Let me state at the outset that, after being Muslim for many years now, if I were given the topic of “The Miraculous Quran,” as I see it now, I would be emphasizing and discussing aspects that were completely unknown to me at the time that I was studying Islam as a non-Muslim.  I have been studying the Quran for over thirty years now and it never fails to fascinate me.  In fact, the phenomenon of continually finding new fascinating aspects of the Quran has been true for the Muslim scholars throughout the years.  Over the centuries, as they have spoken about the Quran, later scholars recognize the miraculous aspects that the earlier scholars mentioned while coming across other aspects that they consider no less remarkable and amazing.  Thus, for example, in the past century, we have had Aishah bint al-Shaati, Sayyid Qutb and Mustafa Saadiq al-Raafi’ee all adding components to the overall theory of the miraculous nature of the Quran.[1]  Lately, many have emphasized what are called the “scientific miracles of the Quran,” a topic we shall try to visit toward the end of this lecture.

However, this lecture is about “my story” and my path to Islam via the Quran.  Therefore, I will be emphasizing those aspects of the Quran that influenced me the most at that time and I will give less time to other aspects that I have studied in detail since then.

A Very Brief Introduction to the Prophet Muhammad and the Quran

I am sure that most of you have some familiarity with the Prophet Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, and the Quran but for some points that I will make later, I believe a very brief introduction to the two is in order.

Muhammad was born around 570 years after the birth of Jesus Christ.  He was born in Mecca, in the Arabian Peninsula.  The people of Mecca were devoted to idol-worship.  The area was not known as a place of advanced civilization or learning at its time.  In fact, the Prophet Muhammad was illiterate.  At the age of forty, Muhammad received his first revelation.  Although he was known among his people as “the trustworthy,” the majority of the Arabs belied him and soon after started a massive campaign to persecute those who believed in him.  After thirteen years of preaching in Mecca, the Prophet himself left for the city of Medina, where he already had some followers.  They made him the leader of the city.  The disbelievers of Mecca did not rest and attempted to militarily squash the new faith.  However, what was originally a small band of Muslims grew in number and were able to withstand the onslaught of the disbelievers.  Within ten years, the Prophet himself led an army back to Mecca and conquered it in a bloodless victory.  Thus, Islam became victorious in Arabia and began spreading throughout the world.  The Prophet Muhammad finally died in 632.

As for the Quran, it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad over a period of twenty-three years.  It was revealed directly to him via the angel Gabriel.  He would receive the revelation and then convey it to his followers.  Thus, the Quran is very different from the Bible.  There are no human contributions to the Quran; it is only the revelation from God.  In other words, you will not find any stories about the Prophet written by his Companions in the Quran.  In fact, you will not even find in the Quran any of the Prophet’s speech outside of what he stated to be the revelation of the Quran.  The Prophet’s own words have been kept completely separate from the Quran.

One final note, the Quran is only in Arabic.  The best translation is not the Quran.  Once you lose something in its original wording and rely only on translation, the original is truly lost.

The Story of My Conversion and my Near Baptism

The story of my conversion is not the most fascinating.  However, one aspect is of interest: the affect that the Quran had on me.

My family moved to California from Spain.  Thus, we were nominally Catholic.  I had very little exposure to any religion until a friend of mine in school invited me to their church.  I started attending and this was the first time that I began to read the Bible.  I was definitely taking everything very seriously.  There then came the time to be baptized.  I had no problem with it except that I decided that, since this was the first religion I was exposed to, I should just look around at other religions to make sure that I was certain about what I was doing.  I did not think this would actually affect my final decision while, in reality, that near baptism led me to becoming a Muslim.

I started studying about all religions I could find.  This, obviously, is what led me to the Quran.

Studying the Quran in 1976: The Quran Versus many Non-Muslim Writers

You should keep in mind that this took place in 1976.  This was before the Iranian Revolution and Islam being plastered all over the media.  I didn’t know any Muslims at the time.  (I was living in a relatively small college town and I incorrectly assumed that there were no Muslims there.) Thus, there was no one trying to convince me of the truth of Islam.  In fact, I eventually converted to Islam before ever meeting a Muslim, doing my best to learn the prayers from a book written by a missionary, T. P. Hughes’ The Dictionary of Islam.

