The Haman Hoax

Jochen Katz

[This article is part of a series. The reader is advised to start with the Introduction.]

Excursus

The impact of the Muslim Haman argument and the development of further derivatives

On a Muslim discussion forum, a convert to Islam wrote the following:

After excerpting and summarizing this article, Abul Layth concludes:

As stated in the introduction, these claims about Haman are found on close to a thousand Muslim web pages. It is a major argument for the divine origin of the Qur’an and the truth of Islam, used to draw outsiders into conversion to Islam and to establish Muslims more firmly in their convictions and confidence in Islam.

The above quotation is just one illustration of how the writings of Islamic Awareness, and specifically this article on the person of Haman in the Qur’an, have misled people, and this is reason enough to spend the several hundred hours that went into researching this issue carefully and writing a detailed rebuttal. My hope and prayer is that Abul Layth and others like him will reconsider and re-evaluate the matter and draw the right conclusions.

Da’wah Training Course

This argument is included into various training courses for Muslim missionaries. To give but one example (IIU means “International Islamic University”):

Which 20^th century excavation is he referring to? What tablets is he talking about? No references are given. Most probably Amir Ali was inspired by Harun Yahya’s first edition. We have already shown that all of this is false (see our detailed discussion of the claims made by Maurice Bucaille, Islamic Awareness and Harun Yahya). Here we see an educated Muslim simply believing these claims without checking them and then spreading them further by teaching them to others.

This course outline is found on a website dedicated to the writings of Dr. M. Amir Ali and, somewhat ironically, the entry page has this statement:

A tool for mockery

Some Muslims have taken these claims and made them the source of great mockery of anyone who would dare to question the Qur’an. Under the title “The Literal Word and the Last Laugh” the Haman argument by Islamic Awareness was used and “further developed” by a Muslim writing under the penname of “Mithridates” in order to mock those who questioned the figure of Haman in the Qur’an. Seemingly, he is continually developing this posting further and some others have also picked up this approach (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.). [In his later postings, Mithridates usually connects the “Miracle of Haman” and the “Miracle of Iron” which is answered here.]

Wikipedia – a platform for Islamic propaganda?

The Muslim missionaries even managed to insert these false claims into Wikipedia in a prominent way!¹

Virtually the whole time I was researching and writing this article series on the Muslim Haman Hoax, the Wikipedia entry on Haman in Islam was dominated by the false claims fabricated Bucaille, Islamic Awareness and Harun Yahya.² Who knows how long this “information” can be kept out from this page? I am sure zealous Muslims will not give this one up without a struggle.

Also the second Muslim theory, claiming that Khufu’s vizier Hemiunu is the quranic Haman (cf. Appendix 5), was subtly inserted into Wikipedia on 14 November 2008 and remained unchallenged until the publication of this rebuttal series on 9 November 2009. The entry on Hemiunu begins with these words:

Similar observations can be made regarding many other articles on Wikipedia that touch on matters of Islam. But this is not the place to discuss them in detail.

Conclusion: Wikipedia has to be used very judiciously! On factual issues they are usually reasonably reliable, but on contentious matters, there is a lot of propaganda in their articles. Whoever has the most time to edit and re-edit these articles will have great influence. Zeal and bias, and not necessarily objectivity, play a great role there, despite guidelines and efforts by some administrators.