bismillAhi r-raHmAni r-raHiym
THIS IS A DRAFT FAQ.
19: STUDY PROBLEMS Rev 1.01, June 10, 1995
(c)1995 Marjan Publications, P.O. Box 459, San Quentin, CA 94964,
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Contents.
1.0 Introduction.
1.1 What is the Qur'an?
1.2 What, precisely, is counted?
1.3 Is the data filtered before presentation?
1.4 Is the data verifiable?
1.5 Summary.
1.0 Introduction.
This document is planted as a seed; it is hoped that it will grow
into an authoritative discussion of the problems involved in the
study of what has been asserted to be a "numerical miracle" in
the Qur'an. The editor of this FAQ, and the author of the initial
draft, is AbdulraHman Lomax (marjan@crl.com). Corrections and
comments are invited; permission to incorporate them into the
next draft will be assumed unless it is denied.
Because the initial person to report the kind of phenomena we
will be discussing was Rashad Khalifa, late of Tucson, Arizona,
USA, and he also made numerous claims considered heretical by
many, the subject is tainted with suspicion. However, Khalifa
claimed that the "miracle" was objectively verifiable. As such,
it should stand regardless of the truth or falsity of the
remainder of his claims. Allah, the Most High, has said in his
book (49:6) "... If a wicked person comes to you with news
[nabaa'], ascertain the truth, lest you harm people in
ignorance...."
Further, it remains to be demonstrated that the "miracle" of the
nineteen, or the other numerical phenomena claimed by Khalifa and
others, if valid, would prove that Khalifa was correct in his
other claims, such as the wholesale rejection of hadith. A full
discussion of all this is outside the scope of this document,
which will not discuss the character and the other claims of
Rashad Khalifa; rather we will attempt to define the problems
involved in looking at the Qur'an itself to determine if the
claims of a "numerical miracle" are justified. Here is what
Khalifa said in the preface to his book, a book which was
intended to be definitive and irrefutable, *Qur'an, Visual
Presentation of the Miracle*:
"There now exists physical evidence for a message from God to the
world. This marks the advent of a new era in religion; an era
where FAITH is no longer needed. There is no need to "believe,"
when one "knows." People of the past generations were required to
believe in God, and uphold His commandments ON FAITH. With the
advent of the physical evidence reported in this book, we no
longer believe that God exists; we KNOW that God exists. Such
knowledge is ascertained through God's final scripture, Quran,
wherein overwhelming physical evidence has been encoded.
"Employing the ultimate in scientific proof, namely, mathematics,
the evidence comes in the form of an extremely intricate code.
Thus, every word, indeed every letter in Quran is placed in
accordance with a mathematical design that is clearly beyond
human ability. [...]
"Not only does the evidence prove the authenticity and perfect
preservation of the Qur'an, but it also confirms the miracles of
previous messengers [....]
"[...] Upon reviewing the evidence here, and examining the
appropriate narrations, the reader will be as positively certain
as an eyewitness."
It must be noted that Khalifa, without explicitly acknowledging
it, later denied his quoted affirmation of the "authenticity and
perfect preservation" of the Qur'an he reproduced in his book.
Certain of his counts in *Visual Presentation* were erroneous,
and he eventually claimed that 9:128-129 were not authentically
Qur'anic, referring to these verses as the "false verses."
This document will not attempt to conclude whether or not Khalifa
was correct in his conclusions; rather it will examine how we
might investigate the problem. In this investigation, certain
errors or anomalies in the work of Khalifa will be mentioned. We
have seen objections that this is "focusing on the errors of a
dead man" instead, presumably, of looking to see if there is an
actual miracle. Lomax's response is that these anomalies are
mentioned as examples of the pitfalls involved in these studies.
He agrees that the errors of Khalifa do not prove that there is
no miracle.
This brings us to the first difficulty:
1.1 What is the Qur'an?
Is the Qur'an a particular written text? Since a copy necessarily
differs in some points (large or small, or even very small) from
an original, is the Qur'an something that can be copied? Or is it
an ideal, a form (sura) which the copies follow with greater or
lesser degrees of perfection?
Traditionally, the consensus of the reciters has had greater
authority than any particular written text.
Khalifa generally used the received text of the Qur'an known as
Hafs, written in the Egyptian style. There are other received
texts, which differ in certain respects from the text he used.
