From Zahid.Aziz@vme.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk
Newsgroups: soc.religion.islam
Subject: Re: 365 Days in the Qur'an: Hoax Update
Date: Fri Feb 23 09:35:03 EST 1996
Organization: None

In Message-ID: <4gieks$6u3@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu>
>From: Marjan 
Abdur-Rahman Lomax refutes at length the thesis that:
 
> THERE ARE 365 OCCURRENCES OF THE WORD "YWM" (DAY) IN THE QURAN
 
by raising questions regarding the counting procedure. While Mr. Lomax
has obviously devoted much effort to collecting these details, I would
simply say that the basic idea in this "365" thesis is (to put it
plainly) absurd, useless and pointless.
 
I cannot see how this "gem" of information makes us better Muslims, in
our faith or our practice. There is, I do believe, unseen knowledge in
the Quran which is discovered from time to time (such as prophetical
descriptions of modern world conditions) that was not known
previously, and the discovery deepens our faith in the Quran as having
been sent by the All-Knowing God.
 
But how the occurrence of YWM in the Quran 365 times can benefit us, I
fail to understand.
 
If this "discovery" had been made at a time when mankind did not know
that there were 365 days in the solar year, and it had been announced
by the discoverer that the Quran has disclosed that there are 365 days
in the year, and this had *subsequently* been confirmed by science,
then of course it would be a miracle!
 
There are also other serious objections to this theory.
 
Firstly, the word YWM in most of its occurrences in the Quran does NOT
mean a 24 hour day. For example, the Day of Judgment is mentioned a
very large number of times in different ways:
 
"the last day" (2:62, and many other places), "the promised day"
(85:2), "on the day when they see it" (79:46), "the day when the
spirit and the angels stand in ranks ... that is the true day"
(78:38,39) "Guard yourselves against a day when no soul will avail
another ..." (2:48), "the day when a man flees from his brother"
(80:34) and of course the famous "Malik-i yawm-id-din" (1:3)
 
The day mentioned here is not a 24-hour day (365 of which make a solar
year), but a time.
 
Then the Quran speaks of "a day the measure of which is a thousand
years as you count" (32:5) or the day which is fifty thousand years
(70:4). Are these days (1/365)th of a solar year?
 
Then consider the statement in 2:259:
 
     "He (God) said: How long have you remained (in this condition)?
     He said: A day or part of a day. He (God) said: No, you have
     remained a hundred years."
 
Here when the man says: "A day or part of a day", the first occurrence
of day is no doubt a 24-hour day, but the second occurrence of YWM
here is within the expression "ba`da yawm-in" (part of a day). So if
this expression is taken as one entity, it means not a day but
something less than a day. (Analogy: if someone says "half an hour",
is that an occurrence of "hour"?)
 
Then one may ask why occurrences such as "six days" (32:4 and
elsewhere) should not be counted as six days towards the 365? If an
occurrence of yawm is counted as 1, then the occurrence of "six days"
should count as 6, towards the total.
 
In conclusion, the whole theory is so ridiculous that innumerable
objections based on plain commonsense can be raised against it.
 
 
Zahid Aziz.

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