Re: Discussion about "My Ordeal with the Qur'an"
Reply #282 - May 13, 2010, 11:10 PM
Chapter 4 (cont...)
Part 2
What kind of Miraculousness is it?
Now we say: Indeed the belief in the miraculousness of the Qur'an is no more than a myth amongst myths. Indeed! The Qur'an is not amongst the secrets of the gods. It doesn't bear the slightest relation to divine inspiration that takes it outside the (normal) activity of (human) history. It's a purely human achievement that follows the norms of humanity in strength and weakness, correctness and error, agreement and contradiction, cohesion and disparity, consistency and inconsistency, uniformity and disarray.
The direct result of all that is that the Qur'an is a very ordinary book. For that reason it is necessary to remove it from its safe refuge, outside Human history and return it to the world of people. After that it will no longer be storehouse for timeless wisdom nor a divine book protected from error that no falsehood can approach it from either front or behind.
In that way, it and it's time and it's context become part of the historical process of the area which has witnessed, and continues to witness every day, comparable books that influenced these books and are influenced by it and ignite the interaction between them.
Every star-struck believer, regardless of whether he is from the common people or their elite or even from the elite of the elite, relies (on the belief) that "in the Qur'an, due to beauty of the words and the splendour of the style especially, no-one can attain the phrases, style and meanings. (9)
And that challenge, that Allah announced in the Qur'an for Man & Jinn to bring the like of this Qur'an,
"Say: "If the whole of mankind and Jinns were to gather together to produce the like of this Qur'an, they could not produce the like thereof, even if they backed up each other with help and support." (17:88)
is absolutely true, but it doesn't apply only to the Qur'an, it also applies to every great work. For just as Man & Jinn are not able to produce the like of the Qur'an, likewise they cannot produce the like of that which Plato brought, nor Al Jahiz, nor Al Tawhidi, nor Dante, nor Goethe, nor Shakespear...
Great works always contain the fingerprints of their authors. It is a part of their identity. So if it is impossible to imitate these fingerprints, then it is also impossible to imitate these works. Each one is a unique weave that has no match in the works of man and thus establishes it's character. Despite this each one is not free from flaws and errors and defects that the critic can be aware of. Likewise the Qur'an. In the work of al Jahiz and Al Tawhidi is that which far surpasses what is in some of the verses of the Qur'an, as we shall see, but who dares criticise the Qur'an?
Indeed the Muslims of the Middle Ages during the Golden Age, had more freedom than Muslims in this time. If not then why does no-one dare, like Al Sarakhsi and Ibn Rawandi and Al Razi, to defame the most holy symbol of Muslims, the valuable of valuables that gives meaning to their existence and bestows on them hope and immortality.
All efforts and active forces in the Islamic world have been enlisted to repel the "Enemies of Allah". Criticism of Allah's book has been met with a reception that varies from forbearance & irritation, between insult & vilification and between suppression & temperance, and 'dealing' with antagonists ranged between chit-chat & bluster, to finding excuses and haphazard solutions - or as I myself call it, "Patching" (the holes) - to save the word of Allah from the clutches of the deniers, the astray and the ones who lead others astray. Between hitting and slapping, punching and physical eradication, seeking closeness to Allah through the blood of that insolent fabricator of lies about Allah, denier of his signs, so that he be a warning to his like, the forces of the Devil, "and Satan indeed found his calculation true concerning them, for they followed him..." (34:20) them and the seducers. Then they topple into the Fire of Hell all of them together (10). They are the ones who Allah curses, and those who curse, curse them!!
Indeed opposing the Qur'an was a natural process that arose with the rise of Islam, but the new religion killed it in the cradle, or at least was able to silence it for a while. That was after the astounding victory that it achieved in the arabian peninsular and the area surrounding it. Indeed it was such a tremendous breakthrough that it temporarily diverted attention away from that which interplays in it of (opposing) forces and deep contradictions that don't appear on the surface except in moments of quiet and stability or at the times of fitna.
For that reason it is not strange that this process started anew or returned to the open when the Umayyad dynasty began to disintegrate and draw towards it's inevitable end. For indeed Islam injured the pride of many of the leaders of the heretics (Zanadiqa) - and they were the Shu'ubiyyah (Hassan: A popularist movement against the the supremacy of the Arabs) - and nationalist pride overtook them and led them to fanaticism for the religion of their fathers such as Zoroastrianism and Manichean dualism and hatred towards Islam that ended their glory and destroyed their dreams in lasting and noble life. A group of poets who belonged to "The League of the Mujjan" (Hassan: A group of libertine/dissident intellectuals such as Bashar ibn Burd and Abu Nuwas) joined them, fleeing from the constraints of religion and seeking a life of freedom with no restrictions or regulations.
Then came the Abbasid period where the Shu'ubiyya movement was active side by side with the Heretical movement (Harkatu z-Zandaqa) and the attacks on Islam intensified and disparagement of it's holy of holies - the Qur'an. And at the head of this movement were poets, satirists, and disaffected thinkers, the most famous of them: Salih Ibn Abdul Quddus, and Abdul Karim ibn Abu Al 'Awjaa', and Abu 'Isa al Warraq and Bashar ibn Burd, and his adversary Hammad Ajrad, and Iban ibn Abdul Hamid al Lahiqi, and Ibn Muqaffa', and (his son?) Muhammad ibn Abdullah ibn Muqaffa', and Abd al Masih al Kindi who we shall say a few words about in a bit to show the participation of non-Muslims in the attack on the Qur'an...
But the most famous of all these without argument is: Abu al Hussein Ahmad ibn Yahya ibn Ishaq al Rawandi, and Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakariyya al Razi, under both of whom the movement of Heretics reached it's climax and extent of its maturity and we will discuss now each of them briefly, enough to clarify what we mean.
(9) Muhammad Abu Zahra, "The Greatest Miracle."
(10) Allusion to what is related in Sura al Shu'araa' 26/94.
Topic: Discussion about "My Ordeal with the Qur'an"