked where his miracles were, answered that the Qur’an was his miracle, and there is a verse challenging anyone to write verses that are better. However, if you read the Qur’an (it honestly doesn’t matter if it’s in English, French, or Arabic), you will quickly see that it is a really mixed bag: there are very poetic passages (quite often mirroring similar ideas–and even phrases–in Christian writings); legalistic passages; repetition; and not a few passages that–to a non-Muslim–clearly were written just to make Muhammad’s life a bit easier. For example, several verses tell visitors to Muhammad’s tent not to come early and to leave right away after they’ve eaten. If this has religious meaning, it’s lost on me.
Leeds U. has a very good web site
corpus.quran.com/wordbyword.jsp that goes into each Arabic words, gives multiple translations of each verse in English, and also has an audio feature so you can hear the verse, as well as many more features.
And then of course there’s the whole issue of abrogation (Wikipedia…) where scholars throughout almost the entire history of Islam have claimed that certain verses were abrogated, or replaced, by other verses. The problem is there is no agreement on how many verses have been abrogated, or which ones…and if you look at the historical development of the idea, you can quickly see that as time went by more and more verses were put into the “abrogated” column. Most Muslims accept this idea, but some reject the idea entirely.