For example, in Warsh (another common version), the first verse
of the Qur'an, called the invocation, is not given a number;
rather the first numbered verse begins with "al-Hamdu lillah"
(Praise belongs to Allah). There are other differences as well,
essentially matters of spelling. Normally this is not a problem,
but if one is counting letters, words, or numbered verses, as
Khalifa did in claiming miracles, these differences become
important.
But suppose that the Hafs version showed the phenomena Khalifa
asserted and the others did not? Would this not simply show that
Hafs was correct and the others wrong?
Theoretically this might be true; however, Khalifa did not always
follow the received Hafs version. In particular, he modified
spelling in at least two places: at 7:69 he changed a Sad to a
Sin, and at 68:1 he spelled out the initial letter, thus adding
two extra letters. It could be said that he was following
pronunciation, but in numerous instances, he emphasized that it
was the written Qur'an that was being studied and counted, not
the pronunciation. He justified the change at 7:69 by referring
to the Tashkent Qur'an, which is perhaps the oldest extant copy,
and the change at 68:1 by claiming that it was spelled out in the
"original text." He never specified what, exactly, this "original
text" was, or where it could be found. (The copy of the Tashkent
Qur'an available to Lomax does not extend to Sura 68, and Khalifa
did not mention it in this connection.)
So, perhaps Khalifa is referring to the Tashkent Qur'an, as
modified by removing the "false verses." But the Tashkent Qur'an
does not match the Hafs which he normally counts, in many, many
respects. For example, 3:37 in all the current received versions
(as far as Lomax knows) has the phrase "inna 'llAh," and it is
missing from the Tashkent Qur'an (which, in context has very
little effect on meaning: it is only a phrase of emphasis). This,
of course, would affect Khalifa's count of the word "Allah,"
which is crucial to his theory.
However, we could start with what is, to be sure, a widely
accepted text of the Qur'an, the Egyptian Hafs which Khalifa
generally used. If we could find substantial evidence of a
numerical code in that text, then it *might* be possible to
search for anomalies in the text, to see if some modification of
the text, preferably but not necessarily with some authority from
another text or hadith, makes the pattern initially found more
complete. But if we can pick and choose from the various sources,
there appears the second difficulty.
1.2 What, precisely, is counted?
How can we tell the difference between a genuine miracle and a
numerical pattern which is created by manipulating the data or
the method of analysis? Such manipulation can occur, for example,
by choosing among different texts or definitions of what is being
counted, or by choosing particular ways of analyzing the data
over other ways which do not show the desired pattern.
I will give an example of each of these, from Khalifa's work,
*Qur'an, the Final Testament*, the current edition of his
translation, p. 625-626:
"We find that "The Quran" is mentioned 58 times in the Quran.
However, verse 10:15 refers to 'a Quran other than this,' and
therefore cannot be counted. Thus, 'this Quran' is mentioned in
the Quran 57 times, 19x3. The suras where the word 'Quran,' in
all its grammatical forms, is mentioned are 38, 19x2. The sum of
numbers assigned to the suras and verses where the word 'Quran,'
in all its grammatical forms occurs, is 4408, 19x232."
Looking in the Kassis concordance, I find 70 occurrences of
Qur'an. Of course, this includes "all grammatical forms."
Checking the number of different suras in which the word is
mentioned, it is, indeed 38.
The mention at 10:15 is discarded because of reasoning regarding
its meaning. It appears that we are not counting words, but
meanings, and this opens a whole can of worms. If it is meaning
which is being counted, then we are faced with all the places
where another word is used to mean the Qur'an, including where it
is clear that it is specifically "this Qur'an." In fact, at
10:15, contrary to Khalifa's assertion, the real Qur'an is
mentioned, using the relative pronoun "hadha," "this." Further,
at this verse, the word "Qur'an" is in the genetive indefinite
form (qur'anin), so it is difficult to understand why it was
included, in the first place, in the count of "The Qur'an," which
would be "al-Qur'an."
I find 52 occurrences of "al-Qur'an." What was Khalifa counting?
He wrote:
"Two other grammatical forms of the word 'Quran' occur in 12
verses. These include the word 'Quranun' and the word 'Quranahu.'
