Under points 7a to 11 of my second article, and in the last paragraphs of my third and fourth articles, I established that:
(1.a) Religions in general, be they theistic or non-theistic, are broad frameworks of knowledge, i.e.; theories, and hence need to be scrutinized through the lens of the seven criteria that theories are generally tested against.
(1.b) Thus it was a logical next step to turn to the Qur-aan to see what it has to say about its own truth value. What I found blew me away! The Qur-aan too claims its truth based upon the same seven criteria! And then, yes, it also meets all those criteria! And it’s infinitely astonishing because the Qur-aan was given to us by an unlettered man of 7th century Arabia, a man who had no training in reading and writing, neither in philosophy, nor in science, nor in spirituality, nor law making, neither politics, nor literature, no training at all in any sphere of intellectual endeavor! He was a simple small time trader under his wife Khadijah until he was forty year old and then boom! All of a sudden he starts dishing out parts of this book called the Qur-aan which claims its truth not upon some magic or some unobservable-untestable supernatural phenomena, but upon criteria which are totally observable and hence testable repeatedly over time (which is the most fundamental criterion of all modern spheres of knowledge including science)! So let’s do a brief recap of the seven criteria (as discussed under points 9a to 9h of my second article) before we check in with the Qur-aan.
(2.a) A ‘true’ theory is/must be:
(i) Correspondent (ii) Coherent (iii) Useful (iv) Robust (v) Advanced (vi) Predictive (vii) Elegant.
(2.b) The theory which has the highest degree of all the above criteria is the most correct or ‘true’.
(3.a) Now the Qur-aan claims in its fourth surah (or chapter) that if it were not from God then it would have been rife with ‘contradictions’. (Chapter 4, verse 82)
(3.b) This is essentially pointing at the correspondence and the coherence criteria, that is, being in sync with the external facts of the world, and consistent with the internal components of the theory, respectively; or in one word – the criterion of correctness. And a thorough reading of the Qur-aan doesn’t throw up any errors; no contradictions whatsoever with any external fact or any internal part of the book. The same goes for Islam as a whole; it doesn’t stand at odds with any external fact, and its parts are in sync with each other, fitting together into a neatly complete framework of knowledge.
(3.c) Whatever alleged contradictions are pointed out by the critics of Islam have failed to impess me, although they did have a detrimental effect on my faith for quite a long time! I’ll discuss them in my articles separately under the categories Scriptural Ambiguities and Shariah : Controversies. As for this article, it should suffice to say that I found Islam to be free of errors, i.e.; it stands out to be both correspondent and coherent!
(4.a) Then comes the criterion of usefulness, and the Qur-aan claims to be useful in several ways. It claims to be the ‘Huda’ or the Guidance. And the ‘Furqaan’ and the ‘Meezaan’, i.e.; the Criterion and the Standard against which truth and falsehood are determined. It also claims to be a ‘Shifaa’ or cure/healing to the hearts of the believers; a spiritual function. For Muslims, no doubt, the Qur-aan does perform these functions, since the past one and a half millenium, serving as the bedrock upon which considerable social, economic, political, legal, cultural, spiritual, and philosophical frameworks of dozens of Islamic nations have been erected across times and climes! For instance, the stellar Arab civilization of the 7th-13th centuries C.E., the Seljuk and the Ottoman Turks of the 11th-16th centuries C.E., the Mughals of India in the 6th-17th centuries C.E., Islamic Spain or Al Andalus of 8th-15th centuries C.E.; just to mention a handful of the many civilizations that have been inspired and nurtured by Islam, spawning thousands of philosophers, scientists, theologians, artists, spiritual masters, and leaders who left indelible imprints on human history, and continue to do so in and from nations like Iran, Turkey, Egypt, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Saudi Arabia, Oman, UAE, Qatar, etc.
(4.b) Needless to say, religion in general and Islam in particular, has dozens of uses or benefits, if not more. To summarize it briefly:
Islam especially, provides a complete framework which enables me to make sense of and explain all the dimensions of human existence (as discussed in my fourth article), viz.; (i) our spiritual existence and experiences, (ii) our consciousness or mind, (iii) our rational faculties, (iv) our morality, (v) our individual-social-economic-political being (vi) our sense of, and longing for, ultimate purpose, justice, and bliss; (vii) our aesthetic sense; and (viii) our material or physical being. In short, Islam is a complete body of knowledge which is useful in addressing not just our deep existential questions but also making sense of all the dimensions of our lives in this world. And I would go in detail of each of these aspects, but in separate articles of course, under the category Islamic Truth!
(5.a) Coming to robustness, it’s mind boggling that Qur-aan claims its veracity upon this criterion too! It claims in its 15th surah/chapter, verse 9 that it is God who revealed it to mankind and it is God who would protect it from corruption! And the Qur-aan has proven itself on this front too, as it has stood the test of time, in two ways:
(i) The Qur-aan has retained its textual integrity; it has remained preserved in its original form.
