The inheritance mistake in detail - Part 2

Two historical attempts at the mistake

Now, what happened when Muslims discovered the inheritance math mistake in the Quran? They needed to follow Sharia law in order to divide the inheritance, yet they took the Quran as divine with no mistakes. There could only have been two results: mass deconversion from Islam or "fixes" that allowed for peaceful division of the inherited property.

Al-Awl (or Aul)

Well, it turns out, I wasn't the first to discover this mistake. In fact, the 4th Caliph, Ali, saw it in 7th century A.D. His attempted fix, known as Al-Awl (or Aul), is basically a normalization. So, let's look at this example from the last post: A man dies and leaves behind 3 daughters, 2 parents and 2 wives. Let's see how Ali would change things (http://www.muslim.org/english-quran/quran.htm under section 4:11):

"The ‘aul was first legalized by ‘Ali, the fourth Caliph, who, being questioned about the share of a wife, the other heirs being the two parents and two daughters, gave the answer “without premeditation” that the wife’s one-eighth had become one-ninth, for the two parents should take one-third, the two daughters two-thirds, and the wife one-eighth, which make up nine-eighths, and hence ‘Ali decided that each of the heirs should take less than was due,
so that the proportion might remain the same "

Now, keeping in mind that nowhere in the Quran does it say to normalize, let's look at the resultant math:

Quran's literal words give a total of 9/8:

3 daughters: 2/3
2 parents: 1/3
2 wives: 1/8

Using Al-Awl rules to normalize, you get:

3 daughters: 16/27
2 parents: 8/27
2 wives: 1/9

The first set of numbers were multiplied by 8/9 so that the total could equal 100%. That's it folks. A quick fix with no basis in the Quran.

Residues and Remainders

Another idea was to take remainders after each calculation. Let me be more clear by quoting from the same Muslim website above:

"In this case the parents first take their respective shares,
and the residue goes to the children, if there are any, failing which, the share of the
parents is increased. "

So, instead of following the Quran literally, that "Allah makes clear to you," Muslims invented words that didn't exist in the 4:11, 4:12 and 4:176 of the Quran...specifically, "first take" and "residue." There is no mention of order in the Quran's inheritance calculation, nor is there a mention of residue. Just for fun, let's go through the calculation:

2 parents first: 1/3, then daughters? No, actually, those who follow this fix actually calculate the 2 wives first at 1/8 total. Yes, I know that the wives are mentioned in a whole other (later) verse, so it's even sillier for them to get their share first but so be it. OK, so now, we've given away 1/3 + 1/8 = 11/24, leaving a balance of 13/24. Now, the daughters get their 2/3 of 13/24 = 13/36. In summary:

3 daughters: 13/36
2 parents: 1/3
2 wives: 1/8

Now, 13/36 + 1/3 + 1/8 = 59/72 <1 style="font-style: italic;" size="2">"The balance (i.e., 1-59/72 = 13/72) shall be given to the person bequeathed by the deceased; in the absence of such a person, it shall be given to the closest male relative of the deceased; in the absence of such a relative, the balance shall be distributed as per the regulations of the state of residence of the deceased."
I interpret this to mean "we don't know because we just made up the fix anyway." LOL Seriously, there is still a math problem, and, I imagine, some very angry relatives.

Let's revisit this fix. An order was added to the calculation whereby shares were taken of residues rather than the whole. However, this solution also has no basis in the Quran. Nowhere does it say to follow a particular order, especially in reverse of how shares are presented in the Quran (children first, then parents, then wives as opposed to parents and wives then children in the fix).

Islamic Math Mistakes With Fixes

Now, even if we were to accept the fixes, and even if we believed that the justification (of which there is none within the "perfect" Quran). Are we still left with a contradiction? Yes. Simply put, the followers of said fixes are not following the perfect Quran. Muslims who you debate actually know this, and will therefore refuse to give you the final percentages in a debate. If they do, go through this:

"4:11 says "if only daughters, two or more, their share is two-thirds of the inheritance," does it not?"

The answer: yes

"OK, well you're giving those 3 daughters in this example 16/27 or 13/26 (depending on which fix they're using). Doesn't that violate the Quran?"

The answer: uhh...but...uhh...you have to calculate shares after normalizing (or based on residues).

"OK, but the Quran never says to calculate shares after normalizing (or based on residues). In fact, there isn't even a word that is close to normalizing (or residues, nor any mention of order in the calculation). Let's return to 4:11..."

And so the debate will go on ad infinitum. The point stays though - silly Allah can't do math.

In the next post, I will go through some of the other rebuttals and lead into more inheritance mistakes.