Comments on How to discuss Islam with Muslims: Ezra (Uzair) and the next Quran error

Hey I read your post today it's wonderful But ...

2009-05-31T04:49:48.863-07:00

Hey I read your post today it's wonderful But Sorry the Jew Blieve that Ezra Son Of God Like U Blieve in Jesus If u Wanna The Proof from your book I will be happy to show U where u can read It and How to pray to Ezra (Ozer)>

Best Regards

Hi SillyAllah! I hope you are alright :) This bl...

2009-05-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

Hi SillyAllah!

I hope you are alright :)

This blog post (Ezra) intrigued me when I read it, so much so that I decided to make a thread about it on the Catholic Answers Forum; I asked Jews whether or not Ezra really is a "son of God" in their religion. If you would like to check out the thread, you can find it here: http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=336539

As you can tell from the first post, I got a warm welcome after my suspension was lifted (I was acting uncharitably, so the mods suspensed my account).

It's amazing that you wrote so much but never addr...

2008-12-23T13:20:00.000-08:00

It's amazing that you wrote so much but never addressed the issue.

Do you believe the Quran when it says the Jews call Uzair the son of Allah? If so, where is your proof? If not, then you admit the Quran made a mistake?

don't you see how using the word "the" in the phra...

2008-12-23T08:14:00.000-08:00

don't you see how using the word "the" in the phrase "the jews" to mean encompassing ALL jews is exactly the kind of idiotic mistake people make when interpreting translations?

Al yahood = "al" can imply the definite article as well as other things, so it's commonly translated as "the." Does that mean it's identical in every way to the english use of "the"? No, not even close, and to imply otherwise is hysterical.

Huckabee pretty much kicked your butt and you responded by basically repeating your talking points and claiming, amusingly enough, that even if you can't interpret the translation of the Quran, you can at the very least interpret the translation of the hadith in the same exact way.

Don't you get by now that the Quran is more a "recitation" than a historical document that should emphasize events in ancient history similarly to how they are emphasized in modern times? One of the points of "the Jews believe ___ is the son of God, the Christians believe ___ is the son of God" is the parallel language, not the relative popularity of those beliefs. Your close-minded agenda to drown these verses in endless criticism has caused you to completely miss the wondrous beauty of them.

Wow, a long post, chock full of Muslim apologetics...

2008-02-11T12:13:00.000-08:00

Wow, a long post, chock full of Muslim apologetics and fallacies, but let's get to your key points in a concise fashion:

1. You claim that Ezra could be referred to as "a son" and not necessarily "the son" based on grammar. If you look back at my original post, I made the point that it referred to "the son" after reviewing the structure of the verse, not the grammar (as the two out of three translators probably did since they agree with me). I will review the structure again below to demonstrate that if what you say is true, the verse in the Quran is in more trouble. I will also go through Hadith which shows the exact same parallel structure!

2. You claim that the verse refers to a sect of Jews, but not THE Jews. Here, you use the fallacy of argument by authority with a little circular logic (Use of Quran apologists to prove the Quran). I found it rather funny because you cleverly avoided the same grammatical reasoning that you used in your first point - why? Because the reader would've seen your argument holds no water. (ALyahoodu= THE Jews). See below where I go through the Arabic itself with English side by side - you know, because Arabic is so subtle and all.

BTW, can you point me and the readers to the words in the Quran that reference "a small group of Jewish people either at the time of early Islam or before" that believed Ezra to be the son of God? I don't see these words, and, since you are not a prophet, I don't believe you're allowed to add words to the Quran.

3. You claim that just because there is no objective proof whatsoever that a single Jew in history ever claimed Ezra to be the son of God doesn't mean the Quran erred. I'll let the readers decide that one if they can stop laughing :) . You also ignore the point that it is traditionally blasphemous for Jews to even claim a son of God. Your rationalizing (and I do mean rationalizing) is based on defeating straw men (more fallacy) including that Muhammad was a "sincere delusional." There are many other straw men, and you only pick your favorite. What if Muhammad just made a mistake? He thought he saw a pattern between Jews and Christians, but had simply made a mistake. Here's another strawman, this time more vicious - what if Muhammad needed some way in which he could discredit Jews. By showing they worshiped the(or a) son of God, he had all the ammunition he needed to finish the very verse: "may Allah destroy them; how they are turned away."

