Answering Christianity Research Center

And brothers, I am absolutely absolutely infuriated with Muslims upholding hadiths thinking that by doing pilgramage, that their sins will be wiped out. These people come out thinking they are now sinless and they won't repent anymore to Allah because they believe they are now sinless!

This is NOT a Quranic concept. This is directly from those against Allah discouraging you from repentance! Had we been told in the Quran that there is one single deed (as Hajj) that would wipe all our sins in a package deal, then we would have had reason to believe in such a concept. Needless to say, there is no such thing in the Quran.

My parents are newly converted to Islam, indeed, I converted first and shared my beliefs with them. But, I am grateful that my family has not disowned me for leaving their Catholic faith. I am glad that my parents have accepted the message. But I am infuriated that they chose the hadith-driven path rather than the Quran path. They believe that going to hajj or pilgrimage will wipe their sins and so that discourages their repentance. I still advised them to repent even after they are done, but I believe they won't. They are currently in their mid 60's and I pray that they will establish Islam correctly.

We are busy looking for fixer for our sins and hope that they can make it all go away, that is the origin of those ridiculous unquranic satanic hadith! Just like the origin of the Christian idea that a priest can absolve sin by you confessing.

Follow the only source of law:

"Among the people, there are those who uphold baseless hadith, and thus divert others from the path of God without knowledge, and take it in vain. These have incurred a shameful retribution." 31:6

Please please please do not take me wrong. I am not trying to stir up conflict. And I hope that you and I (as rational, reasonable, intellectually honest believing Muslims) would find the truth and deal with this Hadith difficulty once again. We must not be intellectually dishonest, nor arrogant, nor unwilling to accept evidence--those are the attributes of the infidels and the disbelievers.

I (as much as I have tried), cannot bring myself in accepting non-Quranic hadith. In a previous post, I have presented Quranic verses that completely forbid it (http://www.answering-christianity.com/blog/index.php?topic=1240.0). On this post, I have presented a rationale. I hope this can be a guide for all Muslims.

Lets begin:

So which Hadith claim should we take up as true and which Hadith should we reject and why?
 
Sunnah of the Prophet Pbuh cannot be any different than the verifiable official message of God he himself delivered, publicly, as per the instructions of God, non other than the Quran and nothing but the Quran. If you ignore this first Sunnah verification then anything you follow will be a mere exercise without any warrant or purpose.
 
Of course you always have the option to throw a dart in the direction of the following collections and see where it lands and take that as the one "true" Sunnah and be prepared to be declared a "Kafir" by all the rest Mind you, all of them are claimed to be vetted through the same magical "Science" of Hadith. Needless to say, each and every one of them ignores the all important  public delivery aspect of the official message and hopes nobody will notice that 99.9% of them are single third party narrations.
 
1. Kutub Al-Sittah - (The six books of Sunnis )Sahih Al-Bukhari ( صحيح البخاري ) Sahih Muslim ( صحيح مسلم ) Al-Sunan Al-Sughra ( السنن الصغرى ) Sunan Abi Dawood ( سنن أبي داود ) Sunan Al-Tirmidhi ( جامع الترمذي ) Sunan Ibn Maja ( سُنن ابن ماجه )
 
2. Al-Kutub Al-Arb'ah - (The four books of Shias)Kitab Al-Kafi ( الكتاب الكافي ) Man La Yahduruhu Al-Faqih ( من لا يحضره الفقيه ) Tahdhib Al-Ahkam ( تهذیب الاحکام ) Al-Istibsar ( الاستبصار )
 
3. The Ibadi one Jami Sahih Tartib Al-Musnad
 
4. The Mu'tazila collection Comments on the Peak of Eloquence
 
Now comes the fun part, with the possible exception of the Ibadi collection, each and every other collection has an interesting thread running through it. All the collectors were Persians and all of them appeared out of nowhere right after the defeat of the Persians. You just need two functioning brain cells to figure out the rest.
 
No matter where the dart lands, in essence it will be no more than a game of "my scholars are better than yours". I for one refuse to assign my eternity to this crapshoot.

Being intellectually honest with myself, I cannot bring myself into believing Hadiths. Just like how I cannot bring myself into believing in Hinduism, Polytheism or Christianity. Why do you think I left Christianity? They all share things in common:

1.) Based on corrupted sources
2.) Shown to be historically corrupted
3.) Contain contradictions within themselves
4.) Contain contradictions with reality
5.) Been shown to be false many times
6.) Immense scientific errors

Assalamualaykum
The ayah is saying that we can eat food which comes from the Jews and Christians. It's not saying that we can eat the same good they eat. Anyways christains aren't even allowed to eat pork but they do it anyways. Bro if you are looking for answers to alleged contrAdictions in the Qur'an go to understanding-islam.com in my opinion they give the most satisfactory answers to alleged errors in the Qur'an

Hello brother, thank you very much for that explanation. It was originally a Yahoo Answers question and I answered it a little differently though. I thought it would be best to reference it here.

