ARE THERE ERRORS IN THE QU’RAN (KORAN)?

ARE THERE ERRORS IN THE QU’RAN (KORAN)?

  (Blackson Makhumba B)

One tends to ask this question often considering the fact that Muslims have been criticizing the Bible since the inception of the Koran. The criticism has increased more especially today when the Koran has been polished to eradicate numerous errors in the Koran. That makes the present Koran having only fewer errors compared with its 17^th century counterpart. This makes Muslim claim that the Koran is in exact word as handed down by Muhammad.

Historical evidence shows that there were circulations of various versions of Koran in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Armenia and part of North Africa prior to the newly authorized version revised by Uthman. Then later, all other versions were burned just to preserve one version of Koran. It is said that only men of Kufa refused the Uthman version of Koran, and their version was resistant as far as 1000 AD. The truth remains that Koran contains many grammatical, scientific, historical and prophetical or spiritual errors.

In relation to grammatical flaws, Ali Dashti, an Iranian author and a committed Muslim commented in his book, Twenty-three Years: The Life of Prophet Muhammad, that errors in Koran were so many that grammatical rules were to be altered in order to fit the claim that Koran contains no flaws. He conceded that some of the sentences in the Koran were incomplete and unintelligible unless with the aid of the external commentaries (Hadiths).

1. Prophecies: Sura 30:1-5 speaks that Muslims will be victorious at home  and abroad which should be better understood of Muhammad speaking in order to boost his troop during his Jihads (wars). This does not mean anything in the divine origin. Such prophecies do not even come close to the biblical prophecies which could be fulfilled centuries later. For example Micah 5:2 speaks of Jesus being born several hundreds years latter.

2. Scientific Errors: Out of many, I will just mention two of which most Islamic Apologists ignore when claiming that Koran mentioned facts only recently proven by science. Indeed, Koran contains many highly suspicious scientific statements. For example, Sura 23:14 states that humans are formed from a clot of blood. Sura 18:86 claims that the sun sets at the spring of murky water.  These statements alone falsify the claims that the Koran is a divinely inspired book.

Historical Inaccuracies: We will examine Sura 20 out of vast historical incurrent passages in Koran. Sura 20 claims that it was the Samaritans that led the Israelites into the sin of worshiping a golden calf. Now, one wonders how could the Samaritans, whose race was not in existence until after the return of the Northern Kingdom from exile, almost 530 years after Moses’ death. The city of Samaria was founded by king Omri about 830 BC yet the Samaritans came into existence in 722 BC.

What does this tell us about the divinely inspiration of the Koran? Surely, Haman the Agagite and Joseph did not co-existed as the Koran claims.