One of these occurrences, in 13:31 [,] refers to 'another Quran'
that [would] cause the mountains to crumble. Another occurrence,
in 41:44, refers to 'a non-Arabic Quran.' These two occurrences,
therefore, are excluded. Table 23 shows a list of the suras and
verses where the word 'Quran,' in all its grammatical forms,
occurs."
Table 23 agrees with the Kassis concordance if 10:15, 13:31, and
41:44 are added back in. Note, once again, that some words were
excluded because their meaning does not meet some standard. Here
is the list of all the forms other than "al-Qur'an," organized by
the form of the word (note that there are four forms, not two):
Qur'anin (genetive): 10:15*, 10:61, 15:1.
Qur'anan (accusative): 12:2, 13:31*, 17:106, 20:113, 38:28, 41:3,
41:44*, 42:7, 43:3, 72:1.
Qur'anun (nominative): 36:69, 56:77, 85:21.
Qur'anahu (verb + pronoun): 75:17, 75:18.
The forms excluded by Khalifa on the basis of meaning other than
*the* Qur'an are marked with asterisks. However, since some of
the other occurrences could also be referring to other than our
Qur'an (a few of them are ambiguous), we are no longer looking at
purely objective facts. In particular, the verbs are really a
different word ("Recite" instead of "Recitation"), but they are
counted in the second and third of Khalifa's statistics.
Khalifa did not specify, in his latest edition, what other two
forms were included in his count of 57 for "the Qur'an." We know
that it was not "Quranahu" and "Qur'anun," because he mentioned
those as part of the "other forms." So that leaves "Quranin" and
"Quranan." Lomax finds no way to reconcile the counts with the
data.
For those who do not know Arabic, the three indefinite forms,
distinguished only by the termination at the end, "un," "an," or
"in," are only different because they are being used as the
subject of the sentence, the object of the verb, or genetively
(the object of a prepostion or an indicator of possession). The
meaning of the word itself is not changed; only its place in the
sentence changes between these three terminations.
The point is not only that there are hidden manipulations of the
data going on, unstated premises, and the like, but also that
these choices are arbitrary. If one looks at Khalifa's counting
of other words, different standards are applied in each case. On
close examinatin, "word" is not a precisely defined term. The
only unifying thread is that methods of counting are chosen which
lead to a multiple of 19.
This leads us to the third difficulty.
1.3 Is the data filtered before presentation?
How can we distinguish between selective presentation of data and
a truly signifigant pattern? This is similar to the difficulty
discussed in 1.2, but, the description is from a different,
statistically-based, point of view.
Suppose we have ten, or a hundred, or a thousand statistics from
the Qur'an which are multiples of 19. Does this prove that there
is a "numerical miracle?" From a book even less complex than the
Qur'an, it would be possible to generate more counts than there
are atoms in the universe, and, presuming that the data was
random, on the average, one out of 19 of these counts would be
divisible by 19. One could start generating counts of different
things in the book, and collect the ones which are divisible by
19. The size of such a list is limited only by the persistence of
the one searching for divisible counts.
Only in one publication, to date, from Khalifa's followers, is
there even a small start toward answering this question, and the
analysis presented there was seriously flawed. It will be given
here as an example of how easy it is to be misled.
>From *Beyond Probability, God's Message in Mathematics*, by
Abdullah Arik, Series I: The Opening Statement of the Quran (The
Basmalah) [sic]*:
Arik presents a series of "Facts" in which he takes the letters
and words of the Bismallah (bsm allh alrhmn alrhym) and generates
numbers with them. 8 of these facts use the following form:
A number is generated by writing the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4,
interspersed with numbers derived from the corresponding words in
the Bismillah. The first fact in this form asserted by Arik,
called "Fact 2," is "the sequence number of each word in the
Basmalah followed by the number of letters in it." This is:
1 3 2 4 3 6 4 6 = 19 x 19 x 36686.
^ ^ ^ ^
He then asks the question, "what is the probability (chances) for
the Basmalah's mathematical composition to occur by coincidence?
Can we compute this probability? If we can, how? Based on our
assumption of coincidental occurrence, we can treat each number
in Facts 2-9 as a random number."
He proceeds to generate all possible eight-digit numbers which
satisfy the criteria that the first, third, fifth, and seventh
numbers are 1, 2, 3, and 4, respectively, and the number is
divisible by 19, finding 527 such numbers, and he compares this
with the 100 million possible eight-digit numbers, concluding
that, "We can say that the probability of the occurrence of the
mathematical phenomenon [,] described in Fact 2, is 189,753 to 1.
