PART TWO
QUR’ÂN AL-KERÎM and TODAY’S COPIES
OF THE TORAH AND THE BIBLE
INTRODUCTION
There are three major religions on the earth today: Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Each of these three religions has a holy book claimed to be the Word of Allah by its votaries. The Holy Book of Judaism is the Torah. The Holy Book of Christians, the Bible, is composed of two parts: the Old Testament, i.e. the Torah, and the New Testament, i.e. the (four) Gospels and the complementary epistles. Muslims’ Holy Book is the Qur’ân al-kerîm.
Whereas Christians deify Îsâ (Jesus) ‘alaihis-salâm’, we know him as a prophet. Since he was a prophet, Allâhu ta’âlâ, naturally, should have revealed a holy book to him. Therefore, the genuine Injîl, (i.e. the original, undefiled copy of the Bible), is, no doubt, the Word of Allah. Only, that real Injîl does not exist today. The copies of the Bible possessed by today’s Christians contains very few passages from the original Injîl. The original Injîl was in the Hebrew language. That genuine Injîl disappeared as a result of the inimical campaigns waged against it by the time’s Jews. Later, various books full of superstitions appeared in the name of the Bible. In the course of time, those already untenable books were translated with numerous errors and mistakes into Greek and Latin, many passages were added, changes were made continuously, and consequently, quite a number of Gospels were written. Most of those Gospels were rejected in the clerical councils held various times, and today’s four Gospels survived.
These facts will be proved in the pages ahead. The alterations, corrections and explanations are still going on. The Qur’ân al-kerîm, on the other hand, has preserved its originality since it was revealed to our Prophet ‘sall-Allâhu alaihi wa sallam’, without undergoing any diacritical alteration until today.
The facts that we have stated so far are not only Muslims’ opinions. In fact, Western scientists and theologians have examined the Bible again and proved that it is not the genuine ‘Word of Allah’. We should not forget that today, when the twenty-first century is so close and when the world’s knowledge and science have improved so much so that even the least cultivated nations have established universities, people cannot be expected to close their eyes and take for granted a credal tenet that you try to impose on them as something that you have heard from your father or teacher and which you cannot explain to yourself. Today’s young people delve into the inner nature and the real causes of matters, and they reject things that they find irrational. In Turkey, for instance, more than a million youngsters take the university entrance examinations every year. There is no doubt as to that these youngsters, who have been educated with up-to-date methods, will pass the religious theories and ideas said or taught to them through the sieve of reason and logic. As a matter of fact, today’s Western theologians divulge the faults in the copies of the Torah and the Bible that they have. In order to refresh our Muslim brothers’ minds concerning the difference between today’s Torah and Bible and the Qur’ân al-kerîm, we have utilized those theologians’ publications. Another source we have benefited from in the preparation of this chapter is Houser, an American writer who wrote on religious subjects. Furthermore, Anselmo Turmeda was a renowned Spanish priest. He accepted the Islamic religion in 823 [1420 C.E.], and changed his name to Abdullâh-i-Terjumân. We have studied that scholar’s book Tuhfat-ul-erîb, which dealt with errors in the Bible, the book Pearls of Bible, written by S.Merran Muhyiddîn Sâhib Ikbâl of Pakistan, and also the Turkish book Diyâ-ul-qulûb, a work of research on the Torah and the Bible written by Is-haq Efendi of Harput (d. 1309 [1891 C.E.]), a great writer and a member of the Ottoman Ministry of Education, and which was published in 1295 [1878 C.E.]. The last book was translated into English and published by Hakîkat Kitabevî in Istanbul with the title Could Not Answer. Furthermore, Shems-ul-haqîqa, a book of two hundred and ninety pages written in Turkish, again, by Khwâja Is-haq and printed in 1278 [1861 C.E.], which is registered at number 204 of the Düğümlü Baba section of the public library of Süleymâniyye in Istanbul, proves with sound documents that the Qur’ân al-kerîm is the Word of Allah and that the Christians’ Holy Book, which they call the Bible, is a history book which was written afterwards. In addition, Idhâh-ul-merâm, written in Turkish by Hâdji Abdullah bin Destân Mustafa Efendi of Bosnia (d. 1303 [1885 C.E.]) and printed in 1288 [1871 C.E.] in the printhouse owned by Yahyâ Efendi, who was the Shaikh of the convent of Mustafa Pâsha situated immediately outside of Edirnekapı, is registered with number 771 at the Nâfiz Pâsha section of the library of Süleymâniyye. It proves with various documents that Christianity is a religion mangled into utter heresy. Another book we have borrowed from is Iz-hâr-ul-Haqq, by Rahmatullah Efendi of India. That book delivered the severest blow on Christianity and divulged the fact that it was a groundless religion.
