Category: Uncategorized

   The size of earth in the visible universe is like a drop of water in the entire ocean, of all the oceans in the world. Or like a sand grain in the seashore, of all the seashores of the world. Would the creator of such a vast universe be bothered if tiny humans living on a tiny planet worship Him as the only God and follow Muhammad or not? A journey by an airplane gives an indication as to how insignificant we are even on this earth. Looking down from an airplane, humans seem less than ants. Imagine ourselves as the creator of all the sand particles on the seashore of all the seashores of the world. Would we be so concerned that tiny creatures living on one tiny particle somewhere unknown follow us and if they don’t worship us, would we burn them in Hell? Or would we be so concerned about tiny viruses living on a drop of water somewhere deep down in the Pacific Ocean?

   Imagine one such small creature who lives in a drop of water somewhere down the Pacific Ocean telling others that he is the Messenger of the Creator of all oceans i.e. us and if other viruses (which are so tiny that they are invisible) do not follow him, we will roast them in Hell forever.

   How ridiculous would it sound?

   A well-known scholar and perhaps the most knowledgeable person on Islam in the world today, Ali Sina, has given an apt analogy. Imagine if there is an ant colony somewhere in our garden. Would we burn ants in fire and torture them if they don’t worship us as the only Savior? Our garden and ants are still very significant, as compared to humans and the Universe. Our Milky Way galaxy is utterly insignificant in it. Then our solar system is an invisible speck inside this galaxy and then there is Earth. Even the sun, which we see everyday, is some 15 crore (i.e. 150 million) kilometer away from the earth, and it takes light a good 8 minutes to reach the earth from the sun. What is our significance in this universe? Nothing! Would the maker of such a vast universe be offended if we humans don’t worship him? It is utterly foolish to say such a thing.

   The Hubble Space Telescope has detected galaxies that are 46 billion light years away from each direction of the Earth. That is an expanse of 92 billion light years from one side of the observable universe to the other side. The observable universe, which is 92 billion light years wide is not all the universe. The complete universe is much, much bigger. According to some calculation, the whole universe would have grown to some 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times the size of the observable universe. That is 10 followed by 24 zeros. Put in another way, the complete universe is to the observable universe, as the observable universe is to an atom.

   Now, let us assume that the Creator (Assuming God exists) of this vast universe does indeed want all humans to worship Him as the only God and follow his only true religion. Surely He can do so in better ways. He can create mankind in a manner whereby everyone is born with belief suited to Him. He can alter human brain in a manner whereby everyone will naturally worship Him as the only God and follow His last Messenger. Or He can show Himself to humanity, or at least send His angels to show them to humanity.

   It is the basic belief of Islam that Islam is the way to Heaven, the door to Eternal Paradise, while not accepting Islam is the way to Hell Fire- also eternal. The sufferings in Hell are mentioned in the Quran many times (Chapter 22 Verses 19-22 are a bit too horrific!), and the whole Quran is full of sentences like “For the disbelievers there is a painful doom”. There are also Muslims desperate to spread ‘The Message of Islam’ in India- through leaflets on railway stations, and other things urging Hindus to give up idolatory and polytheism and recognizing Islam as the only true religion of God since ‘God will not accept anything other than Islam’ (Quran 3:85). Even a cursory visit to the website www.islamreligion.com which is a website made for non-Muslims and massively advertized on the internet makes this point very clear. Often the question is asked- “What about the people who are unaware of Islam?”

   The leaflets and Muslims who try their best to ‘spread the message of Islam’ say that their job is only to spread the message of Islam- ‘there is no compulsion in religion’ (Quran 2:256) which is of course, false, since such passages are early Meccan verses when Muhammad’s followers were in a minority . As for people who are unaware about Islam, some say “God will judge such people by their deeds and decide whether they will go to Hell or Heaven. As for those who were aware about Islam but did not convert to it, Eternal Hell is the only place where God will send them. As for believers, i.e. Muslims, God will send good people to Heaven directly, evil-doers in Hell for a period of time depending on their deeds and then transfer them to Eternal Heaven because they followed the true religion of God”.

