Qur’an The Book of God – I

Qur’an The Book of God – I

1998 5-6 May-June 17-32 Qur’an The Book of God – I (5148) When the Prophet Muhammad (may peace be upon him) claimed that the Qur’an was a divine book revealed to him by God for the guidance of man, many did not believe him. The Qur’an to them was a human rather than a divine composition. The Qur’an then threw a challenge to these people asking them to produce a scripture similar to it, if what they say be true (52:34).

Alongwith this, the Qur’an declared in no uncertain terms that even if all the human beings and the jinns made collective and concerted efforts to produce a book like the Qur’an they will all fail miserably in their attempt (17:88).

The Qur’an being an eternal book poses, therefore, an eternal challenge, addressed to all the human beings continuing to be born till Doomsday.

Now the question arises as to the characteristics the Qur’an possesses which renders it inimitable. There are more than one dimension of the uniqueness which finds mention in the Qur’an in the following words:

“Do they not ponder over the Qur’an? If it had not come from God, they would have found in it many contradictions (4:82).

Professor Arberry has translated the Arabic word lkhtilaf as ‘inconsistency’ . Other rendering of the word include contradiction, disparity and difference.

Total consistency is an extremely rare quality, one which is an exclusive attribute of God. It is beyond any human being to compose a work of absolute consistency. For a work to be free of inconsistency, the composer has to command knowledge which encompasses the past and the future, and extends also to all objects of creation. There must be no shadow of doubt in his perception of the essential nature of things. Furthermore his knowledge must be based on direct acquaintance, not on information indirectly received from others. And there is another unique quality he must possess: he must be able to see things, not in a prejudiced light, but as it is, as they actually are.

Only God can possess all these extraordinary qualities. For this reason, only His Word will remain perennially free of all inconsistency and contradiction. The work of man, on the other hand, is always marred by imperfection, for man himself is imperfect; it is beyond him to compose a work free of contradiction.

Contradictions in Human Reasoning

It is not by chance that the work of man is fraught with contradictions. It is inevitable, given the inherent limitations of human thought. Such is the nature of creation that it accepts only the Thought of its Creator. Any theory which is not in consonance with His Thought cannot find its place in the universe. It will contradict itself, for it stands in contradiction to the universe at large; it will be inconsistent, for it is not in accordance with the pattern of nature.

For this reason, intellectual inconsistency is bound to mark any theory conceived by man. We shall illustrate this point by several examples.

Darwinism

Charles Darwin (1809-1882), and other scientists after him, developed the theory of Evolution from their observations of living creatures. They saw that the various forms of life found on earth outwardly appeared different from one another. Yet, biologically, they bore a considerable resemblance to each other. The structure of a horse, for instance, when stood up on its two hind feet, was not unlike the human frame.

From these observations they came to the conclusion that man was not a separate species, and that along with other animals, he had originated from a common gene. All creatures were involved in a great evolutionary journey through successive stages of biological development. While reptiles, quadrupeds and monkeys were in an early stage of evolution, man was in an advanced stage.

For a hundred years this theory held away over human thought. But then further investigations revealed that it had loopholes. It did not fully fit in with the framework of creation. In certain fundamental ways, it clashed with the order of the universe as a whole. For instance, there is the question of the age of the earth. By scientific calculation, it has been put at around two thousand million years old. Now this period is far too short to have accommodated the process of evolution envisaged by Darwin. It has been shown scientifically that for just one compound of protein molecule to have evolved would have taken more than just millions and millions of years. There are over a million different forms of animal life on earth and at least two hundred thousand fully-developed vegetable species. How could they all have evolved in just two thousand million years? Not even an animal low down in the evolutionary scale could have developed in that time, let alone man, an advanced life form which could have developed only after passing through countless evolutionary stages.

A mathematician, by the name of Professor Patau, has made certain calculations concerning the biological changes postulated by the theory of evolution. According to him, even a minor change in any species would take one million generations to be completed. From this, one can gain an idea how long a period would elapse before a dog, for example, turned into a horse. The multiple changes involved in such a complicated evolutionary process would have taken much too long for them to have happened during the human lifespan of the world.

As Fred Hoyle puts it, in The Intelligent Universe: Just how excruciatingly slowly genetic information accumulates by trial and error can be seen from a simple example. Suppose, very conservatively, that a particular protein is coded by a tiny segment in the DNA blueprint, just ten of the chemical links in its double helix. Without all ten links being in the correct sequence, the protein from the DNA doesn’t work. Starting with all the ten wrong, how many generations of copying must elapse before all the links – and hence the protein – come right through random errors? The answer is easily calculated from the rate at which DNA links are miscopied, a figure which has been established by experiment.