It is written as follows on the three hundred and ninety-sixth page of the Persian book Maqâmât-i-ahyâr: Fander, a Protestant priest, was very famous among Christians. The Protestant missionary organization selected a commission of priests under the presidency of Fander and sent them to India. Their task was to try and spread Christianity. In 1270 [1854 C.E.], scientific debates were held between that commission and Rahmatullah Efendi, a great Islamic scholar of Delhi. The most heated of those debates took place sometime during the month of Rabî’ul-awwal and on the eleventh of Rajab. By the end of the long discussions, Fander was altogether beaten out. Four years later, when the British forces invaded India, [after which they perpetrated horrendous persecutions and torments on Muslims, and especially on the Sultan and the men of religion], Rahmatullah Efendi migrated to Mekka-i-mukarrama. In 1295 [1878 C.E.] the same commission of missionaries came to Istanbul and launched a campaign propagating Christianity. The Grand Vizier (Sadr-i-a’zam) Khayr-ud-dîn Pâsha invited Rahmatullah Efendi to Istanbul. Seeing Rahmatullah Efendi as their opponent was enough to frighten away the missionaries. This time the debate was no more than a brief act of formality, and the missionaries, unable to answer the scholar’s questions, took to their heels. The Pâsha congratulated the great scholar warmly and showed him great kindness, requesting him to write a booklet telling about how he refuted and beat down the Christians. So he began to write his book Iz-hâr-ul-Haqq in Arabic on the sixteenth of Rajab and, completing it by the end of Zi’l-hijja, he left for Mekka. Khayr-ud-dîn Pâsha had the book translated into Turkish and then had both versions printed. It was later translated into European languages, and printed and published in every country. British newspapers wrote that spreading of the book would cause irreparable harm to Christianity. Abd-ul-hamîd Khan II ‘rahmatullâhi ’aleyh’ (d. 1336 [1918 C.E.]), Muslims’ Khalîfa, invited the great scholar once again, in the blessed month of Ramadân in 1304, and hosted him with deep respect and generous kindness in his palace. Rahmatullah Efendi passed away in Mekka-i-mukarrama in the month of Ramadân in 1308 [1890 C.E.].
In addition to all these books, we have studied books written about the Qur’ân al-kerîm by Western orientalists in the previous century. Then we have reached the conclusion that an unbiased comparative study of these two holy books will reveal which of them is the Word of Allah with such indisputable clarity as cannot be denied by the most obstinate person regardless of his religious background. We have arranged this chapter in six divisions. The first three divisions deal with the Qur’ân al-kerîm and the existing copies of the Torah and the Bible, as we have stated above.
The last three divisions are dedicated to our Prophet Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm’, his miracles, virtues and beautiful moral qualities. The information contained in these divisions have been borrowed from a history book in Turkish, namely Mir’ ât-i-kâinât, written by Nişancızâde Muhammad Efendi ‘rahima-hullâhu ta’âlâ’, a renowned Islamic scholar. He passed away in 1031 [1719 C.E.]. His book was published in 1269 [1853 C.E.].
We hope that our dear readers will read this chapter of our book with deep interest and will benefit from the information provided. May Allâhu ta’âlâ bless us all with true guidance. May He keep us all on the right path. Âmîn.
Do not annoy others, and others
will not annoy thee;
Deceive no one, and no one will deceive thee.
Water from Islam’s enemy will never satiate thee;
Nor will the disbeliever, be him fire, a bit burn thee.
Keep on the right way, Allah will not embarrass thee!
Harm of all sorts come to thee
from thee;
Thy own evil thoughts, alone, will defame thee.
The dweller is what gives a dwelling its dignity;
Islam is the only source that will guide thee.
Keep on the right way, Allah will not embarrass thee!
All worldly existence is
transient, nothing stays forever,
Worldlies are all worthless, sorrow about them never.
Abide by the right path, then you’ll be safe forever;
Be faithful to Haqq,[52]
and enemy can harm thee never.
Keep on the right way, Allah will not embarrass thee!
To subdue someone, never consult
to cruelty;
Of thy friends, misconduct will deprive thee.
Never humiliate thyself, nor backbite the absentee;
Be true, and work, Allah will reward thee.
Keep on the right way, Allah will not embarrass thee!
Allah, the Eternal, if He wishes,
protects thee.
Even if the enemy mars the Believers’ chastity;
As the saying goes among the Muslim community,
What brings the reward is one’s pious activity.
Keep on the right way, Allah will not embarrass thee!
