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Tampering with the Text and Meaning of the Holy Qur'an
By: Mahmood Y Abdullah, Leicester, UK: Academia Press, 2005. pp. 128.
Review published in The Muslim World Book Review 27: I, 2006.
Mahmood Y Abdullah has done a good job in drawing attention to the mischievous attempt by Rashad Khalifa in the 1980s to question on flimsy grounds the authenticity of the Qur’anic text and Hadith corpus. Khalifa, an Egyptian student of science, who emigrated to the US at a young age, shot into fame initially with publications on the Qur’an which pandered to the commoners’ taste and made tall claims that caught people’s fancy. The sensationalist title of this work is illustrative: The Computer Speaks: God’s Message to the World (1980). Its contents read as follows: “Secret code of the Quran decoded. Meanings of the Quran’s mysterious letters unveiled. Verse by verse details of the Quran’s numerical code…” While parading his mastery over computer technology, which was new to the Muslim masses in the 1980s, he sought to employ the numerical theory, asserting that the computer establishes the miraculous nature of the Qur’an. This claim uses the number 19 and it multiples as the basis of his argument. By carrying out computer analysis of the numerical value of words and verses in the Qur’an, it is shown that these revolve around the number 19. However, in his publication, The Quran: The Final Scripture (1981) he made outrageous claim that in view of his dubious number 19 theory, the last two verses of Surah al-Tawbah are not part of the Qur’anic text, and hence these are later day accretions. He had the audacity to reject the entire corpus of Hadith and Sunnah.
Some Muslim scholars were quick to point to the serious flaws in Khalifa’s approach. Special mention may be made in this context of the following critical pieces: i) Anis Ahmad, “The miracle called the Quran at the mercy of Charlatans”, al-Ittehad, 15/2 (April 1978); ii) Bilal Philips, The Quran Numerical Miracle: Hoax and Heresy (Riyadh, 1987) and iii) S. M. Darsh’s review of Philips’ refutation in the Muslim World Book Review 10/3, Spring 1990, pp. 22-23.
Of late, new editions of Khalifa’s tendentious works have appeared in the USA and his work is being vigorously publicized on the internet. Mahmood Y Abdullah has therefore done an excellent job in alerting the readers, once again, to the mischief created by Khalifa. Abdullah’s critique is wide-ranging and convincing. Of special value are his comments on Khalifa’s “Hadithophobia”, his garbled version of the concept of intercession and his delusion about the finality of the Prophet Muhammad’s Messengership. Apart from Khalifa’s writings, Milton Viorst’s In the Shadow of the Prophet: The struggle for the Soul of Islam (New York, 1998) is also reviewed in this work, drawing attention to Viorst’s misperceptions about the Qur’an and Sirah. Abdullah deserves credit for his pious effort.
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