‘To obtain the correct sequence of ten links, by miscopying, the DNA would have to reproduce itself on an average, about a hundred million members of the species all producing offspring, it would still take a million generations before even a single member came up with the required rearrangement. And if that sounds almost within the bounds of possibility, consider what happens if a protein is more complicated and the number of DNA links needed to code for it jumps from ten to twenty. A thousand billion generations would then be needed, and if one hundred links are required (as is often the case), the number of generation would be impossibly high because no organism reproduces fast enough to achieve this. The situation for the neo-Darwinism theory is evidently hopeless. It might be possible for genes to be modified slightly during the course of evolution, but the evolution of specific sequences of DNA links of any appreciable length is clearly not possible’ (p. 110).

And in any case, as Hoyle had earlier stated, ‘Shufflings of the DNA code are disadvantageous because they tend to destroy cosmic genetic information rather than improve it.’

To solve this problem, another theory, called the Panspermia Theory, was formed. It held that life originated in outer space. From there it came to earth. But as it turned out, this theory created new problems of its own. Where in the vastness of space was there a planet or a star with the conditions needed for life to develop? For example, there is nothing more essential to life than water. Nothing can come into existence or continue to survive without it. Yet no one knows of anywhere in the entire universe, except the earth, where it exists. We then had a certain body of intellectuals who favoured a theory of Emergent Evolution, according to which life – or its various forms – came into being all of a sudden. But this theory is empty of meaning. How can there be sudden appearance of life without the intervention of an outside force? So we are back to where we started, with the Outside Force – or Creator – to discount which all these theories were originally invented.

The fact of the matter is, without taking a Creator into account, one cannot give a valid explanation of life. There is simply no other theory which fits in with the pattern of the universe. Being inconsistent with the nature of life, other theories fail to take firm root. It is indeed significant that eminent scholars from various fields have thought fit to contribute to an Encyclopaedia of Ignorance, which has been published in London. The book has the following introduction:

‘In the Encyclopaedia of Ignorance some 60 well-known scientists survey different fields of research, trying to point out significant gaps in our knowledge of the world.’

What this work really amounts to is an academic acknowledgement of the fact that the Maker of the world has fashioned it in such a way that it just cannot be explained by any mechanical interpretation. For instance, as John Maynard Smith has written, the theory of evolution is beset with certain ‘builtin’ problems. There appears to be no solution to these problems, for all we have to go by are theories. And without concrete evidence, there is no way we can back up our theories.

According to the Qur’an, man and all other forms of life have been created by God. The theory of evolution, on the other hand, holds that they are all the result of a blind mechanical process. The Qur’anic interpretation explains itself, for God can do as He wills. He can create what He wishes without material resources. Such is not the case with the theory of evolution, which demands that there should be a cause for everything that happens. Such causes cannot be found, with the result that the theory of evolution is left without an explanation, – in an intellectual vacuum, one might say, while the same cannot be said of the explanation of life offered by the Qur’an.

Political Philosophy

The same has been the case with political philosophy. According to the 1984 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica: ‘Political philosophy and political conflict have evolved basically around who should have power over whom’ (14/697).

For five thousand years, eminent human brains have addressed their efforts toward finding an answer to this question. Yet they still have not been able to produce what Spinoza termed a ‘scientific base’ on which to form a coherent political philosophy.

Altogether, there are more than twelve schools of political thought, which fall into two broad categories: despotism and democracy. The first is strongly objected to on the grounds that no good reason can be found for one single individual to tyrannise the entire population of a country or countries. Although democracy has wide popular support, it has also been subjected to sharp criticism on a theoretical plane. The entire basis of democracy is the belief that people are born equal, with equal rights and that they are free. But the problems afflicting democracy are alluded to in the very first lines of Rousseau’s Social Contract: ‘Man was born free and everywhere he is in chains.’

The literal meaning of democracy – word of Greek origins – is rule by the people. But in practice it is impossible to establish rule by all the people. How can all the people govern and be governed at the same time? Furthermore, man is said to be a social animal. Far from being alone in this world with the liberty to live as he pleases, he is part of the body of society. One philosopher puts it like this: ‘Man is not born free. Man is born into society, which imposes restraints on him.’

How, then, can a popular government be formed, when all the people cannot have power at the same time? Various theories have been propounded, the most popular of which is Rousseau’s i.e. that it should be left to the General Will, which can be determined by plebiscite. So, in effect, government by the people becomes government by a few elected individuals. People may be free to vote as they please, but after they have voted, they are once again subjected to the rule of a select group. Rousseau explained this by saying: ‘To follow one’s impulse is slavery, but to obey the self-prescribed law is liberty.’

