Imagine there’s no heaven, my dear Six Billionth, and at once the sky’s the limit.
IBN WARRAQ
The Koran
From Why I Am Not a Muslim
One of those moved into action and response by Ayatollah Khomeini’s assault on civilization was Ibn Warraq, the nom de plume of a scholarly ex-Muslim who is obliged to keep his true identity a secret. In this long extract from his outstanding book Why I Am Not A Muslim, he considers the fantastic claim that the Koran is the final and unalterable word of god, as delivered to an illiterate merchant in seventh-century Arabia.
Timeo hominem unius libri (I fear that I am a man of one book).
The Koran is written in Arabic and divided into chapters (suras or surahs) and verses (ayah; plural, ayat). There are said to be approximately 80,000 words, and between 6,200 and 6,240 verses, and 114 suras in the Koran. Each sura, except the ninth and the Fatihah (the first sura), begins with the words “In the name of the Merciful, the Compassionate.” Whoever was responsible for the compilation of the Koran put the longer suras first, regardless of their chronology, that is to say, regardless of the order in which they were putatively revealed to Muhammad.
For the average, unphilosophical Muslim of today, the Koran remains the infallible word of God, the immediate word of God sent down, through the intermediary of a “spirit” or “holy spirit” or Gabriel, to Muhammad in perfect pure Arabic; and everything contained therein is eternal and uncreated. The original text is in heaven (the mother of the book, 43.3; a concealed book, 55.77; a well-guarded tablet, 85.22). The angel dictated the revelation to the Prophet who repeated it after him, and then revealed it to the world. Modern Muslims also claim that these revelations have been preserved exactly as revealed to Muhammad, without any change, addition, or loss whatsoever. The Koran is used as a charm on the occasions of birth, death, or marriage. In the words of Guillaume, “It is the holy of holies. It must never rest beneath other books but always on top of them; one must never drink or smoke when it is being read aloud, and it must be listened to in silence. It is a talisman against disease and disaster.” Shaykh Nefzawi, in his erotic classic The Perfumed Garden, even recommends the Koran as an aphrodisiac: “It is said that reading the Koran also predisposes for copulation.”
Both Hurgronje and Guillaume point to the mindless way children are forced to learn either parts of or the entire Koran (some 6,200 odd verses) by hearing at the expense of teaching children critical thought: “[The children] accomplish this prodigious feat at the expense of their reasoning faculty, for often their minds are so stretched by the effort of memory that they are little good for serious thought.”
Hurgronje observed:
This book, once a world reforming power, now serves but to be chanted by teachers and laymen according to definite rules. The rules are not difficult but not a thought is ever given to the meaning of the words; the Quran is chanted simply because its recital is believed to be a meritorious work. This disregard of the sense of the words rises to such a pitch that even pundits who have studied the commentaries—not to speak of laymen—fail to notice when the verses they recite condemn as sinful things which both they and the listeners do every day, nay even during the very common ceremony itself.
The inspired code of the universal conquerors of thirteen centuries ago has grown to be no more than a mere textbook of sacred music, in the practice of which a valuable portion of the youth of well-educated Muslims is wasted.
Suyuti, the great Muslim philologist and commentator on the Koran, was able to point to five passages whose attribution to God was disputable. Some of the words in these passages were obviously spoken by Muhammad himself and some by Gabriel. Ali Dashti also points to several passages where the speaker cannot have been God.
For example, the opening sura called the Fatihah:
In the name of the Merciful and Compassionate God. Praise belongs to God, the Lord of the Worlds, the merciful, the compassionate, the ruler of the day of judgment! Thee we serve and Thee we ask for aid. Guide us in the right path, the path of those Thou art gracious to; not of those Thou art wroth with, nor of those who err.
These words are clearly addressed to God, in the form of a prayer. They are Muhammad’s words of praise to God, asking God’s help and guidance. As many have pointed out, one only needs to add the imperative “say” at the beginning of the sura to remove the difficulty. This imperative form of the word “say” occurs some 350 times in the Koran, and it is obvious that this word has, in fact, been inserted by later compilers of the Koran, to remove countless similarly embarrassing difficulties. Ibn Masud, one of the companions of the Prophet and an authority on the Koran, rejected the Fatihah and suras 113 and 114 that contain the words “I take refuge with the Lord,” as not part of the Koran. Again at sura 6.104, the speaker of the line “I am not your keeper” is clearly Muhammad: “Now proofs from your Lord have come to you. He who recognises them will gain much, but he who is blind to them, the loss will be his. I am not your keeper.” Dawood in his translation adds as a footnote that the “I” refers to Muhammad.
In the same sura at verse 114, Muhammad speaks the words, “Should I [Muhammad] seek other judge than God, when it is He who has sent down to you the distinguishing book [Koran]?” Yusuf Ali in his translation adds at the beginning of the sentence the word “say,” which is not there in the original Arabic, and he does so without comment or footnote. Ali Dashti also considers sura 111 as the words of Muhammad on the grounds that these words are unworthy of God: “It ill becomes the Sustainer of the Universe to curse an ignorant Arab and call his wife a firewood carrier.” The short sura refers to Abu Lahab, the Prophet’s uncle, who was one of Muhammad’s bitterest opponents: “The hands of Abu Lahab shall perish, and he shall perish. His riches shall not profit him, neither that which he has gained. He shall go down to be burned into flaming fire, and his wife also, bearing wood having on her neck a cord of twisted fibres of a palm tree.” Either these are Muhammad’s words or God is fond of rather feeble puns, since “Abu Lahab” means “father of flames.” But surely these words are not worthy of a prophet either.
As Goldziher points out, “Devout Mu’tazilites voiced similar opinions [as the Kharijites who impugned the reliability of the text of the Quran] about those parts of the Quran in which the Prophet utters curses against his enemies (such as Abu Lahab). “God could not have called such passages ‘a noble Quran on a well-guarded tablet.’” As we shall see, if we were to apply the same reasoning to all parts of the Koran, there would not be much left as the word of God, since very little of it is worthy of a Merciful and Compassionate, All-Wise God.
Ali Dashti also gives the example of sura 17.1 as an instance of confusion between two speakers. God and Muhammad: “Gloried be He Who carried His servant by night from the Inviolable Place of worship [mosque at Mecca] to the Far Distant Place of Worship [mosque at Jerusalem], the neighborhood whereof We have blessed, that We might show him of our tokens! Lo! He is the Hearer, the Seer.”