   There are many who believe that all non-Muslims will automatically go to Hell, irrespective of whether they are aware of Islam or not. Not believing in God and Muhammad as his Final Prophet is sufficient crime for Eternal hell, even though they may not have even heard of Muhammad ever. If one assumes that all non-Muslims go to Hell irrespective of whether they are aware of Islam or not, then this leads one to ask- Why would God not even keep some people aware of Islam, give them a chance to accept Muhammad’s Prophethood and directly burn them in Hell for eternity for no fault of theirs? Even Muslims who write letters to the editor in English weekly Organiser, which is run by RSS activists, have written that “Message of Islam has not reached India”. This was written by Tanvir Fatima in one her letters.

   Now the question comes- “Would the Almighty God leave 80 % people in the world unaware of the Message of his own true religion?” Islam has been present in India since more than 1300 years, the first attack was in AD 636 and the first mosque was built in Kerala in 629 AD, during Muhammad’s own lifetime. Even after so many years in India, ruling considerable part of the country for more than 500 years (AD 1206- 1707), how has the message of Islam not reached the Indian people? Most Indians, even today in this age of Internet, are totally unaware about the basic ideologies of Islam, its strong hatred for idolatry, its belief in a exclusive, jealous God, its belief in Eternal Heaven and Hell and Day of Judgment, or its massive adulation and following of Muhammad etc.

   As an example, let us say breaking of idols. Since Islam considers idolatry as an unforgivable sin (believing that worshiping God in the form of an idol or symbol is equal to worshiping someone other than God, and this makes the exclusive God jealous) it would rejoice at breaking of idols of Tulja Bhavani (of whom Chhatrapati Shivaji was a great devotee) in her sacred city of Tuljapur. But Hindus- then as well as now-would consider this as an unforgivable sin, as an insult of Goddess Bhavani and genuinely believe that idol breakers would be punished by God for such an act. If this is the situation in a place like India, where Islam has been present for more than 1300 years, then what can be said about places where Islam did not even touch until recently, like South America, or Australia/ New Zealand?

   As in 1991 AD, Muslims constituted 19.9 % of the world population. This percentage has grown tremendously with time, especially in the past 100 years,and even more since the holocaust and genocide and elimination of virtually all Hindus from Pakistan (from 20 % in 1947 to 1 % now) and Bangladesh (29 % in 1947 to less than 10 % now). This global Muslim population must have been something like 15 % till a 100 years ago and even lesser and lesser as we go back in time.

   Now out of the remaining 85% non-Muslims of the world, most of them were unaware of the Message of Islam, its ideology and beliefs! And a majority were not even aware about Islam’s existence! Poor, illiterate people of South America, or North American’s original residents till, say, at least AD 1800 (more than a thousand years since Islam’s birth), were not even aware about existence of any such religion in any part of the world! Even today, only a little more than 20 % of the world is Muslim and most of the remaining non-Muslims are unaware about Islam’s message and ideologies.

   If Islam was really from God, would he have kept an overwhelming majority of the humans unaware about his only true religion? He, being all-powerful, all-knowing could have easily found a way to make South Americans and North Americans and the rest of the world aware about Islam and its message right since the beginning of Islam. He could have also easily aided Muslims in spreading Islam’s message to these places, and helped them discover these places in the first place, instead of allowing Christopher Columbus to discover America in 1492, nearly 900 years after the birth of Islam!

   That even after nearly 1400 years after its birth, and massive killings in wars, enslaving people, forcibly converting the entire populations to Islam (Islamic scripture itself is quite unambiguous about the manner in which Islam was forced on the people by Muhammad and his supporters) -regions North and West of Arabia succumbed immediately after Muhammad’s death, areas like Turkey were subdued in AD 960, only little more than 20 % of the world follows Islam, shows that it is definitely not from God.