Look, the Ezra error is one of many, many errors in the Quran. You can try apologetics to lie to yourself, but it is much harder for others to buy the lie. Instead of going into denial and attack, maybe you should read the Quran with a skeptical eye before you waste your entire life on the imaginary friend of Muhammad. With that, let's go through the verse in detail once more:

"And the Jews say: Uzair is the son of Allah; and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them; how they are turned away! (9.30)"

Let's go through the key words (before all that "may Allah destroy them" rubbish) in Arabic:

"Waqalati (they say) alyahoodu (THE Jews) AAuzayrun(Ezra) ibnu(son of) Allahi (Allah)

waqalati (they say) alnnasara (THE Christians) almaseehu (the messaiah) ibnu(son of) Allahi (Allah)".

"Al" (in Alyahoodu), as you pointed out, means "The." Thus, we are referring to THE Jews, not Arabian Jews, Jews that knew Muhammad, NY Jews or Los Angeles Jews, but THE Jews without qualification. Are you denying that the Quran is trying to draw a parallel between Jewish and Christian beliefs? The structure of the two sentences is identical. The Quran is saying that what THE Jews think about Ezra is identical to what the Christians think about their Messiah (i.e. Christ) - or maybe you're claiming that Christians don't think that their Messiah (Christ) is THE son of God? The Quran is simply wrong either way. The Jews have never considered any prophet to be the Son of God in the same way that Christians consider Christ to be. It is one of the major differences between Judaism and Christianity. The rest of the verse only makes sense with this understanding (THE Jews) because it then says, "these are the words of THEIR mouths;" Now, Muhammad groups the two together as though Jews and Christians both talk about the son of God. Why would it say "their" mouths if we're talking about all Christians, but just a sect of Jews (and btw, this sect has never been proven)?

For further proof, let's go to the Hadith: Go to Sahih Muslim in The Book of Faith:

...Then the Jews would be summoned, and it would be said to them: What did you worship? They will say: We worshipped 'Uzair, son of Allah. It would be said to them: You tell a lie; Allah had never had a spouse or a son... 1:352

So again, we find Muslims claiming that "the Jews" worshipped Uzair (Ezra) as son of Allah. You can put an "a" or a "the" in there, either way, you're in trouble with history. If you go further, you will find the same parallel structure for the Christians:

...Then the Christians would be summoned and it would be said to them: What did you worship? They would say: We worshipped Jesus, son of Allah. It would be said to them: You tell a lie; Allah did not take for Himself either a spouse or a son.

Again, I'll let the reader decide if there is indeed a parallel structure demonstrating the error.

Let's go further - if what you say about some unproven Jewish sect at Muhammad's place and time is true (and you have no proof), then the Quran is not timeless or universal. It is only for the period and place that Muhammad lived - is that so? How could the "one true religion" be based on a book that's only true for a short period of time in a tiny area of the Arabian peninsula? Worse yet, as I've shown, there's no reason to accept this verse as anything other than an error at any place or time.

And I'm still not done :) Now, let's go to the end of the verse: "May Allah destroy them". So all of this was appears to be build up for Allah's wrath. Allah needed more reason to hate the Jews (as if there wasn't enough anti-Jewish crap in the Quran), and Muhammad gave it to him with this error. It was an error, face it. Moreover, I hypothesize that it was an error with a vicious purpose.

Dear Webmaster,

1) In fact, "a son" rather...

