Courtyard of Mosque of Medina
By Zia H Shah MD
This is a short article to introduce the subject to fellow Christians. The Holy Quran says about them: And thou shalt assuredly find those who say, 'We are Christians,' to be the nearest of them in love to the believers. That is because amongst them are savants and monks and because they are not proud. (Al Quran 5:83)
This article was originally published in Spring 2010 volume of Muslim Sunrise:
"Illiterate himself, scarcely able to read or write, he was yet the author of a book which is a poem, a code of laws, a Book of Common Prayer, and a Bible in one, and is reverenced to this day by a sixth of the whole human race as a miracle of purity of style, of wisdom, and of truth. It was the one miracle claimed by Mohammed—his 'standing miracle' he called it; and a miracle indeed it is."[1] Reginald Bosworth Smith
In the 21st century residents of a European country, namely the Swiss voters have backed a ban on building any more mosques with minarets in their country. The Holy Quran, revealed in the desert of Arabia in the seventh century stated that the purpose of defensive warfare is to preserve the sanctity of cloisters, churches, synagogues and mosques. The Quran named the place of worship of the Muslims as the last on this sacred list.
[2] Is the Quran a miracle or not? Religious tolerance is not the only teaching wherein the Holy Quran excels all other secular books or religious scriptures. Since 1982 half a million people have died in USA alone in alcohol related traffic accidents, to name only one problem from alcohol.
[3] The Holy Quran emphatically forbade alcohol, saving the believers from this mother of many evils. Is it a miracle or not? Sir Godfrey Higgins wrote, "By the law of Mohamed all games of chance were expressly prohibited: the beneficial tendency of this law surely no one will deny. He is refused all merit for his morality, because it is said that he only copied it from the Bible. I have not observed the prohibition of this vice either in the decalogue or the gospels."
[4] Fifteen million people now display some sign of gambling addiction in USA, and inflict themselves and the society with pain. The Holy Quran nipped the evil in the bud. Is it a miracle or not? "Mohamedism is reproached with copying its morality from the gospel;" Sir Godfrey Higgins wrote in the defense of the Prophet, "a philosopher, perhaps, may suspect that when the prophet was availing himself of the excellent moral precepts of Christianism, he had sense, not only to take the good, but to leave the evil; to adopt the morality, but to avoid the hired priesthood which, in his day, had filled the world with bloodshed and misery, and was rapidly reducing it to a state of the most debasing ignorance."
[5] The Holy Quran forbade monasticism in clear terms.
[6] Fourteen hundred years later the Catholic Church is following suit in their negotiation with the Anglican Church.
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[8] Every time we contrast the Holy Quran with the Bible, the Quran comes out ahead. Is it a miracle or not?
The Quran was revealed in a seventh century tribal society yet it has 800 verses stressing the study of nature. Is it a miracle or not? It anticipates both the Big Bang and the fact that all living things require and contain water, in the same verse, "Do not the disbelievers see that the heavens and the earth were a closed-up mass, then We opened them out? And We made from water every living thing. Will they not then believe?"
[9] Is it a miracle or not? Read on and in the words of Francis Bacon,
"Read not to contradict … but to weigh and consider."
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