   If God willed and Islam was truly his religion, he would have easily made everyone aware about Islam and its ideologies in the present form (i.e. the Quran containing so many errors and contradictions). The word ‘present form’ is used because doing supernatural things to prove Islam’s truth such as rearranging stars to make them read “Islam is true- it is from God and I have rearranged stars to make you aware of it” or to order Angel Gabriel to show himself to everyone to today- is not being mentioned at all! To this many Muslims would argue, that God ‘tests’ Muslims to do their duty and spread his message. Such an argument too could have a little merit had there been at least 20 % followers of God’s true religion everywhere in the world -to spread the message of Islam in places like South America and North America throughout Islam’s 1400 years.

   In all places where Islam’s message has spread, through sword or through preaching, it has been entirely due to humans and it has reached a mere 20 % of the world in 1400 years.

Quran mistakes Jesus’ mother Mary for Moses’ sister Mariam

 There is a passage in the Quran that describes the mother of Jesus of Nazareth as the sister of Aaron. It goes like this: “At length she brought (the babe) to her people, carrying him (in her arms). They said: ‘O Mary! Truly a strange thing has thou brought! O sister of Aaron, thy father was not a man of evil, nor your mother a woman unchaste!’” (Sura 19:27-28).

But Aaron, the brother of Moses, lived and died centuries before Mary, the mother of Jesus was born; and Aaron’s sister was Miriam, not Mary. There is a time gap of more than 12 centuries between Jesus’ mother Mary and Moses’ sister Miriam. In the Arabic language, the word for Mary and Miriam is the same word (Maryam), perhaps the cause of this mistake. It is an error that an Arab of the 7^th Century might make, to mistake Mary for Miriam, but not a mistake that the all-knowing Allah would make.

 The above error was discovered during Muhammad’s lifetime, and it was brought to his attention. He had an answer for it.

 His explanation went as follows: “The (people of the old age) used to give names (to their persons) after the names of Apostles and pious persons who had gone before them.” (Translation of Sahih Muslim, The Book on General Behaviour (Kitable Al-Adab), Book 025, Number 5326).

 There is no way that Muhammad could have known that this was the reason that Mary was called “sister of Aaron” in the Quran unless Allah told him. Mary is never addressed anywhere (and for any reason) as “the sister of Aaron” in any of the Jewish or Christian scriptures. So either Allah gave this explanation to Muhammad as the reason why Mary was addressed in the Quran as “the sister of Aaron,” or Muhammad lied.

   If we believe that Allah told this to Muhammad, then we have to wonder why, to avoid the appearance of an error in the Quran, Allah didn’t explain the use of the phrase “sister of Aaron” right in the Quran in the first place. For example, why didn’t the Quran say something like this: “At length she brought (the babe) to her people, carrying him (in her arms). They said: ‘O Mary! Truly a strange thing has thou brought!’ And addressing her with a pious name of old, they said, ‘O sister of Aaron, thy father was not a man of evil, nor your mother a woman unchaste’”? Surely Allah, being the greatest of all poets, could have found a beautiful, perfect way to explain this issue in the Quran.

   Allah has many attributes, but “stupid” is not one of them. Why did Allah allow His perfect book to be doubted and attacked for describing Mary as “the sister of Aaron” when Allah could have easily fixed the problem beforehand right in the Quran? Because Allah did not fix this passage, many believe that Muhammad was lying to cover a mistake that he, not Allah, had made. Note that Muhammad’s explanation nullifies all other possible explanations, such as the possibility that the brother of Mary mentioned in the Quran was a different “Aaron” from the brother of Moses.

  Also note that the Quran is claimed to be a perfect book, but contains an imperfection that could have easily been corrected within the book itself, creating a contradiction of the most fundamental sort.

 Surely Allah knew that the phrase “sister of Aaron” would be read as a mistake by many readers. He knew that the Arabic word for Miriam and Mary was the same word, pointing to an Arab (and who else but Muhammad?) as the likely source of this passage. For all these reasons, Allah had every incentive to correct this problem in the Quran so that it would not look like Muhammad’s mistake; but He didn’t correct it.

   Therefore, we conclude that Allah did not write the Quran.

   However it is very likely that this hadith (in which Muhammad gives this explanation) was forged and falsely attributed to Muhammad. It may be an attempt to whitewash Muhammad’s error.