2008-02-10T18:47:00.000-08:00

Dear Webmaster,

1) In fact, "a son" rather than "the" son is a perfectly acceptable translation of the verse. "Uzayru'b nuLlah"
The proof of this is in the fact that if I was to say "Edward ibnu George", "Edward son of George", this does not discount the possibility George having further sons. However, if I said Edward, Al-Ibn George", this would indeed imply "Edward the (sole) son of George". Translators have translated "al-miseehibnu Llah" to mean "the Messiah is the [sole] son of God based on their knowledge that Christians do indeed believe that Jesus is the sole 'son of God', whereas what Yusuf Ali was implying with his differentiation, is that his interpretation of the verse about the Jews was that they believed Ozayr to be one of many 'sons of God'. An elementary knowledge of Arabic demonstrates the validity of the translation.

2) Most mufassiroon believe that the Ozayr verse refers to a small group of Jewish people either at the time of early Islam, or before. In fact, contrary to what you say, it is an accepted device in classical Arabic usage to say, for example, "qatala Bani Quraysh", "The tribe of Quraysh killed", not to mean, of course, that the whole of the tribe of Quraysh killed someone, but rather some individuals, or even one individual from the tribe killed someone. So, your claim that the verse necessarily refers to "all" the Jews is unfounded both linguistically and traditionally - in fact the consensus of Muslim scholars is that the verse refers to a group of Jews, rather than all the Jews.

One simply cannot base one conclusions about such matters on English translations - Arabic being a particularly subtle Semitic language and English being a language derived from both indo-European and Germanic roots, both of which are utterly disconnected to Semitic roots - obviously makes translation between the languages essentially an interpretive affair. What I am getting at is that translations of Arabic works into European languages are insufficient tools for adequate interpretations of such works.

3) You imply that a lack in Jewish sources of corroboration of this verse implies that the Qur'an errs. This is simply very careless thinking - you seem to be implying that Jewish history is a flawless account of every single detail of anything ever said, done, or believed over the last several thousand years, when of course 99% of ancient Jewish history (by that I mean all things that actually happened) is lost to us, as is the case with all ancient history. For example, imagine that a source from 13th Century France, a letter perhaps, claims that a group of philosophers in France believe that the Trinity in in fact not the real Absolute, but that God is in fact single and undifferentiated. But then someone says, "hold on, no historians from this time have ever alluded to this group, therefore I can definitively state that they can't have existed!" Whoever said this would of course be making a silly error.

Naturally, the (hypothetical) letter would itself be a historical source, written by someone who knew of this group of philosophers - our assumption would be that the writer is telling the truth - because there is no particular reason to doubt he is telling the truth - he would need a motive to lie. Even if it was a lie (and we would need proof to make the claim) we would have to take into account the fact that lies are not particularly easy to perpetuate when you are talking about whole groups of imaginary people i.e. people around notice the imaginary group is not really there, and take you to task about it.

This leaves us with the possibility that it was misinformation, but again, for someone to go to the trouble of writing about something that they have no certain knowledge of is unlikely - people refer to events, situations and people because they refer to aspects of their own particular situation or experience of life which are relevant - why would someone refer, for example, to a group of philosophers they'd heard of if their certainty that the group of philosophers actually existed was not confident beyond a reasonable doubt? It would not be relevant to a discussion about topics which had instrumental value or relevance.

Now if we take the lesson of this analogy back to the case of the Blessed Prophet Muhammad and the Qur'an, we have two possibilities. One is the idea that the Blessed Prophet was a type of 'sincere delusional' who genuinely thought that he heard the Qur'an recited to him, but was merely mistaken about its origin. The problem with this is that it is incompatible with the actual content of the Qur'an - masses of information on various matters, religions etc. that are corroborated by other sources - meaning that those who pedal the thesis that the Blessed Prophet was not a messenger from God would have to revert to the "insincere power-grabber doing a lot of research into Jewish and Christian sources" thesis they are famously fond of.

It is also incompatible with the extremely rigourous historical record we have of the Blessed Prophet's distinctly non-delusional approach and behaviour - enlightened maxims, arbitration between people, leadership etc.