Clearly, this leaves much unanswered. Seeing how easily democratic systems deteriorated into elective monarchies, people were not satisfied with Rousseau’s explanation. Once they had secured people’s votes, democratically elected rulers began to assume the same role as monarchs had before them.

All political philosophers have been caught up in contradictions of this nature. And there appears no way out of the impasse. In theory, all of them cherish the ideal of human equality. Yet human equality, in the true sense, is forthcoming neither in monarchies nor in democracies. If the one is a dynastic monarchy, the other is an elective oligarchy. In the 18th and 19th centuries, people rose in great rebellion against monarchic government. But free of the yoke of kingly rule, they found that they were not much better off in that they had to resign themselves to rule by a select group of ‘representatives of the people,’ while the old monarchs had laid claim to being ‘representatives of God on earth.’ This was the only difference between the two.

Even the so-called ‘representation’ of the people is open to question. Take the example of the British conservatives who, in one year, won a decisive victory, winning an overall majority of 144 seats. In terms of votes, however, the conservative share of the vote (43%) had fallen since 1979, i.e. as far as seats were concerned the conservatives had won a massive overall majority. But, as far as votes were concerned, they could muster only 43%. Could this be said to be truly representative of the people? Man’s failure in this field has been summed up in these words: ‘The history of political philosophy from Plato until the present day makes plain that modern political philosophy is still faced with the basic problems.

In both democratic and despotic systems of government, power is handed over to one or to a few select individuals. In neither system, then, can men be said to be equal, not even under democracy, which has failed to produce equality although formulated in its name. Due to inherent contradictions, this system had likewise produced the opposite of what was intended.

In fact, there is only one political philosophy that does not contradict itself, and that is the philosophy put forward by the Qur’an. The Qur’an says, that only God has the right to rule over man: ‘Have we any say in the matter? they ask. Say to them: “All is in the hands of God’” (3:154).

The idea of God as Sovereign makes for a coherent system of thought, free from all forms of contradiction. But when man is considered sovereign, there are bound to be contradictions and inconsistencies in the political theories that evolve. The aim of all political theories has been to eradicate the divisions between ruler and subjects. Yet no human system, whatever its nature, has been able to do this. In both the democratic and despotic systems, human equality has remained an unattainable ideal, for power has always had to be put in the hands of a few individuals, while others becoming their subjects. This disparity can only disappear when God is considered Sovereign. Then the only difference that remains is between God and man. He is the Ruler, all are His subjects. All men are equal before Him. There is no division and no distinction, between man and man.

Two Fold Inconsistency

If the different parts of a book contradict each other, the book is inconsistent within itself. If the contents of a book, as a whole, or in part contradict outward realities, the book is externally inconsistent. The Qur’an claims – with justice – to be free of either type of inconsistency, whereas no work of human origin can be free of either. It follows, therefore, that the Qur’an must be superhuman in origin. Had it been written by a human being, it would have inconsistencies in it of the type so frequently found in the works of man.

Contradictions within a work arise basically from the deficiencies of its author. If inconsistencies are to be avoided, two things are essential: absolute knowledge and total objectivity. There is no human being who is not sadly deficient in both of these areas. It is only God who is omniscient, and flawless as a Being, and while works wrought by the human hand are invariably marred by inconsistencies, His book, and His book alone never contradicts itself.

Because of man’s inherent limitations, there are many things which, intellectually, he cannot grasp. He is forced, therefore, to speculate, and this frequently leads him into making erratic judgements and unfounded contentions.

Every human being graduates from youth to old age, and when a man grows old, he often contradicts things he asserted as facts when he was young and immature. Withage, his knowledge and experience increase, hence his final verdict being at variance with his initial judgements. But even when death finally comes to take him away, he still has much to learn, and often the assertions of his maturer age are proved wrong after his death. Trust is not arrived at purely through experience and reasoning.

Human beings, in addition to making inadvertent and unwitting errors (for the simple reason that they are humans, and not God!) are all too prone to make deliberate misrepresentations of facts when they are motivated by the base emotions of greed, envy, jealousy, revenge and fear.

Human moods and passions are often to blame for people turning a blind eye to the truth and falling a prey to faulty reasoning. Love and hate, friendship and hostility all have their influence on human thinking. A man’s inability to be dispassionate, his elation or depression, his triumph or despair, his successes and frustrations all colour the quality of his thought. Such fluctuations of mood, caprice and willfulness, can deflect the very best minds from the truth.

The only one who is free of all such caprice and all such limitations is the Almighty. That is why His word is of an impeccable consistency.