   Original link is this

   And unfortunately, this blunder is repeated again in Chapter 66 Verse 12 of the Quran. Nowhere in the Quran are Mary and Mariam mentioned as different characters. It should have been made clear in the Quran that even though the word is the same in Arabic, Mary the  Mother of Jesus lived more than 12 centuries after Mariam, the sister of Moses. Simple and clear! The Quran repeatedly claims to be a “clear book” (5:15), “easy to understand” (44:58 , 54:22 , 54:32, 54:40), “explained in detail” (6:114), “conveyed clearly” (5:16, 10:15), and with “no doubt” in it (2:1). Isn’t it clear that it mistakes Mary for Moses’ sister Miriam?

   For a more detailed study of this massive blunder of the Quran, open this link.

   However, in this case, one point we find worth mentioning is this. Perhaps the best exposure of mistakes in the Quran are made in the websites  www.answering-islam.org and in www.1000mistakes.com

   They seem to be even better than websites of former Muslims like www.faithfreedom.org or www.islam-watch.org  in trying to prove that Islam is false. These sites, answering-islam and 1000mistakes.com are run by Christians who say “Christ is the way”.  Some Muslims have tried to refute these sites and launched their own sites- like answering-christianity.com  They point out mistakes in the Bible and try to refute errors in the Quran.

    For neutral observers, both are partly in the right and partly in the wrong. They are both right when they point out errors in the others religious book viz. The Holy Bible and The Holy Quran. But their forcible defense in bending all rules of logic to forcibly explain the unexplainable, deny the undeniable and defend the indefensible errors in their own book are wrong.

   As a matter of fact, Hindu religious books too contain many errors, contradictions and mistakes and things which are not acceptable by today’s modern standards. But Hindus are free to reject such sentences in their religious books and follow modern civil laws, since Hinduism does not insist in blind belief without reason and blindly following a book accepting it as the “Word of God”. This freedom of thought of accepting or rejecting any or all of what is given is the beauty of Hinduism. And it is this free thinking, given in Hinduism (not in Islam and Christianity which insist on blind faith), which will liberate the world in the 21st century.

Faithful believers go to any level to bend all rules of logic to deny the undeniable, defend the indefensible and explain the unexplainable. Why should there be a need to explain contradictions in a ‘clear book’? The best answer to show that the Quran must not be interpreted in any other way than its obvious meaning comes from the Quran itself. The Quran repeatedly claims to be a “clear book” (5:15), “easy to understand” (44:58, 54:22, 54:32, 54:40), “explained in detail” (6:114), “conveyed clearly” (5:16, 10:15), and with “no doubt” in it (2:1).

1. Who was the first Muslim? Muhammad 6:14,163, Moses 7:143, some Egyptians 26:51, Abraham 2:127-133, 3:67 or was it Adam 2:37?

Muslim explanation: These people were the first Muslims “of their community” not humanity. This explanation is completely wrong since nowhere is it mentioned in the Quran that they were the first Muslims of their community. “Of their community” is invented by some Muslims to explain a clear contradiction. It is also a heinous sin to alter the words of the Quran, which those who are trying to explain this are doing.

2. Verses 22:47 and 32:5 say that Allah’s day equal to 1,000 human years. But 70:4 says that it is equal to 50,000 years.

Muslim explanation: Chapter 70 Verse 4 says, “Angels and spirits ascend unto Allah in a single day the span of which is 50,000 years”. These are 50,000 years for angels and spirits, not human beings. An year for an angel or spirit may be different than one for a human being.

This explanation again puts words in the mouth of the author of the Quran since nowhere is it mentioned that the span is 50,000 years ‘for spirits and angels’. The Quran, which claims itself to be a clear book, with no confusion, would have explicitly mentioned that these 50,000 are years for spirits and angels, and not human beings. Since this verse was going to be read by humans, it is only certain that 50,000 years mean 50,000 human years unless explicitly mentioned. This is a clear contradiction, and if there is some explanation, God would have given that explanation in the book itself being aware that this is a strong case of being seen as a contradiction.