Therefore, the information I was receiving about Islam came mostly from non-Muslims writing about Islam.  There were very few books available to me at that time written by Muslims.  In fact, I only recall coming across one work written by a Muslim, a relatively small work by Maudoodi.[1] However, I was able to find a couple of copies of the Quran translated by Muslims.  In particular, I was reading the translation by Abdullah Yusuf Ali.

In essence, it was truly the Quran versus a number of works written by non-Muslims.  In general, these non-Muslims were forced to praise Islam every now and then but always tried to find some fault with the very basis of the faith.  Thus, they came up with many theories about the Prophet Muhammad and the Quran.  I would be reading their critique side-by-side with the Quran.

Most of the authors I was reading were clearly saying that the Quran was not a revelation from God but simply written by the Prophet Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him.  Such was the view expressed by Richard Bell in The Qur'an: Translated With a Critical Re-arrangement of the Surahs, Arberry in his introduction to his translation of the Quran, Kenneth Cragg in The Call of the Minaret, ad nauseum.[2]

However, as Montgomery Watt noted, this in itself presented a host of questions.  If Muhammad were a phony, did he do what he did maliciously?  He was not known to be an insincere or malicious person beforehand, what then led to his change?  Furthermore, if he did it maliciously, how did he come up with all of the information contained in the Quran, especially while living in a place like Mecca?  Did he have teachers; if so, who were they and where is it documented that he had teachers?

To be frank, I was not very impressed with those who claimed that the Prophet  had some teacher who gave him all of the information that later made up the Quran.  In general, those authors would refer to chance or one-time meetings between the Prophet and specific individuals.  Thus, for example, Muir and Margoliouth attributed the information found in the Quran to Baheerah, a monk that the Prophet may have met in Syria during his youth while part of a trading caravan, long before he claimed to be a Prophet.  Such arguments are flatly illogical and extremely far-fetched.  I did not spend much time with them.

Some critics were forced to admit that the Prophet Muhammad was known to be an extremely honest and sincere person.  They also noted how he did not really materially benefit from his actions, as he continued to live a very sincere and humble life.  Therefore, they concluded that he was honest and sincere but terribly deluded.  But still, if he were deluded, where did this information come from? Some made it seem like it was from his subconscious.  Anderson even called it “wishful thinking.”  Others actually said that he was suffering from epileptic seizures and that the revelations were the result of such seizures.  These theories may have been convincing to anyone who simply read what these authors wrote without taking the time to read and study the Quran itself.  As shall be noted later in this lecture, there is simply too much information in the Quran that could not have possibly have come from one’s own subconscious.

Another common claim that I had read was that the Prophet Muhammad was some kind of “nationalist” leader whose main goal was to unite the Arabs.  Typical of this way of thinking is what was stated in The New Catholic Encyclopedia: “About the age of 40 he received his ‘prophetic call’ to unite Arabs under a monotheism.”[3]  This approach can be considered more complementary, as it does not seek to ridicule the Prophet in any way.  Yet, at the same time, it made no sense to me just on the basis of one reading of the Quran.  It is sufficient to note that there is not one passage in the Quran that is addressed to the Arabs.  In the Quran, God speaks to humankind or the people, believers and disbelievers.  If this book were meant for the Arabs only, why are they never addressed directly and, instead, these general terms that cross all of humanity are used?

In any case, the plethora of their different views concerning the Prophet was a sign to me that something unfathomable to those authors had occurred.  This was all evidence to me that there was really something to the Quran, as otherwise just could have just discounted it as a trivial work, not worth the effort of refuting or discussing.  It actually got me even more interested in the Quran.  This is something that you will see again later: The works that should have dissuaded me from further pursuing the Quran made me more convinced that I need to pursue it further.

My First Parameter: If it is God’s Religion I am Looking for, the Sacred Scripture Must be From God

In my study of other religions, one of my goals was to read each religion’s sacred scriptures directly, in order to understand directly from the source what the religion was all about.  This is obviously what piqued my curiosity in the Quran.

I already had a strong belief in God and was convinced of the existence of a Supreme Being.  In fact, for a while, I was sometimes a Christian and sometimes simply a deist, following in the footsteps of Voltaire and many of the “founding fathers” of the United States.