[sic]"
He meant "1 in 189,753." However, actually, the probability is 1
in 19. The discrepancy between these two figures is explained by
the fact that he took his exprimental condition (1a2b3c4d) and
treated these fixed numbers as if they were random variables.
Thus only one out of 10,000 eight digit numbers is included in
the experiment, from the outset; since one in 19 of these numbers
could be expected to be divisible by 19 (this is the normal
case), the theoretical prediction of the result of his
(erroneous) calculation would be in in 190,000. The remaining
discrepancy is basically round-off error caused by his method.
Moreover, the entire analysis is incorrect. Since the statistics
given are selected out of a much larger body of statistics, it is
certainly true that it is not a coincidence that they are
divisible by 19. They were *selected* that way. Unless it were
shown that the sample was unbiased, that statistics were not
examined and discarded (because they were not divisible by 19),
the numbers given in Arik's work prove nothing more than the
persistence of Arik and his sources. None of Khalifa's followers
have done the kind of global analysis necessary to convert a list
of interesting numbers into a statistical proof.
There is a fourth difficulty which applies in some cases:
1.4 Is the data verifiable?
As an example, Khalifa reported counts of the letters known as
"initial letters," which prefix some of the chapters of the
Qur'an. Uniformly, he presents these counts as being divisible by
19. It is easy to miss, however, that he does not always count or
combine letter counts in the same way to produce a total. This is
another example of arbitrary counting criteria.
However, with the Suras which contain alif as an initial letter,
he always uses the same overall pattern: he adds up the count of
all the letters which initial the chapter, within the chapter. He
reports all of these counts as divisible by 19. Since there are
13 chapters with alif as an initial letter, this, if true, is
strong evidence for the existence of a pattern in the text. From
random data, to find a method of analysis which would produce
this kind of pattern would require examining an estimated 4 x
10^16 statistics. (This is 4 followed by 16 zeros.) The
difference between this statistic and those reported by Arik is
that a single counting method, which can be stated in a few
words, is applied precisely to all examples (at least, all
examples containing alif), whereas the counting or calculation
method changes with each statistic in Arik's work.
However, counts of alif are impossible to verify. In *Visual
Presentation,* Khalifa presented verse-by-verse counts of alif.
His counts do not match his own published text of the Qur'an. It
is apparent, from this, that he is counting hamza as alif. But he
does not always count hamza: for example, both 3:158 and 30:51
contain the same word, la'in, which contains a hamza (represented
by the apostrophe); but Khalifa counts 4 alifs in 3:158,
apparently including this hamza, but only 6 alifs in 51:30,
excluding the same hamza. This is particularly odd in light of
the fact that Khalifa strongly blasted his critics for denying
that the Bismillah contains only 19 letters because they pointed
to similar unwritten letters.
(Hamza was not written in the earliest Qur'ans.)
Particularly because of the history of Khalifa's counts of alif
(they changed radically over the years: the alif count in Baqara
increased from 4502 to 4592), Lomax concludes that errors in
counting other initial letters forced Khalifa to reanalyze his
alif counting in order to keep the total counts at multiples of
19. He re-analyzed until he believed he had found a method of
counting that produced the "miraculous" numbers, but he did not
go so far as to apply the new criteria to all cases; he stopped
as soon as he had the results he wanted. Neither did he state
explicitly his criteria for counting.
Further, since there are known errors in his counts where there
are no hamzas to manipulate, the statistics cannot be accepted,
even if the alif counts were correct: He counts 16 alifs in
13:41, where there are only 15 and no extra hamzas, and he misses
a lam at 30:21 (He counts 7; there are 8).
By no means has this discussion mentioned every error which
Khalifa is known to have made; only one or a few examples of each
type of error has been given.
1.5 Summary.
It is the opinion of Lomax that it will never be possible to
prove that there is no "numerical miracle" in the Qur'an;
however, it can be said that, until the questions raised in this
document are addressed and answered, it remains to be
demonstrated that this kind of "miracle" exists.
--
'AbdulraHman Lomax
P.O. Box 459
San Quentin, CA 94964
marjan@crl.com
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