The way I answered it would be that in the beginning of that verse it says: "On this day". So this verse is not stating what Christians and Jews can eat, its a verse that is telling us (from the context) that on this day their slaughtered meat is okay for you, and your slaughtered meat is okay for them. Its not stating fact, rather it is a new law.

Here was my response:

[Let us read Quran 5:5 with its important beginning.

Quran 5:5, ON THIS DAY, good foods have been made lawful, and the food of those who were given the Scripture is lawful for you and your food is lawful for them.

Did you get that? "ON THIS DAY".

Not let us dissect the verse.

"The food of those who were given the scripture is lawful for you". So the food that the previous scripture says are made lawful for us on that day. Indeed the Jew's form of Kosher is lawful onto us (muslims).

"Your food is lawful to them". On this day, your food is lawful to them. So when this verse was revealed, what you can eat, they can eat (of the slaughtered meat).

If you notice this verse is talking about Marriage. So when you Marry someone who is a real Jew or Christian (yes Christians are actually supposed to follow the old law for not eating pork), their food is okay for you, and your food is okay for them. Don't add any meaning to that verse.

Source(s):

Alcohol consumption in the bible:

Do not drink wine nor strong drink (Leviticus 10:9)

Wine [is] a mocker, strong drink [is] raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise. (Proverbs 20:1)
i]

Earth conditions different back then - http://earthsky.org/science-wire/new-theory-explains-seeds-of-life-in-asteroids
Meteor found in Sri Lanka - http://daily.bhaskar.com/article/WOR-is-discovery-of-extraterrestrial-life-being-kept-under-wrap-a-meteor-in-sri-lank-4392617-NOR.html
"Evolution of humans did not occur on Earth" - Dr Ellis Silver
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/human-beings-came-from-another-planet--not-earth--new-book-claims-134335110.html#ZBnfZ88

I don't understand what this has to do in the Islamic context. But yes, a lot of things are possible and we won't be able to know exactly what happened. We could only resort to a probabilistic method.

Anyway, regardless of how life on earth sparked, Earth had to have the necessary molecules to sustain such life and allow it to reproduce. So in a sense, all of creation on Earth were produced from the Earth. Without the Earth's molecules to sustain life, no life would exist here.

Anyway, the burden of proof is on you, show us where the Quran goes against evolution please. I will show you how it supports the idea of creation with many steps, show me how it doesn't

(Quran 76:1) Has there come on man a long period of time when he was a thing unremembered?
(Quran 71:14)  God created you in diverse stages
(Quran 71:17) And Allah has caused you to grow from the earth a [progressive] growth.
(Quran 30:27)  God originates creation; Then reproduces it; and For him it is most easy.
(Quran 6.133)  If He wills, he can do away with you and give succession after you to WHATEVER He wills, just as He produced you from the descendants of another people.
(Quran 47:38) And if you turn away, He will replace you with another people; they will not be the likes of you.
(Quran 2:30) And when your Lord said to the angels, "Indeed, I will make upon the earth a successive authority.

^In this last verse, who are we succeeding?

How about another verse?

Quran 29:19 Have they not considered how Allah begins creation and then repeats it? Indeed that, for Allah , is easy.

^Allah is telling you to consider this natural process of Allah of how he begins creation and then repeats it.

Quran 29:20 "Roam the earth and observe how the creation was initiated. Then God will establish the final design. God is capable of all things."

^The verse right after COMMANDS us to travel through the Earth and observe how creation was initiated. Then Allah gives us a hint that Allah will establish the final design. God is so capable of all of these things, that he will definitely be able to resurrect you and judge you. An example of Allah's power is in his biological creation.

----

How about this verse?

(Quran 32:7) Allah is He who has made everything He created BETTER, and He began the creation of the human (being) out of clay

Here is a clear example of Allah telling you that creation had a process of betterment or perfection. That whatever was created was created BETTER. Also mankind's creation BEGAN. Allah BEGAN the creation of a human being out of clay! Creation with a process.

What is clay? Clay is a product of wet-earth. Water and Earth compounds is what makes up clay. In fact, we believe that the oceans are too dilute to provide the sustenance necessary for the first cells to form. We believe that it is more probable that the first cell formed in a shallow location with a good number of water and Earth. I.e Clay.