Doff that sordid hypocrisy, and
don pure sincerity,
Don’t be a blabbermouth, and never talk indiscreetly.
Perfect as you might be in hiding your hypocrisy,
From Haqq ta’âlâ, the Omniscent, none can be done in
secrecy.
Keep on the right way, Allah will not embarras thee!
TODAY’S COPIES of THE TORAH and THE BIBLE
Today’s world contains three major religions holding a belief in the existence of Allâhu ta’âlâ: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The international statistics obtained in 1979 indicated nine hundred million (900,000,000) Christians, six hundred million (600,000,000) Muslims, and fifteen million (15,000,000) Jews living on the earth. The remaining population [more than two billion], consisted of Buddhists, Hindus, Brahmins and the like, whose religious credos do not recognize the concept of Allah, idolators, fire-worshippers, people worshipping the sun and atheists. According to some recent American publications, the Muslim population was nine hundred, not six hundred, million. In fact, according to a statistical study published in 1980 by CESI [Centro Editoriale Studi Islamici], in Rome, there were 865.3 million Muslims on the earth, 592.3 million in Asia, 245.5 million in Africa, 21 million in Europe, 6 million in America and Canada, and 0.5 million in Australia. According to a book entitled Islam and published in English in 1984 by the Islamic center called ‘The Muslim Educational Trust’, there are one billion and fifty-seven million (1,057,000,000) Muslims living on the earth today. The book also gives the numbers of Muslims living in the forty-six different Muslim countries as well as those in the other countries of the world. The statistics show that these numbers are on the increase. The number of countries with more than fifty per cent Muslim population is fifty-seven as of today. It is a deplorable fact that today, when we are on the threshold of the twenty-first century, there are still people worshipping idols. On the other hand, some of the votaries of the three major religions professing belief in the existence of Allâhu ta’âlâ have lost their belief entirely. For there are no longer any true murshîds (guides) to lead them. It is impossible for those ignorant men of religion who lack the necessary religious and scientific knowledge to imbue love for Islam into a young generation who are educated with scientific teachings. Leading them to salvation requires open-minded guides equipped with a powerful religious background reinforced with most up-to-date scientific knowledge. Our aim in this chapter is to launch an objective quest for the true religion of Allah, to carry on a scientific research to determine which one of the two great holy books, i.e. the Torah and the Bible versus the Qur’ân al-kerîm, is the true Book of Allah, and to show the right way to those who falter in this respect.
We would like to assure our readers that these studies have been carried on in quite an impartial way. The two major religious books we have examined are the Holy Bible, which comprises what exists in the name of the Torah and today’s Gospels, and the Qur’ân al-kerîm. The Torah, which was merged with the Holy Bible under the name the Old Testament, has been considered within the Bible in the course of these studies. In other words, the book we have examined is the Holy Bible = Evangelium, which today’s Christendom holds as the real Injîl.
The Holy Bible is not only one book. First of all, it contains the Old Testament. Its second part, the New Testament, consists of the Gospels written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the Acts of the Apostles written by Luke, the Epistles written by Paul, (James, Peter, and John, and Revalation). The Old Testament consists of three sections. The first section, which is considered to be the Torah revealed to Mûsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’, covers five books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The second section is called Nebiim, or Prophets, and is composed of two divisions, i.e. former Prophets, and latter Prophets. Their names are Joshua, Judges, 1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The third section, Ketûbîm, or books, writings, consists of Psalms, which are attributed to Dâwûd (David) ‘alaihis-salâm’, Proverbs of Solomon, The Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Ruth, Esther, Job, Jeremiah, Lamentations of Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, 1 Chronicles, and 2 Chronicles.
Who hold the tenets written in all these books? Fanatical Jews and Christians, who are always controversial with each other although they believe in the same Holy Book. They claim that the statements in these books are the Word of Allah. However, an attentive examination of these books 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 of Allah. For in these passages Allâhu ta’âlâHimself addresses humanity. For instance:
“I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put My words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.” (Deut: 18-18)
“I, even I, am the LORD; and beside Me there is no saviour.” (Is: 43-11)
“Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else.” (Is: 45-22)
We presume that these passages were taken from the heavenly books revealed to those Prophets sent to the Israelites. As due attention will show, Allâhu ta’âlâ declares in these passages that He is ONE, (which means that other gods, such as the Son and the Holy Ghost, are out of the question), that He sent the Prophets, and that THERE IS NO GOD, except Him.
