Question: What is the third fundamental of îmân?
ANSWER
The third fundamental of îmân is belief in the Books. The phrase wa kutubihi in the Âmantu expresses the belief in Allahu ta’âlâ’s Books. The Books sent down by Allahu ta’âlâ are many. Our religious books write 104 of them. 100 of them are small Books. These small Books are called suhuf.
100 suhuf were revealed to the following prophets:
10 suhuf to Âdam ‘alaihis-salâm
50 suhuf to Shît ‘alaihis-salâm
30 suhuf to Idrîs ‘alaihis-salâm
10 suhuf to Ibrâhîm ‘alaihis-salâm
The four big Books were revealed to the following prophets:
The Tawrât (Torah) to Műsâ (Moses) ‘alaihis-salâm
The Zabűr (the original Psalms) to Dâwud ‘alaihis-salâm
The Injîl to ‘Îsâ (Jesus) ‘alaihis-salâm
The Qur’ân al-karîm to our master the Prophet, Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm
It is Jabrâil ‘alaihis-salâm who brought all the Books. The Qur’ân al-karîm replaced the rules of all the divine Books, that is, abolished the validity of their rules and accumulated in itself all these rules. Today all people have to follow the Qur’ân al-karîm. Now in no country exist the original copies of Tawrat or Injîl. There are defiled Bibles. These divine Books were falsified, that is, altered by people over the course of time. Even if they had not been falsified, it would not have had validity because Allahu ta’âlâ abrogated all of them.
The Qur’ân al-karîm was revealed verse by verse, and its descent was completed in 23 years. It will be valid until the end of the world. It is safe from being invalid or being altered by humans. A person who believes that there are missing points or additions in the Qur’ân al-karîm has not believed in Allahu ta’âlâ.
It is purported in the following Qur’anic verses:
(It is We who have sent down the Qur’ân, and it is certainly We who will protect it.) [Sűrat-ul-Hijr, 9]
(The Qur’ân is a matchless Book. Falsehood [any addition or omission] cannot come to it from before it or from behind it [from no direction, in no way]. [Because] It has been sent down by Allah, whom the universe praises, who is the Owner of decree and hikmah.) [Sűrat-u Fussilat, 41-42]
Question: How were the Books sent down to prophets? What qualities do they have?
ANSWER
Allahu ta’âlâ sent these Books to some prophets by making the angel say to their blessed ears. To some He sent Books inscribed on tablets, and to some others by making them hear without the angel. All these Books are the Word of Allahu ta’âlâ. They are eternal in the past and everlasting. They are not creatures. They are not words made up by angels, nor are they words of prophets.
The Word of Allahu ta’âlâ is unlike the language which we write, keep in mind, and speak. It is not like being in writing, speech, or mind. It does not have letters or sounds. Humans cannot understand how Allahu ta’âlâ and His Attributes are. But humans can read that Word, keep it in mind, and write it. This means to say that the Word of Allahu ta’âlâ has two aspects: When it is with human beings, it is a creature and haadith (created). When it is thought as the Word of Allahu ta’âlâ, it is eternal (qadîm).
Question: Some people say that the Qur’ân al-karîm was inspired into our Prophet’s brain. What is the truth of the matter?
ANSWER
The Arabic words in the Qur’ân al-karîm, having been arranged by Allahu ta’âlâ, descended in âyât (verses). Jabrâil (Gabriel) ‘alaihis-salâm recited the âyât with these words and letters. And our master the Prophet, hearing them through his blessed ears, memorized them and immediately recited them to his companions. If our master the Prophet says in Arabic what is inspired into his blessed heart by Allahu ta’âlâ, these sayings are called hadîth-i qudsî.
Jabrâil ‘alaihis-salâm used to come once every year to recite the Qur’ân al-karîm that had descended up to that moment according to its order in the Lawh-il-mahfűz. And our master the Prophet used to listen to it and repeat it. In the year when he would honor the Hereafter, Jabrâil ‘alaihis-salâm came twice, and they recited the whole of it. Our master the Prophet ‘alaihis-salâm and the majority of his companions memorized the whole Qur’ân al-karîm. Some of his companions memorized some sections of it and wrote down most of its sections.
When our master the Prophet passed away, Hadrat Abű Bakr, the caliph, gathering those who knew it by heart and uniting the written parts together, formed a committee to write down the whole of the Qur’ân al-karîm. Thus, a book called a Mus-haf was formed. Thirty-three thousand companions of the Prophet decided unanimously that each letter of the Mus-haf was precisely in its correct place. Hadrat Uthmân, the third caliph, had six more mus-hafs written in 25 A.H. and sent them to Bahrain, Damascus, Basra, Baghdad, Yemen, Mecca, and Medina. The mus-hafs all over the world today have been multiplied by copying these seven. There is not even a point’s difference among them.
There are 114 sűras (chapters) and 6,236 âyât (verses) in the Qur’ân al-karîm. The general populace wrongly says that there are 6,666 verses. It is also reported that the number of verses were sometimes more or less than 6,236, but these differences originate from the fact that one long verse was considered several short verses, or that a couple of short verses were considered one long verse, or that the Basmalas before the chapters were considered to be one verse or independent verses. (Bostân-ul-‘Ârifîn)
Question: What is the greatest miracle of our master the Prophet?
