Month: May 2023

Praise be to God! There is no other god except God.

The first revelation was “Read,” and included the statement “God teaches by means of the pen” (96:1-4), and the second revelation was “The Pen” (68:1). The only function of the pen is to write.

Ignorant Muslim scholars of the first two centuries after the Quran could not understand the Quran’s challenge to produce anything like it. They had no idea about the Quran’s mathematical composition, and they knew that many literary giants could have composed works comparable to the Quran. In fact, many such literary giants did claim the ability to produce a literary work as excellent as the Quran. One of the latest claims came from Taha Hussein, the renowned Egyptian writer.

The ignorant Muslim scholars then decided to proclaim Muhammad an illiterate man! They figured that this would make the Quran’s extraordinary literary excellence truly miraculous. The word they relied on to bestow illiteracy upon the Prophet was “UMMY.” Unfortunately for those “scholars,” this word clearly means “Gentile,” or one who does not follow any scripture (Torah, Injeel, or Quran) [see 2:78, 3:20 & 75, 62:2]; it does NOT mean “illiterate.”

Muhammad was a successful merchant. The “Muslim scholars” who fabricated the illiteracy lie forgot that there were no numbers during Muhammad’s time; the letters of the alphabet were used as numbers. As a merchant dealing with numbers every day, Muhammad had to know the alphabet, from one to one thousand.

The Quran tells us that Muhammad wrote down the Quran—Muhammad’s contemporaries are quoted as saying, “These are tales from the past that he wrote down. They are being dictated to him day and night” (25:5). You cannot “dictate” to an illiterate person. The Prophet’s enemies who accuse him of illiteracy abuse Verse 29:48, which relates specifically to previous scriptures.

On the 27th night of Ramadan 13 B.H. (Before Hijerah), Muhammad the soul, the real person, not the body, was summoned to the highest universe and the Quran was given to him (2:97, 17:1, 44:3, 53:1-18, 97:1-5). Subsequently, the angel Gabriel helped Muhammad release a few verses of the Quran at a time, from the soul to Muhammad’s memory. Muhammad memorized and wrote down the verses just released into his mind. When Muhammad died, he left the complete Quran written down with his own hand in the chronological order of revelation, along with specific instructions as to where to place every verse. The divine instructions recorded by the Muhammad were designed to put the Quran together into the final format intended for God’s Final Testament to the world (75:17). The early Muslims did not get around to putting the Quran together until the time of Khalifa Rashed ‘Uthmaan. A committee was appointed to carry out this task.

On the other hand, it is also worth noting that when Muhammad wrote God’s revelations with his own hand, he was writing them in the role of a scribe, and not in the role of a messenger. And therefore, it is not very important whether he wrote them or not, because the Quran was revealed as a recitation. The word “Quran” means “recitation”, and the different written versions of the Quran which are written on earth do not define the Quran. When God promised to preserve the Quran in verse 15:9, He did not promise to preserve the written book, but to preserve the reminder – to preserve it within the minds and hearts of the people. The written versions of the Quran are simply human-made aids to help people recollect the Quran. In written form, the original Quran only exists high up in heaven (43:4). People can choose to write the written earthly versions with whatever symbols they want to represent the sounds of the original recitation. Muhammad in the role of a scribe happened to write it with Arabic letters, because those were the letters which his society was using, but that does not make it the official version. There is no official written version of the Quran on earth. One of the roles of the Mathematical Miracle of the Quran was to help us distinguish which written human-made versions are correct representations of the revealed spoken Quran, because many written human made versions can exist and exist. Therefore, the written human-made versions can also be written with English letters, or Greek letters, or even computer characters, or even with bits inside a computer, (i.e. only with numbers 1 and 0), and they would still have the Mathematical Miracle based on number 19 in them. So, there is no official symbols (letters) of how the Quran should be written. The written symbols are human made. God taught Adam the words, the sounds of things, but not the writing of it. More than about half of how Adam spoke sounded similar to the Arabic of today, but God never taught or officiated the Arabic symbols. If anything, the symbols or the letters which have more merit to be correct are the letters which were used in the tablets of Moses. Those were the only letters which were directly written by God and angels. Moses received them in written form (7:145). And those symbols were in a shape which Moses would understand. Moses, being a Semite, would understand the Proto-Semitic symbols, which are pretty much the Phoenician alphabet. So, even though there is no official symbols chosen by God, if we had to choose one set of symbols, the closest to being correct are the Phoenician letters, which are similar to the English letters of today. So, when God called Muhammad “a gentile”, “an unlettered one”, in the Quran, among other things, it meant that he is someone who does not know how to read the Phoenician letters with which originally the people of the scripture wrote God’s previous revelations.

Friday Sermon based on Appendix 28 of the Authorized English Translation of the Quran by Rashad Khalifa (1989)

Praise be to God! There is no other god except God. But, who is your god? Most people are outraged upon hearing this question. “What do you mean, ‘Who is your god?’. “My god is the Creator of the heavens and the earth.” And most of these people will be shocked to find out that their proclamation that their god is the Creator of the heavens and the earth is no more than lip service, and that they are in fact destined for Hell (12:106).