When we look for life on mars and other places, we look for water, more specifically CLAY.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/12/mars-clay-boron-meteorite-key-element-life_n_3428600.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/science/space/mars-could-have-supported-life-nasa-says.html?_r=0

http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/MartianClay/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11536891

"The first organisms were self-replicating iron-rich clays which fixed carbon dioxide into oxalic and other dicarboxylic acids".

http://www.ox.ac.uk/media/science_blog/110401.html

These articles alludes to the fact of how we are looking for clay to find life on mars. Any intellectual person would know that there is a reason why they are looking for clay. Because you have clay when you have water on a rocky planet. And if life comes from water and some other compounds necessary for life, then that clay would be the source of life.

Doesnt alien mean that something not originated on earth ? So if you think in that perspective Allah is an alien, as he is not originated on earth. He has always existed, he created the earth so yeah. And not originated on earth means that Allah is not a man made god, as he is not originated in earth. In that sense telling that Quran is written by aliens is proof that it is not a man made book. They are refutating themselves(Noobs). -.-

We are talking about extra-terrestrial aliens that exist in this word. Allah is not an Alien because he doesn't exist in this universe. He exists outside of the universe and he is the maker of the universe.

But yes, I've heard the fact that the Quran being written by aliens so many times and they are refuting themselves.

Citation please.

Its obvious that the primary source of any Islamic discussion is the Quran . Time and time again in the Quran, it refers to the disbelievers as those who have seen the evidence and denied or those who willingly disobeyed.

Example: Quran 17:15 Whoever is guided is only guided for [the benefit of] his soul. And whoever errs only errs against it. And no bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another. And never would We punish until We sent a messenger.

^This verse makes it clear that no one gets punished unless they receive the message.

Quran 19:73 And when Our verses are recited to them as clear evidences, those who disbelieve say to those who believe, "Which of [our] two parties is best in position and best in association?"

^hints that a disbeliever is those who have seen the message.

Further: Allah is just

Further: Linguistically and spiritually, there is immense beauty in the way the Quran uses the term

Actually, I tried all religions before making my decision...

OK.

Nope, Agnosticism was still there.

OK. Did you expect us to beg you into Islam?

Um..that's not very reassuring. Am I supposed to feel good about people burning in eternity?

Another emotional argument.    Those who burn in hell will be those who have heard about Islam and denied it through arrogance, refusal to worship, or intellectual dishonesty. Those who have never heard of Islam or studied it will get a second chance in the hereafter and then they may be saved or burn in hell?

Is hell eternal: There is a view of the Quran that hell isn't actually eternal and that it is for a very long time. I'm not saying you should follow this view, I'm just putting it out there. They actually derived it from Quranic verses and they explain that the Quran meant to allude to the fact that Hell is going to be a very long time. I personally do not care, what's the difference between a million years and an eternity. I wouldn't want either.

Assuming hell is eternal: Is it a fair punishment? Well if Allah left you to stay in the Earth and allowed you to live for eternity, you would disbelieve for an eternity. So eternal punishment is definitely fair for those who are arrogant.

"There are zero contradictions in the Qur'an."
Nope, there are several, like how many days was the Earth created in?

If you think there is a contradiction in the Quran, ask yourself the following:

Have I made any unverified assumptions?
Have I considered all possible definitions of the words?
Have I considered all possible translations of the words?
Have I considered all grammatical syntactic definitions/renderings?

If the answer is no to the first one and yes to the last 3 and there still is a contradiction--you have found a contradiction. Nobody has successfully found a Quranic contradiction. You too will find that there isn't a single contradiction in the Quran.

Now lets delve into the verse you have in Question, my guess is that it is Quran when it says he created everything in 6 and when you believe he said 8 in 41:9-12.

 41:9 (...He who created the earth in two days..),  41:10 (..and determined therein its sustenance in four days without distinction). 41:11 (Then He directed Himself to the heaven while it was smoke and said to it and to the earth, "Come [into being]...). 41:12 (so He completed them as seven heavens within two days..)

This verse is not saying 2+4+2= the creation of everything. I don't understand where people get this from. The verse is clear. Allah created The Earth in 2 days. He put things on earth and made it how it is. He DETERMINED/MEASURED the sustenance in 4 days. This doesn't mean he created it in 4 days. Rather it means that 4 days passed at his throne and THEN he told the Earth to form, these first 4 days were necessary to allow things to sustain the Earth (scientifically these 4 days would be when the universe would forming stars to give the Earth atoms to support life).  After he determined Earth sustenance, he brought the universe to come into existence. When he brought the universe into existence, he made 7 dimensions (layers) within it and each Layer has its natural function.

The ancients knew a lot about astronomy. The ancient Egyptians, 2000 BC, knew the Earth was not flat, but spherical in shape. They even calculated the circumference of the Earth with a medium accuracy. The Hindus calculated the circumference to 90+% accuracy. By Galileo's time, it was common knowledge, but the Catholic Church didn't like the idea of a spherical Earth because it conflicted with their religious texts (Much like how they deny evolution!)