Biblical Inconsistency

To illustrate this point let us take the example of the Bible, which, as a book of revelation was the forerunner of the Qur’an.

Initially the Bible was the word of God, but in later years it suffered from human interpolations, with the result that many internal contradictions began to sully its pages. A case in point is the genealogy of the Messiah, which has been given in several places in that part of the Bible known as the Injil, or New Testament. The Gospel according to Matthew begins with this abridged genealogy: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt. I: 1).

The genealogy of Christ is then given in detail, beginning with Abraham and ending with Joseph who, according to the New Testament was “the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus” (Matt. I: 16).

When the reader turns to the Gospel according to Mark he finds these words: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’ (Mark. 1: 1)

According to one chapter of the New Testament, Jesus was the son of a person named Joseph, while another chapter of this very New Testament says he was the son of God.

Undoubtedly, in its original form, the Injil was the Word of God and free of all contradictions. It was only in later years, that human beings made additions of their own, introducing contradictions into a formerly consistent text. The Christian Church has evolved another extraordinary contradiction in order to explain away this contradiction in its sacred book. The description given of Joseph in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1984 edition) is as follows: ‘Christ’s earthly father, the Virgin Mary’s husband.’

Secular Contradictions

For an instance of serious internal contradiction in secular writings, I turn to the works of Karl Marx, who commands an immense following in the modern world. The famous American economist, John Galbraith, has written of him:

‘If we agree that the Bible is a work of collective authorship, only Mohammad rivals Marx in the number of professed and—devoted followers recruited by a single author. And the competition is not really very close. The follower of Marx now far outnumber the sons of the Prophet.

But Marx’s enormous popularity does not change the fact that his work is little better than a collection of flaring contradictions. For example, Marx considers the existence of class as the root of evil in the world. According to his philosophy, class distinction is derived from the system of private ownership, and the control exercised by the bourgeoisie over the means of production enables them to plunder the lower labouring class.

The solution prescribed by Marx consisted of confiscating the properties of the capitalist class and putting them under the administration of the labouring class. Thus, he claimed, a classless society would come into being. But herein lies the basic contradiction of Marx’s philosophy. For what comes into existence as a result of this transfer is not a classless society, but a society in which one class takes over where the other leaves off. Where one class previously controlled the economy by virtue of ownership, another class now controls it by virtue of administration. Marx’s so-called classless society, was, in fact, one in which capitalist ownership was replaced by communist ownership.

What Marx had condemned in one place, he condoned in another. But due to his great antipathy for and antagonism towards the capitalist class, he was unable to see his own contradiction in thought. He was in favour of taking the control of economic resources away from capitalists and entrusting it to officials. But, blinded by prejudice, he failed to see what he was doing. He gave separate names to two different forms of the very same phenomenon: in the one case, he called it plunder of the many by the few, in the other, he termed it ‘social order.’

The Qur’an, on the other hand, is completely free of self-contradiction of this nature, and there is absolute harmony in its description/content. Yet, even so, opponents of the Qur’an have tried to prove that there are contradictions in it. All the examples they cite in this regard, however, have absolutely no connection with the case they are trying to prove. They say, for instance, that in the sermon of his Farewell Pilgrimage, the Prophet stated that all men were from Adam, and Adam was from the earth. According to this principle women should enjoy the same status as men. In practice, however, this is not the case, say opponents of the Qur’an. On the one hand, Islam says that men and women are equal, yet at the same time women are allotted an inferior position in Islamic society. They then cite the fate that the testimony of two women is considered equal to that of one man. This is a total misunderstanding. It is true that in Islam the testimony of two women is, under normal circumstances, considered equal to that of one man. But the basis of this rule is not discrimination between the sexes. It is something quite different, as is made clear in the verse of the Qur’an where it has been laid down. The verse deals with the written recording of debts:

‘And take two male witnesses. If there are not two men, then one man and two women – you may select the witnesses of your choice. If one woman forgets, the other will be able to remind her.”

The wording of the verse shows quite clearly that the basis of this rule is – not discrimination between the sexes – but rather the memorizing ability of women. The verse alludes to a biological fact – that women are not as good at remembering things as men. This is why, if one is going to accept women’s testimony in loans cases, there should be two of them: so that if at any time in the future, they are required to give evidence, one of them should be able to compensate for the other’s poor memory.

