November 1986: Page 1, 2, 3

Submitters Perspective

Page 2

Arabs dismissed from God's grace

Continued from page 1

Judging from this report, it is obvious that these leading Arab scholars are hopelessly stuck on the very first item of God’s undeniable mathematical miracle. As shown in the photocopy from IMPACT, they decided that Bism Allah Al-Rahman Al-Raheem, which is the first verse of Qur’an, “contains neither just nineteen letters nor four words.”

Now, they are even trying to remove the Basmalah from Qur’an altogether!!! Apparently the idiots think that if Basmalah is removed, the whole miracle will collapse. This is the first proof that they are utterly forbidden from seeing the miracle. In my translation of Qur’an, Footnote 1:1 stated that Basmalah is “the foundation upon which a great miracle is built.” The great Arab scholars figured that if they destroy the “foundation”, then the whole structure will come down!

A terrible dilemma for the great Arab scholars is that any grade school student who looks at the Basmalah at the top of Sheikh Ben Baz’s own stationary and count the words, he or she will see four words and 19 letters. How would they convince that student that the Basmalah “contains neither just nineteen letters nor four words”?

It is noteworthy that the great Arab scholars did not tell us exactly how many letters and/or words are in the Basmalah. Lisa Spray of Masjid Tucson quipped, “They must be still counting the letters and words of Basmalah!!”

Naturally, the great Arab scholars did not say a thing about the fact the letter Qaf is mentioned 57 times (19x3) in each of the Qaf-initialed suras (42 & 50). They said nothing about the physical fact that the SSaad-initialed suras (7, 19, & 38) contain 152 SSaads (19x8). They said nothing about the profound physical fact that the HHA MEEM- initialed suras contain 2147 HHA & MEEM (19x113). They said nothing about the established and easy to confirm fact that Sura YA SEEN contains

precisely 285 YA & SEEN (19x15); and so on and on.

IS THIS NOT POSITIVE PROOF THAT GOD HAS TAKEN AWAY THEIR HEARING, THEIR EYESIGHT AND SEALED THEIR MINDS”?

(Sura 6, Verse 46)

Now let us see how confused these scholars are.

Shown below is a photocopy of two letters from Dr. Muhammad Abdul Rauf, Rector of the International Islamic University, Malaysia. Dr. Abdul Rauf is an internationally recognized Muslim scholar. In his letter dated December 18, 1985, he stated that Basmalah is either 17 letters, or 20 letters (he doesn’t know). However, in a letter dated September 16, 1986, he counts 19 letters in Basmalah and adds up their numerical value , the famous number 786.

(Continued on page 3)

First the committee thanked Dr. Khalifah for what appeared to be his interest in supporting the miraculous nature of the Qur’an, by making use of modern technology and pointing out to new factors which have hitherto been unknown to the Muslims.

Afterwards it went on to record the Arabic translation of his booklet and lectures and put forward its findings and recommendations.

Basically the learned Doctor has founded his theory on number 19 and its multiple. According to him the first Qur’anic verse, ‘Bismillaahirrahmaanirrahiim’, or ‘al-basmalah,’ – meaning ‘In

the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful’ – consists of nineteen Arabic letters!

From linguistic point of view it is clear that ‘al-basmalah’ contains neither just nineteen letters nor four words. Besides, it is not the first Qur’anic verse as Dr. Khalifah has claimed.

In fact there is no unanimous agreement among the Qur’anic scholars as to consider whether ‘al-basmalah’ is a part of the first Surah and of the subsequent Surahs, or whether it is an independent verse by which we start reciting the Qur’an, or whether it is meant as an indicator of the end of a Surah and the beginning of a new one. All these aspects are discussed

extensively by these Muslim Qur’anic scholars themselves.

Once there is no consensus achieved on all these points – except Surah 27 (al-Naml) where ‘al-basmalah’, mentioned in verse 30, is a part of it – a solid foundation cannot thus be laid down for a theory which claims the ‘miraculous nature’ of the Qur’an. This means that many points claimed to rest upon the figure 19, and hence the whole theory, will crumble.

IMPACT INTERNATIONAL

8 - 21 AUGUST 1986

INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY

Thus, al-Basmalah consists of 20 letters, counting each duplicated consonant as two, or of 17 letters if each is counted as one.*

 

}Dr. M. A. Rauf’s letter dated Dec 18, 85

Yet, this figure is the total of the values of the letters contained in the full Basmalah; that is,Arabic Basmallah. The values of these letters are as follows:

2 + 60 + 40 + 1 + 30 + 30 + 5 + 1 + 30 + 200 + 8 + 40 + 50 + 1 + 30 + 200 + 8 + 10 + 40 = 786
}Dr. M. A. Rauf’s letter dated Sep 16, 86 and showing that Basmalah has 19 letters.

Signature of Rauf

(PROF. DR. MUHAMMAD ABDUL RAUF)
Rector