Already believing in God, therefore, my first parameter for a true religion was that the religion must have God as its original source.  No one can know the details about God except God.  He is above and beyond the realm of human experience.  More importantly, no one knows how He should be worshipped except Him.  No one knows what way of life is pleasing to Him except Him.  Although humans are able to come to many sound conclusions about God, no human could logically claim that he has somehow—independent of revelation from God—discovered the way in which God should be worshipped and the way that is pleasing to God.  Thus, if the ultimate goal in one’s heart is to truly please and worship God as He should be worshipped, then one has no alternative but to turn to Him for guidance and direction.

Based on this first premise, any man-made religion is not a logical alternative.  No matter how hard humans may try, they cannot authoritatively speak about how God is supposed to be worshipped.

It is important to note that this parameter does not mean that one time God played a role in the formation of a specific religion.  No, this parameter means that the entire scope of the teachings come from God.  There are some religions that may have originated from God but, afterwards, their adherents felt free to rely upon human reasoning to adjust, modify or alter the religion.  In the process, they actually created a new religion, different from that which God had revealed.  This, once again, completely defeats the purpose.  What God revealed does not need any improvement or change from humankind.  Any such change or alteration means a deviation away from what God revealed.  Thus, any change or alteration will only take humankind away from the true and proper way of worshipping God.  Furthermore, God is more than capable of revealing a perfect revelation for any time or circumstance.  If there were any need to alter or change any of God’s laws, the authority for that also rests only with God.  In other words, God is free to change some of His laws due to His wisdom and knowledge, for example, out of mercy or as a form of punishment upon His servants.  He may do this by sending a new revelation or even by sending a new prophet.  With that, there is no logical problem.  But there is a grave problem when humans take it upon themselves to “fix” God’s revelation.

Thus, the first parameter states that the religion originates with God.  However, this is not sufficient.  The second parameter is that the teachings from God must be preserved in their original form.  The logic behind this point should be obvious.  If the original revelation came from God but was then later tampered and distorted by humans, one now has a mixture of God’s religion and human interpolation.  This is no longer God’s pure religion.  Although this may seem like an obvious premise, it is amazing to see many people who have not even considered this point, blindly following scriptures or teachings that cannot be historically authenticated.

The First Miraculous Aspect of the Quran: Its Detailed Preservation

In fact, this is one of the first things that impressed me concerning the Quran.  Even those who were clearly anti-Islam in their writings, such as Sir William Muir, would admit that the Quran that we have today was preserved since the time of the Prophet, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him.[1]  In fact, even those who tried to be most critical and cast doubt upon the complete authenticity of the Quran, such as Jeffery, impressed me even further as to the amount of information that we have concerning the history of this text.

To fully appreciate this point, one must put it into the context of my Christian background.  Incidentally, this paper is in no way meant to be a critique of Christianity.  However, it is the background from which I came and it was the litmus test by which I examined other religions.  Therefore, I did a lot of cross comparisons between Christianity and other religions, including Islam.  Hence, I have no choice but to refer to Christianity during the course of this paper as this is a paper about my experience.

 was painfully aware of much of the history of the Bible and it was one of the main problems that I had with Christianity.[1]  I had asked pastors and the like about this question and most of them at that time, this was before the fundamentalists became very mainstream, were very open about it and would admit that there were problems with the historical authenticity of the Bible.  At the same time, though, most of them proclaimed that the “teachings” have been preserved although the details may not have been.  In other words, the Bible was clearly not God’s word; they would claim that the Biblical writers were “inspired” by God.  That is the most that they could claim, although even that they could not prove.  This seemed to me to be blind faith because if you do not know if the details have been preserved, how can you be so certain that the main teachings have truly been preserved.  In reality, we do not even know who Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were and why exactly their names were attached to those famous Gospels.

In the light of this, I found Jeffrey, while trying to prove that there are some minor difficulties with the Quran, demonstrating that the compilation of the Quran from its earliest years is known in great detail, as most of his work was concerning the time of the Companions of the Prophet.  I was very impressed and this supposed attack on the Quran simply, again as I alluded to earlier, made me continue in my study of the Quran.  (Of course, much later I would read responses to Jeffrey’s arguments, totally refuting his claims of the Quran not being preserved in tact.)