(ii) And the religion that it promulgates, has held its ground despite several challenges from social, economic, political, military, philosophical, and materialistic adversaries throughout its history.
(5.b) Let’s elaborate on these two points. Point number one first.
The last edition of the Qur-aan that the Prophet Muhammad left to the first generation of Muslims (the Companions of the Prophet), has been transmitted to us in the same form.
(5.c) When we say that the Qur-aan has reached us in the same form as it was left in by the Prophet, we mean that the various ways of reading (recitation of) the Qur-aan as well as its core text have remained preserved, although some superficial features were added to its text either as tools to make the Qur-aan more accessible or as aids to non-Arabs to enable them to correctly read the Qur-aan, which in no way alter the original text and the recitations.
(5.d) And we are confident about its preservation because we witness it happening in this very age too, right in front of our own eyes! At any given point of time we have thousands of keen learners (‘huffaaz’) who have memorized the entire Qur-aan verbatim, so that even if the last printed and handwritten copies of the book were burnt or destroyed, it could be easily retrieved from the concurrent memories of the thousands of huffaaz spread across the globe! And this chain goes back uninterrupted right up to the Prophet Muhammad. Thus there is a continuous, concurrent, widespread chain of transmission that ensures the integrity of the text and the readings of the Qur-aan.
(5.e) Had there been any disruption in the above mentioned practice of Qur-aan’s preservation then it would have become widely known to the critics of Islam and they would have surely used it as their most lethal weapon against Islam. The absence of any academically established record of any such disruption attests to the immaculate integrity of the Qur-aan. Whatever minor allegations have been made against the Qur-aan by orientalist critics like Theodor Nöldeke, Joseph Schacht, Ignác Goldziher, David Margoliouth, etc.; have failed to garner academic reputation and have all been well refuted by Islamic and secular academics alike, Muhammad Mustafa Al-A’zami and Taqi Usmani to name a few of the prominent ones from the Indian subcontinent.
(5.f) Coming to the robustness of Islam the religion; if we take a look only at the post Muhammad era, Islam has withstood over a dozen major challenges and succesfully integrated them all within itself, as a sponge that soaks all that comes to it!
(5.g) Socio-Political challenges which failed to break Islam:
(i.) The Ridda Wars (or the Wars of Apostasy) just after the Prophet’s demise, in the caliphate of Abu Bakr.
(ii.) The civil war in the era of the third caliph Uthman.
(iii.) The Kharijite rebellion in the reign of the fourth caliph Ali.
(iv.) The civil war in the era of Yazid.
(5.h) Military challenges:
(i.) The Crusades, arguably the longest war of human history, starting 1095 C.E., and continuing up until the end of 15th century, lay brutal offensive against the Muslim world on all fronts, but failed to break the spirit of Islam (as is evident from the resounding Ottoman takeover of Constantinople in 1453).
(ii.) The Mongol invasions of 13th century C.E., arguably the most devastating of all, yet a fertile ground for a great miracle that triumphantly emerged out of this dark chapter of Islamic history: the invading Mongol hordes themselves embraced the religion of the people they vanquished; Islam conquered the conquerors, as they say, the Mongols could conquer the Muslims but couldn’t resist being conquered by the religion of the Muslims! This astonishing feat speaks volumes about the appeal of the Islamic way of life and attests to the robust nature of the religion.
(iii.) European Imperialism of the 18th-20th centuries C.E. The Muslim lands that were occupied by the European powers were all liberated by the end of the 20th century.
(5.i) Intellectual challenges that Islam successfully negotiated with:
(i.) Greek philosophy, successfully dealt with and also integrated into Islamic theology by Islamic philosophers like Al Farabi, Aboo Hasan Al Ash-a’ri, Al Baaqillaani, Ibn Sina, Al Juwayni, Al Ghazali, Ibn Rushd, Fakhruddin Al Razi, Ibn Arabi, Ibn Taymiyyah, etc.
(ii.) Mystical spiritual religions which got integrated into Islam as Sufism.
(iii.) Communism.
(iv.) Capitalism.
(v.) Darwinism.
(vi.) Materialism and Scientism.
(vii.) Liberalism.
(viii.) Libertarianism.
(ix.) Feminism.
(x.) Atheism.
(5.j) This was a non-exhaustive enumeration of course, of intellectual fads that arrived with much pomp, briefly dazzled the world but eventually withered away, while Islam keeps shining as the only religion with a positive growth rate even in this ultra modern third decade of the 21st century!
(5.k) Intricate details of all the above challenges cannot be covered here in this short article. I’ll try to cover them all eventually, individually in separate articles under the category Islamic Truth!
(5.l) Let this be the first part of the analysis of Islam as a theory. Criteria no. v to vii, I’ll cover in the second part of this article.