ANSWER
It is the Qur’ân al-karîm. All the poets and men of literature that have come up to today have acknowledged their shortcoming and admiration about the poetic and semantic superiority of the Qur’ân al-karîm. They have not been able to rehearse a literary piece approximating to the sublime standard of any one its verses. With respect to eloquence and rhetoric, it is quite dissimilar to the human language. That is, a single verbal addition or excision spoils the beauty in its phraseology and purport. Efforts to substitute even one of its words have proven futile. Its poetic style is unlike any one of those of Arabian poets.
It informs about many a past and future event. The more you read it or hear it, the more enthusiasm will you feel to read or hear it. Tired as you normally may be, you never feel bored. It is a fact established with innumerable events experienced that reading it or listening to someone reading it cures melancholy. Awe-strickenness or sudden feelings of fear upon hearing it being read or recited are not rare, and some people have even died with its effect. Many implacably inimical hearts became mollified when they heard the Qur’ân al-karîm being read or recited, and their owners became Believers. Some enemies of Islam and some insidious heretics disguised in Muslim names, i.e. the groups called Muattalâ, Malâhida, and Qarâmita, attempted to change, to defile, and to substitute the Qur’ân al-karîm, yet their attempts ended in disillusionment.
The Qur’ân al-karîm contains information about all scientific facts, including those that cannot be obtained by way of experimentation, beautiful ethical principles and methods that will equip a person with superior merits, goodnesses that will bring happiness in this world and the next, the information about the origins of the creatures as well as their end, and things from which humans can reap benefits as well as those which will cause harm, and all these things are stated expressly or symbolically. And there are people who can understand the symbolical statements.
The Qur’ân al-karîm is an embodiment of all the open and hidden facts contained in all of the Heavenly Books, in the Torah, in the Zabűr, and in the Bible. Allahu ta’âlâ alone knows all the information contained in the Qur’ân al-karîm. He has intimated most of it to His Beloved Prophet.
It is a grand blessing to read the Qur’ân al-karîm. Allahu ta’âlâ has bestowed this blessing on the Ummat of His Habîb (beloved one, darling, i.e., Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm). Angels are deprived of this blessing. For this reason, they gather together at places where the Qur’ân al-karîm is being read, and they listen to it. All the books of tafsîr explain only a tiny part of the information contained in the Qur’ân al-karîm. On the Day of Judgement, our master the Prophet will mount the minbar and recite the Qur’ân al-karîm. People who listen to him will understand it in its entirety.
Today’s copies of the Torah and the Bible
Question: Could you provide us with information about today’s copies of the Torah and the Bible?
ANSWER
An attentive examination will bring one to the inescapable conclusion that the statements in them originate from the following three sources:
1. Some of them may be the Word Allah.
2. The statements in this second source may have been made by prophets.
3. Some of the statements in this group were made by the Apostles of ‘Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm, some of them are narrations conveyed by some historians, and others are statements made by unknown people for unknown reasons. In most parts of the existing copies of the Holy Bible, there are quite a number of statements without a certain identity on the part of the person who made them, but with all the necessary material suggestive of the fact that they are human-made. It is, therefore, impossible to accept them as the Word of Allah.
A book containing partly Words of Allah, partly a prophet’s utterances, and mostly narratives conveyed by various people cannot be accepted as the Word of Allah. In fact, the sundry errors in their human-made parts, the differing accounts given about the same events, the incongruity of the scores and numbers given add corroborative evidence to the plain fact that today’s copies of the Torah and the Bible are human fabrications. Let us see what Christian theologians and scientists say on whether today’s Gospels are the Word of Allah or human-made:
Dr. Graham Scroggie, a member of the Moody Bible Institute, makes the following observation in his book Is the Bible the Word of God?:
“Yes, the Bible is human, although some out of zeal which is not according to knowledge, have denied this. Those books have passed through the minds of men, are written in the language of men, were penned by the hands of men and bear in their style the characteristics of men …” [p. 17]
Kenneth Cragg, a Christian theologian, states as follows:
“The New Testament part of the Holy Bible is not the Word of Allah. It contains stories told directly by people and events narrated by eye-witnesses. These parts, which are sheer human language, are being imposed on people in the name the Word of Allah by the church.”
Theology Prof. Geiser says:
“The Holy Bible is not the Word of Allah. Yet it is still a holy book.”
This means to say that the decision that we and the Western men of knowledge reach about the Holy Bible is this: The Holy Bible is the Word of Allah. The real Torah and the real Bible, which were the Word of Allah, have been turned into an altogether different book each. In today’s Bible, alongside the statements that can be considered to be the Word of Allah, there are many statements, reasonings, superstitions, and tales that were added by other people. Even if all the parts of the Bible were the Word of Allah, they do not contain either a civil or a penal code, as the Qur’ân al-karîm does. One cannot govern even a village with the Bible.
Secondly, even if the Bibles were the Word of Allah, they fell into abeyance. Even if we find the Books that were sent down to Âdam ‘alaihis-salâm and Nűh ‘alaihis-salâm in their original purity, we cannot live by them because they have been abrogated. Allahu ta’âlâ Himself has abrogated them. We must live by the religion He has sent last. If the case were not so, Allahu ta’âlâ would have revealed only one Book and commanded all prophets to act upon it. As tenets pertaining to belief are the same in all religions, so the tenets pertaining to practice would have been the same. If He had not abolished Christianity, He would not have sent the Islamic religion.
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