To put this commandment into practice, we must establish certain habits whereby we guarantee that God occupies our minds more than anything else. The Quran helps us establish such soul saving habits:

1. The Contact Prayers (Salat): those who observe the daily prayers come a long way towards commemorating God a significant proportion of their waking hours.

2. Commemorate God before eating: Verse 6:121 enjoins us to mention God’s name before we eat. It says, “You shall not eat from that upon which God’s name has not been mentioned.”
3. Saying, “God Willing (IN SHAA ALLAH): Verse 18:24 says, “You shall not say, ‘I will do this or that tomorrow,’ without saying, ‘God willing’ (IN SHAA ALLAH). If you forget to do this, then apologize and say, ‘May my Lord guide me to do better next time.’ ”. This is a direct commandment that we must carry out, no matter who we are talking with.
4. God’s Gift (MAA SHAA ALLAH): To invoke God’s protection for our beloved objects—our children, our cars, our homes, etc.—we are enjoined in verse 18:39 to say “MAA SHAA ALLAH” (This is God’s gift).
5. Glorify God day and night: When we eat anything, we shouldn’t be like animals; we must reflect on God’s creation of the food we are eating—the flavor, our enjoyment due to the senses God has given us, the perfect packaging of the banana or the orange, the varieties of sea foods created by God, etc.—and glorify Him as we enjoy His provisions. When we see a beautiful flower, or animal, or sunsets, we must glorify God. We must seize every possible opportunity to remember and glorify God, so that God may be our God.

Praise be to God! There is no other god except God.

The Quran, informs us that Jesus was a human messenger of God whose sole mission was to deliver God’s message; he never possessed any power, and is now dead (4:171, 5:75, 117). Those who consider Jesus to be God, or Son of God, or part of a trinity are “pagans” (5:17, 72, 73). Outstanding Christian scholars have reached these same conclusions (THE MYTH OF GOD INCARNATE, John   Hick, ed., The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1977 & THE MYTH MAKER, Hyam Maccoby, Harper & Row 1986). Christianity is the product of the Nicene Conferences, the first of which happened 325 years after Jesus.

The Bible’s Jesus

Jesus proclaimed aloud: “Whoever puts faith in me believes not so much in me as in him who sent me;…. For I have not spoken on my own; no, the Father who sent me has commanded me what to say and how to speak. Since I know that his commandment means eternal life, whatever I say is spoken just as he instructed me.”  

[ John 12:44-50 ]

“I cannot do anything of myself. I judge as I hear, and my judgment is honest because I am not seeking my own will but the will of him who sent me.”

[ John 5:30 ]

Jesus said: “My doctrine is not my own; it comes from him who sent me.”

[ John 7:16 ]

“Men of Israel, listen to me! Jesus of Nazareth was a man whom God sent to   you with miracles, wonders, and signs as his credentials. These God worked through him in your midst, as you well know.”

[ Acts 2:22 ]

 “…The man who hears my word and has faith in him who sent me possesses eternal life.”    

[ John 5:24 ]

“Whoever welcomes me welcomes, not me, but him who sent me.”

[ Matthew 10:40, Mark 9:37, Luke 9:48, & John 13:20]

“…I have not come of myself. I was sent by One who has the right to send, and him you do not know. I know him because it is from him I come; he sent me.”

[ John 7:28-29 ]

Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “…Eternal life is this: to know you, the only true God, and him whom you have sent, Jesus Christ.”

[ John 17:1-3 ]

All who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

[ Romans 8:14 ]

Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I know that you always hear me but I have said this for the sake of the crowd, that they may believe that you sent me.”

[ John 11:41-42 ]

As he was setting out on a journey a man came running up, knelt down before him and asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to share in everlasting life?” Jesus answered, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.”

[ Mark 10:17-18 ]

“None of those who call me ‘Lord’ will enter the kingdom of God, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”

[Matthew 7:21]

“…Go to my brothers and tell them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ”

[ John 20:17 ]

“God is my Lord and your Lord; you shall worship Him alone. This is the right path.”

[ Quran 3:51, 19:36, & 43:64 ]

Trinity, the doctrine of God taught by Christians asserts that God is one in essence but three in “person,” Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Neither the word Trinity, nor the explicit doctrine as such, appears in the New Testament, nor did Jesus and his followers intend to contradict the Shema in the Old Testament which is “Hear O Israel: The Lord our God is one” (Deut. 6:4).

[Encyclopedia Britannica, 1975]

Praise be to God! There is no other god except God.

In God’s kingdom, certain creatures are necessarily given the powers needed to perform their duties. Satan believed that his God-given powers qualified him to function as an independent “god”. As evidenced by the prevalence of misery, disease, accidents, and war in his dominion, we now know that Satan is incompetent.

The Quran clearly states that Satan was an angel, by virtue of the immense powers and rank bestowed upon him. This is why he is addressed as an angel (2:34, 7:11, 15:29, 17:61,18:50, 20:116, 38:71) prior to his fall. By definition, a jinn is a fallen angel (18:50). Satan’s rebellion teaches us that the angels were created with minds of their own, and absolute freedom of choice (2:34).

Friday Sermon based on Appendix 21 of the Authorized English Translation of the Quran by Rashad Khalifa (1989).