The Quran’s Promise that it Shall be Preserved

In any case, it caught my eye that the Quran says about itself:

“We have revealed the reminder and We shall preserve it.” (Quran 15:9)

This was interesting to me because within the Quran there is a clear reference as to how the previous peoples fail to preserve completely the message that they received.[2]  Hence, in the light of what the Quran was saying about previous revelations, this was a very bold statement.  And, incidentally, it can be considered one of the prophecies of the Quran- coming from a Judeo-Christian perspective, prophecies were somewhat important to me.  If they did not come to pass, they would be very damaging in my eyes while if they did come to pass, I would consider that a very good sign.

Once again, the history of Islam presents a different scenario than that of the earlier revelations.  The Prophet Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, lived just over 1400 years ago.  He is definitely the most “historical” of the various prophets.  Thus, the history of the Quran is known and documented.

The Quran was preserved with meticulous care.  The Quran describes itself as both a “reading” (Quran) and a book (kitaab).  In fact, it was via both of these means that the Quran was meticulously preserved.

During the life of the Prophet, the Prophet had specific scribes whose job was to record the revelation when the he received it.  The Quran was not revealed all at once.  It was revealed and recorded over a period of twenty-three years.  During that time, revelation could come to the Prophet at any time.  When it did, it would be recognized by physical signs on the Prophet (a point that led some to claim that he was simply epileptic).  He would then call for his scribes and tell them what had been revealed and exactly where the new passage fits vis-à-vis what had already been revealed by God.

The Quran, which is not a large book, was also preserved in memory as well as written form from the time of the Prophet Muhammad himself.  Many of the Companions of the Prophet had memorized the entire Quran and, fearing what had happened to earlier religious communities, they took the necessary steps to protect it from any form of adulteration.  The Quran continues to be memorized today—another amazing aspect of the Quran.  In fact, God says about the Quran:

“And We have indeed made the Quran easy to understand and remember…” (Quran 54:17)

 To this day, millions of Muslims have the Quran memorized.  If Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451were to be a reality today and all the books were to be burned to ashes, the Quran would still survive.  Muslims would be able to rewrite the entire Quran from memory.

Soon after the death of the Prophet, the Quran was all compiled together and shortly afterwards official copies were sent to the distant lands to ensure that the text was pure.  To this day, one can travel to any part of the world and pick up a copy Quran and find that it is the same throughout the world.[3]

Even the language of the Quran, which is essential to keeping a true understanding of the text, has been preserved.[4]  Such cannot be said for earlier prophets such as Moses and Jesus, whose Hebrew and Aramaic no longer exist.

As noted earlier, the greatest care was taken to make sure that anything that did not belong to the revelation directly from God—even the Prophet’s own statements—were kept completely out of the Quran.  The Quran was nothing but the words that the Prophet received as revelation and informed his followers that they formed part of the Quran.  Hence, the Quran is completely different from the Bible, which includes stories about the prophets, comments on their lives and teachings, letters and writings by non-prophets and so forth.  No such human interpolations and additions can be found in the Quran whatsoever.

Thus, the Quran originally impressed me in two ways: First, it clearly proclaimed itself to be the word of God and was not interlaced with words from humans.  Second, it was minutely preserved from the time of its revelation.  These two points meant that the Quran met my logical parameters for religion and revelation.  I was therefore ready to move on to further study and analyze its teachings.

By the way, someone may rightfully ask as to why it is that God allowed his earlier revelations to be distorted and not preserved.  One can actually think of a lot of important reasons behind this.  First, as is clear in their own scriptures, the earlier prophets, such as Moses and Jesus, were not sent for all of mankind.  Their messages were clearly for the Tribe of Israel and for their particular times.  Actually, God teaches us that all peoples had messengers who were sent to them and whose purposes were limited.  The Prophet Muhammad, and therefore his revelation, is meant for all of humankind from his time until the Day of Judgment.  Secondly, if their revelations were preserved, their followers could use that as a reason for continuing to follow their prophets and refusing to follow the Prophet Muhammad.  Since it is very clear via many means, such as historical evidence, contradictory statements within the text and so on, that their scriptures have not been preserved in detail and that they cannot claim to be following what is purely God’s religion—not mixed with human interpolation—they have no valid excuse not to abandon their non-preserved revelation for the true, complete and exact revelation from God found in the Quran.

I was very impressed with the Quran’s teachings about God and found it unlike any other scripture that I had studied.  This was once again proving to me that this scripture was free of all human interpolation.  I was also very impressed with the way that it handled belief about God in particular and its belief system as a whole.

