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Response by Khalid to Newton's Grammatical errors in the Qur'an


Assalamu Alaikum

The response to Newton claims can be summed up as following :

The Arabic grammar was preserved by the Qur'an from changing since the time it was revealed to Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) until the end of time! The Qur'an became the main reference for modern Arabic grammar scholars. Since it is the only book which have not been changed. For this reason schools and Arabic academic institutes today teach the same Arabic grammar which was taught a thousand years ago .

To explain these so-called errors we must explain certain aspects of the Arabic grammar. Arabic scholars differed in explaining the Quran Grammatically , and that dose not indicate in any way that there are grammatical mistakes in the Quran , let me explain:

For Example when we say in Arabic :

"yaadhreeb "u Ali Zaid"

This sentence when written in regular Arabic it could mean *two* things , it either can mean Ali is hitting Zaid or the other way around . In this case, the locations of nouns in Arabic verbal sentences is not enough to identify it's subjects and objects therefore it is not easy for us to say who is hitting who in the sentence "yaadhreeb"u Ali Zaid" . In order to explain this simple sentence we would need more grammatical information on the nouns Ali & Zaid and how they were declined, for instance with "rafaa" or with "nasb".

Now let's say we have the extra information required to understand the meaning of it , and the sentence now sounds like this:

"yaadhreeb" u Ali" (oon) Zaid"(an) " or "yaadhreeb"u Ali"(an) Zaid"(oon)"

Notice the sounds between brackets are only marks in Arabic language and it is not obvious in regular Arabic writings , these marks shows how words are declined therefore providing the extra information we require to understand the meaning of it

The first sentence :

(yaadhreeb) the verb hitting declined with rafaa because it is in present tense

('u) the mark of rafaa for the verb

(Ali) the subject in this case because it is declined with rafaa

('oon) the mark of rafaa for Ali

(Zaid) the object because it is declined with nasb

('an) the mark of nasb for Zaid

The 2nd sentence:

(yaadhreeb) the verb hitting declined with rafaa because it is in present tense

('u) the mark of rafaa for the verb

(Ali) the object in this case because it is declined with nasb

('an) the mark of nasb

(Zaid) the subject because it is declined with rafaa

('oon) the mark of rafaa for Zaid

As we can see the extra information enabled us to identify the subject and the object of the sentence

What can we understand from the above examples?

  1. The original sentence "yaadhreeb"u Ali Zaid" is not grammatically wrong .
  2. Grammatical information helped us to understand the exact meaning of the sentence
  3. Declining words differently in Arabic can change the meaning of the word in its position of the sentence.
  4. The two different explanation of the original sentence does not mean one of the explanations is wrong but it means both explanations are grammatically right because it follows the rules of grammar.

And now let us push an extra word in the original example :

"yaadhreeb"u Ali alkareem Zaid, we added the word "alkareem" which means the generous to the sentence producing a problem in understanding. Who is the generous in this case, is it Zaid or is it Ali ?

Furthermore this sentence now could mean one of the following :

  1. The generous Ali is hitting Zaid or it could mean
  2. That Ali is hitting the generous Zaid or perhaps
  3. Ali the generous is being hit by Zaid or even
  4. Ali is being hit by the generous Zaid

One single word have added extra problem to this simple sentence which now have FOUR probable meanings .

Again all of the above can be grammatically explained in four (or more) acceptable ways and these different explanations should not indicate that the above sentence is wrong.

What can we understand from the above ?

The sentence is still grammatically correct.

Different people might explain the above sentence differently using correct grammatical methods , these different explanation would change the meaning , but that dose not affect the sentence itself.

So where did people like Newton went wrong ? Newton thought that these different explanations means grammatical mistakes, and that definitely is false. In addition he kept copying incomplete information to persuade people that there are mistakes in the Quran and this only shows the quality of these people and their faith!


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