Now let us take a look at the second possible source of the Holy Bible:
2) The statements in this second source may have been made by Prophets. For instance:
“And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, E’li, E’li la’ma sa-bach’tha-ni? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt: 27-46)
“And Jesus answered him, The first of all commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:” (Mark: 12-29) [Please pay attention to this point: There is still no reference to the son or the Holy Ghost.]
“And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.” (Mark: 10-18)
These statements, alleged to have been made by Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’ (Jesus), may belong to Prophets. This comes to mean that the Words of Allâhu ta’âlâ and Prophets’ ‘alaihim-us-salawât-u-wa-t-taslîmât’ statements have been merged with one another in the Holy Bible. In contrast, Muslims have separated the Words of Allâhu ta’âlâ from the statements made by the Prophet and compiled Prophets’ ‘alaihimussalawâtu wattaslîmât’ utterances under the appelation Hadîth-i-sherîf in separate literature.
Now let us come to the third group of statements in the Holy Bible:
3) Some of the statements in this group were made by the Apostles of Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’ and tell about the events in which that great Prophet was involved, some of them were made by some people, some of them are narrations conveyed by some historians, and others are events with unknown narrators. Let us give an example: “And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came, if haply he might find anything thereon: and when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for the time of figs was not yet.” (Mark: 11-13)
In this verse, a person conveys an incident in which someone else is involved. The person who conveys the incident is not known. Yet it is hinted that the person who goes near the fig tree is Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’. However, Mark, who wrote these lines, had never seen Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’. Another oddity here isthat in the following verse, i.e. the fourteenth verse, Îsâ ‘alaihis-salâm’ invokes a malediction on the fig tree so that it will never yield any fruit. It is an inconceivable paradox. It is beyond a fig tree to give fruit prematurely. It would have been contrary to reason, to knowledge, to science and to the religious canon for a Prophet to accurse a fig tree, which is only a helpless creature of Allâhu ta’âlâ, because it would not give fruit prematurely.
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 man-made. It is therefore impossible to accept them as the Word of Allah.
Now, let us put our hand on our heart and ponder: can a book containing partly Words of Allah, partly a prophet’s utterances, and mostly narratives conveyed by various people be accepted as the ‘Word of Allah’? In fact, the sundry errors in their parts which we have classified as man-made, the differring accounts given about the same events, the incongruity of the scores and numbers given,-which will be dealt with later in the text and the mistakes will be pointed out-, add corroborative evidence to the plain fact that today’s copies of the Torah and the Bible are human fabrications.
Muslims’ Holy Book, the Qur’ân al-kerîm, declares, as is purported in the eighty-second âyat-i-kerîma of the Nisâ Sûra, “Will they still not think that the Qur’ân al-kerîm is the Wordof Allah and meditate over its meaning? [The Qur’ân al-kerîm is the Word of Allah.] Were it not the case, it would definitely contain inconsistencies.” How true it is! The inconsistencies in the Holy Bible indicate that it is a human utterance. Furthermore, as we shall enlarge on later, the copies of the Torah and the Bible have been examined, corrected, altered, amended and, in short, changed from one shape into another by various councils and synods. Can the Word of Allah be corrected? Since the Qur’ân al-kerîm was revealed up to our time, not a single letter in it has been changed. As we shall see in the division allotted to the Qur’ân al-kerîm, no effort has been spared to accomplish this end. That the Qur’ân al-kerîm has not been changed until now is a fact which the most bigoted Christian clergymen acknowledge, though with fierce jealousy. The Word of Allah will be so! It will never change. Let us see what Christian theologians and scientists say on whether today’s Gospels are the Word of Allah or man-made:
Dr. Graham SCROGGIE, a member of the Moody Bible Institute, makes the following observation on the seventeenth page of his book ‘Is the Bible the Word of God?’:
“Yes, the Holy Bible is man-made. Some people deny this for reasons I do not know. The Holy Bible is a book that was formed in the human brain, which was written by the human hand in the human language, and which bear entirely human characteristics.”
Kenneth Cragg, a Christian theologian as he is, 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 of the Word of Allâhu ta’âlâ by the church.”
Theology Prof. Geiser says, “The Holy Bible is not the Word of God. Yet it is still a holy book.”
There were even popes among the people who were opposed to some Biblical tenets, i.e. Trinity. One of them, Pope Honorius, rejected the tripartite deity, which caused him to be anathematized forty-eight years after his death, by the council that convened in Istanbul in 680.
On the other hand, the Gospel written by Barnabas, whowas one of the Apostles of Îsâ (Jesus) ‘alaihis-salâm’ and who had accompanied Paul in his journeys intended to promulgate the Christian religion, was immediately made away with, and the fact that was written in it, “Îsâ (Jesus) ‘alaihis-salâm’ said, Another Prophet, whose name is Muhammad ‘sall-Allâhu ta’âlâ ’alaihi wa sallam’, will come after me, and he will teach you many facts,” was hidden by the bigoted Christians.