Let me explain what I mean by this.

No Leap of Faith

Coming from a Christian background, I experienced what many experienced concerning matters of belief and how to understand them.  It was virtually impossible to get straight answers concerning the very basics of Christian beliefs from the pastors and priests.  The reality is that the concepts of belief were meant to be a “mystery” and belief in what one cannot truly understand is what proved a person’s faith.

That approach simply did not sit well with me and I found it, and still find it, illogical.  It does not seem that the truth as revealed by the Merciful and Wise God, who has given so many marvelous signs in the creation, should lead one to have to say, as the 2nd-century North African Church Father Tertullian is well known for saying: credo quia absurdum est, “I believe because it is absurd.” Religion should not be simply “faith-based”—a leap of faith, as such.  Actually, it should be first as well “knowledge-based,” so that both the heart and the mind find solace in it and submit to it with a firm resolution.  And this is what I found in Islam.

You should recall that the Prophet Muhammad, may the mercy and blessings of God be upon him, first encountered a people who were indulged in idol worship.  Furthermore, they, in general, did not believe in the Hereafter.  Some of them, it seems, did not have a clear perception of the Supreme Being.

It was in this environment that the Quran was revealed.  The Quran did not simply give them a command to believe.  No, indeed!  The Quran gave them proof after proof, lesson after lesson, sign after sign that should make anyone believe that there is a Creator and that the Creator created humans and all of this wonderful working of the Universe with a purpose, as He is not a foolish or ignorant Creator.

Hence, the Quran is filled with passages demanding that humans think.  In essence the message was this: Allah knows that if humans do use their mental capabilities properly, they will come to recognize the truth of what Allah is saying in the Quran.  In fact, Islam teaches that the recognition of such facts is innate within the souls of humans.

The fact is that one’s belief in Allah, the Quran and the Prophet Muhammad is not based on mere emotion or a blind leap of faith.  It is based on real reasons and evidence.

Coming from my background, this boldness in propagating the belief and challenging humans to think and ponder was nothing short of miraculous.

Stealing from the Christians and Jews

One concept that many of the non-Muslim writers were claiming was that the Prophet Muhammad simply stole most of his teachings from the Jews and Christians.  Take, for example, the title of Bell’s book, The Origin of Islam in its Christian Environment—which, by the way, if you tell any Arab that Islam developed in a Christian environment, it would be a real shock to them!

I recognized that there were two possibilities:

(1)  the Prophet Muhammad did steal his material or

(2)  the revelation he received was from the same God who sent Moses, Jesus and the earlier prophets, as the Prophet Muhammad himself claimed.  If it were the latter, it would explain why there would be much overlap in the teachings and message.  The same God sent the earlier prophets and is simply recounting their stories again in the new revelation.

However, I immediately started to notice some glaring differences between the Quran and the Bible, even with respect to the teachings about God.  If the Prophet Muhammad was “editing” what he was hearing from the Bible—and by the way, at that time, there was no Bible available in Arabic—then he was doing an excellent job.

I found that the strange teachings about God that one finds throughout the Bible are completely and unequivocally missing from the Quran.

For the sake of brevity, only a few examples illustrating this point shall be given.

The New International Version of Genesis 3:8-11, reads,

8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.  9 But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”  10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” 11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked?  Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

Here, God is pictured as walking in the garden in the cool of the day.  What is even more astonishing is that Adam and Eve were able to hide from God and he had to ask, “Where are you?”  If a human is able to hide from Him in the garden, how is it that this Lord is going to have knowledge of the sins that people commit?  It would be difficult for any human to gender in his heart the kind of love and fear of God that he should have when he believes that his God is so faulty and weak that an event like this could occur to him.

In Genesis 32:24-28,[1]  there is the story and literal description of Jacob wrestling with and defeating God.  In verse 28, it says, “You [Jacob] have wrestled with God and with men, and you have won.” In other words, the creator of the universe whom mankind is expected to worship and submit to was defeated by a mere mortal in a wrestling match.

The Old Testament even pictures God as one who intended to do evil but then repented.  Exodus 32:14 states, “And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people” (King James Version).  It would not be surprising for anyone to turn away from God and not consider Him worthy of worship if He himself has to repent from His own evil.