*In the Name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful* *Assalaamu alaykum,*
*One Ali Sina has renounced Islam. Among the many points on which he criticises Islam, one is the allegedly indiscriminate use of different persons for pronouns of Allah, in the Qur'aan. Given below are relevant extracts from his writings on this point.* "And *We* did not send before you any messenger but We revealed to him that there is no god but *Me* [1st person singular] therefore serve *Me*. And they say: The Beneficent Allah has taken to Himself a son. Glory be to* Him* .[3rd person singular] Nay! they are honored servants They do not precede *Him *in speech and (only) according to* His *commandment do they act. *He *knows what is before them and what is behind them, *and they do not intercede ** except** for him whom **He **approves *and for fear of *Him *they tremble. And whoever of them should say: Surely I am a god besides *Him*, such a one do *We *recompense with hell; thus do, "*We *recompense the unjust. (21:25-29)" I also highlighted the pronouns (in the Qur'aanic quote above). We see sometimes Allah refers to himself in third person singular, (He) then shifts to first person plural (We) and sometimes to first person singular (I and Me). Will you please explain this unorthodox way of speech? It appears that these are Muhammad's Freudian slips of tongue. It is as if the Prophet keeps forgetting that the Quran is supposed to be the word of Allah and Allah should not allude to himself in 3rd person. We can find this error in the entire Quran. I hope you will give some explanation to this conundrum as well. Is the Quran really the word of God or that of the illiterate Muhammad? *In this cotext I would like to point out that the Qur'aanic Verses were not directly revealed by Allah Almighty to the Prophet (peace be upon him). They were revealed through the angels. So the Qur'aan is in general the Message of Allah conveyed in the words of the angels. But they have often used therein Allah's Own Words. It is just like A conveying to B a message from C. A will convey the message generally in his own words, but may sometimes use C's words for emphasis etc. And A will use the pronoun 'we' in that message when there is something to be conveyed, which A and C had done together.* ** *Let us now examine the Verses (21.25-29) Ali Sina had quoted, keeping the above position in mind:* ** *"And We did not send before you any messenger but We revealed to him that there is no god but Me, therefore serve Me." In the actions involved in sending a messenger to mankind and then sending divine revelations to that messenger, Allah makes use of the angels. So the angels have used the pronoun 'We' here to indicate their involvement, together with Allah, in those processes. But then they couldn't further on say, 'there is no god but Us, therefore serve Us'. Only Allah is worthy of worship, and not the angels. So they used Allah's own words in conveying this part of the V**erse. As often is the case, the speaker and the addressee are revealed from the text of the Verse. The Qur'aan is economical in the use of words.* ** *"Glory be to Him." Here the angels had to use the third person singular pronoun to refer to Allah. They couldn't say, 'Glory be to Us', for, in that case, they would be glorifying themselves, along with Allah! And Allah Himself won't say, 'Glory be to Me'! Please take note of the appropriateness of the pronoun 'Him' used here.* *And further down the middle of the quote, the third person singular is continued with, since Allah's exclusive prerogatives are referred to here, and the angels are not quoting Allah's own words.* *Then, at the end, the first person plural is used again since the angels take part in the process of punishing the sinners.* *The difference, in person and number, of the pronouns used in all other Verses is similarly justified and appropriate. As the Qur'aan reiterates, Ali Sina and his likes will fail to find a single mistake in the Qur'aan, howsoever they may try.* ** *Wassalaam,* *Mohammad Shafi* *islam-n-interest.com* -- Keep us on the Right Path, Allah! --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Asalam o Alaikum, You Are Receiving This Message, Because You Are A Member Of FOCUS ON ISLAM, A Google Group [..:: The Best Group For Nice Islamic Mails ::..] \/<<<<>>>>\/<<<<>>>>\/<<<<>>>>\/<<<<>>>>\/<<<<>>>>\/<<<<>>>>\/<>\/ You can Post Your Comments and Suggestions to Me [Moderator of this Group] on this email address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.google.com/group/focusonislam/ To post messages/mails to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please forward our Mails to Your friends, and convence them to join our Group. 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