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 not 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. Especially those passages referring to tripartite godhead are fallacies that run quite counter to the essential belief in the Unity of Allah and to people’s common sense.
As the Torah and the Bible were being translated into Greek and Latin, the Roman and Greek idolators, who had been accustomed to worshipping many gods until that time, would not be contented with one god and missed for their polytheistic practices. According to some scholars, the reason why the original Biblical credo ‘Unity of Allah’ was bred into ‘Trinity’ during the process of its translation into Greek was that the Greek people were adherent to Plato’s philosophy. The Platonic philosophy would divide everything into three. For instance, good manners were based on three sensory forces: Morals, reason, and nature. And nature, in its turn, was divided into three: plants, animals, and humans. Essentially, Plato thought that there was one creator of the world, yet he ascribed two possible assistants to the creator. This gave birth to the dogma of ‘Trinity’, which is acknowledged by a number of historians. However, as you will see further ahead, many verses of the Torah and the Bible confirm the fact that is stated, for instance, in the twenty-second verse of the forty-fifth chapter of Isaiah, “... for I am God, and there is none else.” Even today’s copies of the Holy Bible reject the dogma of ‘three gods’ that was forced into them. It is argued also that ‘Trinity’ was an error of translation. Upon seeing that the dogma of ‘Trinity’ is gradually losing its credibility especially in the minds of younger generations, the Christian church is fumbling for other connotations for the words ‘Father’ and ‘Son’, and thus trying to make a soft landing on the belief in ‘One Allah’. Later on we shall dwell on this matter of translation.
Despite the established fact admitted by many Christians that today’s copies of the Torah and the Bible are not the Word of Allah, some bigoted Christians still insist that “Every word in the Bible is the Word of Allah.” Our response to this bigotry would be to quote the eighteenth âyat-i-kerîma of Baqara Sûra, which purports, “[They are] deaf, [so that they will not hear or accept the truth], dumb, [so that they will not tell the truth], and blind, [so that they will not see the right way]. They will not return to the right path.” The thirteenth verse of the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew reads as follows: “Therefore speak I unto them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.”
Now let us come back to our examination of the Bible:
First of all, let us say that today’s Christians do not all posses the same version of the Bible. If you tell a Catholic that you would like to talk with him on the Bible, he will ask you, “Which version of the Bible?” For various Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Christians read varying versions of the Bible. When you ask them, “How can there be various versions of the Bible which is the Word of Allah,” they will fumble for an answer and then prevaricate, “In actual fact, there is only one Bible. They may have varying interpetations, though.” A retrospection into history will show that the first Roman Catholic Text of the Bible, the Latin version of the Bible translated by Jerome and called Vulgate, appeared in Reims in 990 [1582 C.E.],[53] and was reprinted in Douay in 1609. It exists today under the name Roman Catholic Version (RCV). Yet the Bible possessed by the British today is very much different from that former version. For the Bible was subjected to numerous alterations since 1600 up to our day and some parts, which are termed ‘apocrypha’[54] = (writings or statements of doubtful authorship or authenticity), were excised from the Bible, while some other parts, e.g. Judith, Tobias, (or Tobit), Baruch, and Esther, were abrogated irrevocably. Finally, it was published as the most recent and truest Bible under the label Authorized Version. However, because its language was found extremely coarse by a number of people who had a say in the various branches of knowledge, including renowned prime minister Churchill,[55] the former Bible, i.e. the Authorized King James Version (KJV), which had been published in 1611, was resumed. In 1952 the Bible was revised once again and a version was prepared under the label Revised Standard Version (RSV), which also was rejected soon because it was found ‘inadequately revised’. A short time later, in 1391 [1971], the ‘Double-revised Bible’ was published.
The Catholic Bible as well underwent many changes. In fact, the Bible was translated from Hebrew into Greek and from Greek into Latin, was re-examined by various councils, e.g. by the Nicene Council that was held with the command of Constantine the Great in 325, by the Council of Ludicia in 364, by the Council of Istanbul in 381, by the Carthaginian Council in 397, by the Ephesus Council in 431, by the Council of Kadiköy, and by many other councils, was re-arranged at each council, some parts were changed at each time, some books were excised from the Old Testament, while some books that had been rejected by the previous councils were re-admitted. When the Protestant sect appeared in 930 [1524 C.E.], these books were examined again and new changes were made.
During this long period many Christian theologians raised objections to these translations and ch