3. Will people be raised from dead on the Last Day to receive their punishment and rewards 6.36, 7.57, 2.260, 21.21, 30.50, 35.9, 43.11, 72.7, or do they receive it right after their death? 3.169

4. Verses 7:54, 10:3, 11:7, and 25:59 say the universe was created in six days while verses 41:9-12 say it was created in eight days. Then again in 2:117 we are told that “He [3^rd person] saith to it: ‘Be,’ and it is”. These are three different versions of creation – six days, eight days and instantaneously.

5. 54:19 says Allah destroyed the people of Aad in a day. 41:16 says it was days (three or more) 69:7 specifies seven nights and eight days in succession.

Now there may not be a contradiction between 41:16 and 69:7 since more than three days can mean seven (though it should have been specified in 41:16 itself that there are 7 nights and 8 days and 41:16 does not mention nights) but there is a clear contradiction between 54:19 and 69:7.

Muslim explanation: 54:19 says “One day” which means the starting day, and continued for 7 days. But 54:19 does not mention ‘started’.

“For We sent against them a furious wind, on a Day of violent Disaster Plucking out men as if they were roots of palm-trees torn up (from the ground). Yea, how (terrible) was My Penalty and My Warning!”. This verse nowhere mentions that furious wind lasted more than one day. It is clear that there was only one day of violent disaster from this verse. Hence this explanation is also wrong.

6. The food for the people in Hell will be only “Dhari” 88:6, only foul pus from the washing of wounds 69:36, or will they also get to eat from the tree of Zaqqum 37:62-66?

Muslim explanation: Here, someone tries to explain the unexplainable by saying that God is simply saying that food in Hell will be horrible and that God uses different words for the same thing. This is a clear contradiction-foul pus is different from Dhari and tree of Zaqqum is also different. Nowhere is it said in the Quran that Dhari is same as pus and Zaqqum’s fruits. Forcible explanations to explain the unexplainable are all wrong.

7. Who takes the souls at death: The Angel of Death 32:11, THE angels (plural) 47:27 or Allah 39:42?

Muslim explanation: All the above are Beings who take souls to God, to whom the souls ultimately reach. The ‘Angel’ or ‘Angels’ of death do it on behalf of God i.e. Allah only.

   Of course, this is a desperate attempt to explain a clear contradiction, since if it was so in a book claimed as “clear book” (5:15), “easy to understand” (44:58, 54:22, 54:32, 54:40), “explained in detail” (6:114), “conveyed clearly” (5:16, 10:15), and with “no doubt” in it (2:1), it would have been clearly explained directly why 3 different Beings are named on 3 different occasions as taking the souls at death. Is it that in some instances only one Angel takes them, in some instances many Angels, and in some instances Allah? Or is it that on all occasions Angels take them but bring them to Allah on His orders? This is of course a clear contradiction with no explanation provided in the Quran, meaning it is a clear mistake.

8.How many angels announced the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary? ONE angel 19:17-21 or several angels 3:42-45? 

9. At the Day of Judgment, people are divided into three groups 56:7 or two groups 90:18-19, 99:6-8?

Muslim explanation: Someone says that there is no contradiction, 56:7 mentions three groups, while 99:6-8 and 90:18-19 only mention two of the three groups. The verses 90:18-19 say “Their place will be on the right hand. But those who disbelieve Our revelations, their place will be on the left hand.” If God is only talking of two of the three groups, then who will be in the third group? There can only be two types of people, namely believers, and unbelievers. If there was a third category (say, in the ‘central’ hand!) then it should have been mentioned by God here, which is not.

10. 21:30 says “heavens and the earth were joined together (as one unit of creation), before We [1^st person] clove them asunder?” But 41:11 says “Then He [3^rd person] directed Himself to the heaven and it is a vapor, so He said to it and to the earth: Come both, willingly or unwillingly. They both said: We come willingly.” So were the heaven and earth joined originally and Allah separated them or where they separated and Allah joined them? There is a contradiction.

The above verse also assumes that heaven and earth have wills of their own and can obey or disobey God’s orders. This is good for children’s story but it is not science.

For a complete list of contradictions, this link is useful. Two excellent articles on ‘Mistakes in Quran Part 1 and Part 2‘ can be downloaded from here and here.