It is as well to remember here that modern research has confirmed what the Qur’an said – that women’s memory is weaker than that of men. Russian scientists have gone into this matter in great detail, and their conclusions have been published in book-form. A summary appeared in the New Delhi edition of the Times of India on January 18, 1985, under the caption, ‘Memorizing- Ability’:

Men have a greater ability to memorize and process mathematical information than women, but females are better with words,’ a Soviet scientist says, report UPI. ‘Men dominate mathematical subjects due to the peculiarities of their memory,’ Dr. Vladimir Konovalov told the Tass news agency.

The Qur’anic rule, far from evincing any contradiction, proves in fact that the Qur’an has come from One who has absolute knowledge of the facts of nature. He sees things from every angle, and so is in a position to issue commandments that are in total harmony with nature.

External Inconsistency

Now we turn to external inconsistency. External inconsistency in a literary work occurs when what it asserts is contradicted by some reality in the outside world. Since man speaks or writes within the sphere of his knowledge, which is marked by human limitations, these fail to confirm to the external reality. We produce here a few comparative examples to illustrate this point.

Certain ancient Arab tribes sometimes killed their children, in most cases female babies, for fear of being unable to feed a large family. It was in this context that the following verses were revealed:

“Kill not your children for fear of want: We shall provide, sustenance for them as well as for you verily the killing of them is a great sin” (17:31).

This announcement of the Qur’an was a sort of a claim. It suggested that the growth in population, whatever may be its extent and degree, will not create a problem of sustenance for man on the earth. That there will be a constant favourable balance of sustenance and human population. That they will be provided for sustenance tomorrow just as they are being provided for today.

Through the ages, Muslims have been endorsing this account as a matter of faith. That is why Muslims do not feel the need to resort to birth control measures. They have left this matter to God, the Provider of subsistence.

One thousand years after this claim made by the Qur’an, the British economist, Robert Malthus (1766-1834) published in 1798 his book, An Essay on the Principle of Population as it Affects the Future Improvement of Society, he set forth his famous theory on the growth of population. ‘Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio.’

Simply stated, growth in population and growth in sustenance are not naturally equal. Human population grows geometrically, that is at a ratio of 1-2-4-8-16-32, while the growth of food supplies maintain an arithmetical ratio: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8. Sustenance, therefore, cannot keep up with the astronomical growth in human population. The only solution to this problem, according to Malthus, was for mankind to control its birth-rate. The population should not be allowed to exceed a certain limit. If it did, the number of people on earth would become greater than the amount of sustenance available, ushering in an age of famine in which countless people would starve to death.

Malthus’s book made a powerful impression on human thought, winning substantial support among writers and thinkers·, and leading to the launching of birth-control and family-planning schemes. Recently, however, researchers have come to the conclusion that Malthus was quite wrong in his calculations. Gwynne Dwyer has summarized this research in an article which appeared in The Hindustan Times (New Delhi) on December 28, 1984. The provocative headline read: ‘Malthus: The False Prophet.’ In it he wrote:

It is the 150th anniversary of Malthus’ death, and his grim predictions have not yet come true. The world’s population has doubled and redoubled in a geometrical progression as he foresaw, only slightly checked by wars and other catastrophes, and now stands at about eight times the total when he wrote. But food production has more than kept pace, and the present generation of humanity, is on average the best fed in history.

Malthus was born in an age of ‘traditional agriculture.’ He was unable to envisage the approach of an age of ‘scientific agriculture,’ in which amazing advances in production would become possible. Over the 150 years since Malthus’s death, methods of cultivation have been radically altered. Crops under cultivation are chosen for their particularly high yield. Cattle are able to produce a far higher amount of dairy food than before. New methods have been discovered to increase the fertility of land. Modern machinery has brought vast new areas under cultivation. In technologically-advanced countries of the world there has been a 90% fall in the number of farmers: yet at the same time a tenfold increase in agricultural produce has taken place.

As far as the third world is concerned, 3 billion people inhabit these under-developed countries, but the third world also possesses the potential to produce food for 33 billion – ten times the present population. According to F.A.O. estimates, if the increase in the population of the third world continues unabated, reaching over the 4 billion mark by the year 2000 a.d., there will still be no cause for alarm. The increase in population will be accompanied by an increase in production: the means will be available to provide food for 1½ times more than the number of people who have to be fed. And this increase in food production will be possible without deforestation. So there is no real danger of a food crisis, either on a regional or on a universal scale. Gwynne Dwyer concludes his report with the following words: ‘Malthus was wrong. We are not doomed to breed ourselves into famine.’

Where Malthus’s book on population and sustenance – the work of a human mind working within the confines of time and place – was very far out in its predictions for the human race, (and this was proved to the world just 150 years after the author’s death) the Qur’an, on the other hand – the work of a superhuman mind – still bears out external realities to this very day.

(To be concluded. . .)