The idea of someone researching Jewish stories, and all the multifarious aspects of life it would be necessary to know about if one was to 'write' the Qur'an is simply not compatible with the idea of a sincere delusional taking his knowledge from visions - and yet the historical record shows that the Blessed Prophet both experienced visions and was perceived as being utterly sincere by his contemporaries. What I am getting at is that it is very unlikely that the verse in the Qur'an would have been considered 'wrong' by people aware of different Jewish sects in Arabia at the time - as a Medinan surah, if people weren't aware of the Ozayr cult, the Blessed Prophet would have been open to immediate criticism, or at least questioning, over the verse - yet there is no mention of such a phenomena in the voluminous hadith literature.

If Ozayr being said to be the son of God was an exclusively Arabian phenomena, it would have disappeared very quickly from Arabia after the rise of Islam anyway, hence the lack of Jewish record of this. It may well have been a small mystical group.

Certainly, your argument of Qur'anic error is a rather weak one. Since Muslims know that the Qur'an is a revelation from God, any ambiguity hardly threatens the books integrity - the books reception is not contingent on its correspondence with non-Muslim uncertainty - rather it is the profound spiritual perception of its revealed nature that ensures the continued growth and deep spiritual health of Islam for all time. It is up to speculation to match up to Qur'anic assertions, not the other way round, since this great revelation in its sublime beauty is its own most eloquent epistemological standard.

The Qur'an in reality is the uncreated word of God - and God knows best about who believes what, when, and why - if you read on, the verse is clearly referring to general excesses in raising religious leaders up to stations that are not appropriate to their real natures.

Again, terribly authoritative net "polemics" against Islam and Muslims continue to amuse and dismay with the sheer range of their stupidity. By the way, the title of your blog is potentially offensive not just to Muslims, but to Christians too - Arab Christians (unsurprisingly enough) also use the word "Allah" for God (since it means "God"!!) whilst Jesus, peace be with him himself used the Aramaic word "Allaha".

You can continue to entertain :) I checked your l...

2008-01-14T05:49:00.000-08:00

You can continue to entertain :) I checked your links and, alas, there was no new information. Since you've gone to fallacies to support your argument, I can only assume that you have none. Why are you so dishonest with yourself? Look at you, instead of reviewing the facts to better understand whether you are a blind believer in an imaginary friend, your twitch reflex is to defend without learning. If you cannot defeat the arguments with facts and logic, it means you might be wrong. Use your brain and wake up!

For the readers, we can see the typical fallacies used by Muslims:
ad-hominem
"No more than a newly invented structure among other newly invented structures that someone may use or throw out in their writing project."
(this one is funny, it's hard to even understand what he means)

"They do not govern Reality, young man."
(Why is Reality capitalized? Oh, and I'm probably older than he is)

Appeal to authority
"The appropriate documentation..."
(ahh, the "appropriate" documentation...unfortunately, it was inappropriate because it had no facts)

A'UudhuBillaahi Minash Shaitaanir Rajeem.

B...

2008-01-14T00:38:00.000-08:00

A'UudhuBillaahi Minash Shaitaanir Rajeem.

Bismillaahir RaHmaanir RaHeem:

In reference to your detailed but totally unfounded allegations about Al Quraan:

A list of literary faults and strongpoints on a website you found is no more than some newly invented structure among other newly invented structures that someone may use or throw out in their writing project. They do not govern Reality, young man.

You may abide by those literary guidelines and sociology observations but that is never going to be sufficient for yourself or anyone else.

The appropriate documentation of the ways the Jews wrongfully believed in the one called 'Uzair is available.
For Instance one may examine:

http://www.alqaim.info/unity/?p=156

I don't assume you would believe it yet but anything is possible Bi Idhnillaah (with the Permission of Allaah).

http://youtube.com/watch?v=N48Ymna9q8k&feature=related

2008-01-14T00:19:00.000-08:00

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