Yes they did know a lot of astronomy, but only some beliefs were accurate. The Ancient egyptians also made mistakes and not everyone at that time believed the Earth was oval. Some believed that it was actually flat, others believed it was round disk, others believed it was perfectly round etc.

How did Muhammad always manage to never say the inaccurate stuff that the ancients made said and put only the accurate stuff. That speaks to me.

Again, the water thing was already known to man back then. I think the mention of isostacy is just a mere coincidence.

[Missing citation] Further, of course everything in the Quran is just a mere coincidence

further, like I said before, the Quran presents things that support 7th century belief and modern belief without contradicting either belief. So it uses words precisely so that they support beliefs of all times.

Numbers are meaningless. That's an argumentum ad populum

Agreed. But it should mean something to you.

Argument from authority.

Agreed. But again, it should mean something to you when knowledgeable people convert to Islam. Perhaps that Islam is worth examining?

The theory evolution directly contradicts the Quran for two reasons:

1) 38:71 clearly says "Indeed, I am going to create a human being from clay."
2) Evolution via the law of natural selection (the weak lose the struggle) is not the work of a loving creator
3) Why would God work using elimination of the unfit? Why not just make humans on the spot?

Hey bro, thanks for questioning Islam. The best thing for anyone to do is to Question everything and reflect upon reality.

1.) Saying that mankind is made of clay actually proves the Quranic argument for evolution. It is saying that we were created from a lifeless substance and then we were fashioned into shape!

Anyway, you can attack this Clay thing in 3 ways:

1.) It is metaphorical and it means that we are made of a substance derived from Earth. (Scientifically true)

2.) It means that we are made of the same basic components clay has. (Scientifically true)

3.) It literally means that we were made from clay. That the first cell existed in Clay. We currently believe that the deep ocean is rather dillute to allow the first cell to form with its necessary components of formation, and we believe it most likely formed in some kind of muddy spring which is not as dillute and shallow enough to allows the first cell to form. And I don't know if you read about it, but there is the possibility that life bearing compounds and maybe even the first cell formed on mars. And they are sure that life may have existed on mars because of the presence of clay.

Here are some sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/12/mars-clay-boron-meteorite-key-element-life_n_3428600.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/13/science/space/mars-could-have-supported-life-nasa-says.html?_r=0

http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/info/press-releases/MartianClay/

I also got a really good verse that hints at everything.

Quran 32:7 Who perfected everything which He created and began the creation of man from clay.

You notice that in this verse it is talking about how creation went through a process of perfection. And then Allah BEGAN the creation of man from clay (wet earth)

Quran 32:8 Then He made his posterity out of the extract of a liquid disdained.

After Allah began the creation of a human being out of clay, he has created sexual reproduction.

Quran 32:9 Then He proportioned him and breathed into him from His [created] soul and made for you hearing and vision and hearts; little are you grateful.

After sexual reproduction, we were proportioned and given a higher consciousness!

Notice the similarity with the basic idea of evolution.


2.) Allah is not an all-loving creator , Love is conditional and must be earned through faith and obedience. You notice in the Quran Allah does not love everybody or everything. He loves those who deserve it.  Also he may have sufficiently good reasons to support using evolution as a method of creation.

3.) Either way, the Quran says that creation had a process. You will never find a Quranic verse in support of instant creation. All Quranic verses dealing with creation show a process thereof But:

 This question implies time. Does Allah experience time? No, absolutely not. Allah exists outside of time, to him 13.7 billion years could be instant or a split second. In fact, the Quran tells us that the universe has been in existence for 6 days at Allah's throne. That means the throne experienced 6 days while we experienced 13.7 billion years. The Quran also describes the throne as being VERY massive, so according to our modern theories, more massive objects experience time slower. So why did Allah make humanity in diverse stages as he said in the Quran? Why 13.7 billion years old? Well, we must say that he has wisdom in his creation. We also know that the universe has to expand at a ''just-right'' rate and the right amount of time needed to pass to allow stars to form the necessary compounds for life and allow higher level organisms to form through a process. Humanity is not the only creation of Allah, the universe was made for others as well.

Side note: The Quran says the universe has been in existence for 6 days at God's throne (Quran 10:3). And the Earth existed for 2 periods ( Quran 41:9). Notice that Allah says that he created in the universe and the Earth and everything in between in 6 days (Quran 50:38)--this means that everything has been in existence for 6 days (so in the future it would be 7 days at the throne).

The Quran here is stating that the age of the Earth relative to the universe should be around 2/6th (1/3rd). What has science discovered:

The Earth is 4.54 billion years old
The universe is 13.7 billion years old.

4.54/13.7 is 1/3rd. Here you have an accurate representation of the relative ages of the universe in the Quran. If the Quran used a different ratio, it would contradict science, but it supported science!

Islam has 2 holy books: The Quran and proven science.