401.    An issue we must pay attention to is the “conflict of interest” between the conclusion that the miraculousness of the Qur’an would have on one accepting this statement, and the previously held beliefs of those who are talking about this matter. We normally hear of the alleged ‘bias’ that we Muslims have when talking about the Qur’an as the revelation from Allah, but we should also pay attention to those from the non-Muslim side who while assessing the Qur’an, would not utter the full impact that the Qur’an had on them in all its aspects. Continue reading →

376.    It is asked that how can one reconcile the traditions mentioning that the Prophet ﷺ appears to people in their dreams in truth, with the fact that no two people have ever witnessed the Prophet ﷺ in the same form?

The answer is that the soul of the Prophet ﷺ is seen according to the dreamer’s spiritual reality – so depending on the purity or lack thereof of the person experiencing the dream (plus other factors of that person’s soul), then the Prophet ﷺ will appear to him in that form and manner. Continue reading →

351.    Someone asked me a while back why I was not saying much about the whole uproar that is going on in the world, for example the shootings and bombings in Europe, then the subsequent rise in Islamophobic feelings in many places, and as a continuation of this, what this has led to in terms of acts of vandalism and arson on Muslim places of worship, and even physical attacks, including murders of Muslims living in the West. Continue reading →

326.    It should be known: the nurturing of the Sahaabas (RAA) at the hands of the Prophet ﷺ was in itself an amazing miracle, since he ﷺ took those who were either very simple or very rough people and made them into conquerors of the world and universities in their own persons, only in the span of one generation, while this is something never before seen in the history of mankind. This I would say is one of the additional miracles of the Qur’an and of the Prophet ﷺ, and this cannot be ignored or sidelined as an evidence for Islam. Continue reading →

301.        Some ask that how can it be said that Arabic is the only language in which the miracle (and hypothetically the challenge) of the Quran was (or can become) actualized. One important reason is the greater declension of words one finds in Arabic which makes it possible to articulate complex meanings in fewer words. Also, the different forms that one verb root may take allows for multiple valid shades of meanings to be derived from one word or base, while at the same time a number of different words may have a common ultimate meaning. So basically this points to greater flexibility for classical Arabic as opposed to other languages. Continue reading →

276.        Of note: There are certain narrations mentioning that Ibn Mas’ud (RAA) had doubts about the Muawidhatayn being part of the Qur’an, or that ‘Ubay Ibn Ka’b (RAA) thought certain Du’as were actually part of the Qur’an, and a few other things of similar signification. We say these are solitary narrations, and such types of narrations cannot be used as proof in the field of determining what the Qur’an is or is not. This confuses many people among the lay Muslims, but if they understand what is the criteria for Qur’anic studies and what establishes a proof in this field, then there is no reason for such doubts to be held by any person. Continue reading →

251.        We need to remember how, in the case of most scholars of the Muslims, many of their books if not most of them have been lost, or only partially passed down to us, and their existence is known only through citations found in existing books; of course, this is lamentable in a sense, but it  is also important to consider, since if one were to rely only on the books, one would get only a partial picture of the entire collection of the scholars’ viewpoints and reasoning process. This is also why in Islam the insistence is so much on the teachers as human beings who pass down the tradition, and not merely on books that one buys or finds in a library. Continue reading →