هلا راجع لي أحد هذا المقال عن أحد الأدلة على الإسلام؟

سأبحث في هذا إن شاء الله و أرحّب بأيّ رابط لمدخل في مباحث علم التجويد لو يقدمه أحد الزوار.

Evidence for Islam
- Part 1
-------------------

In the name of Allah,

This is my attempt to provide evidence that Islam is truly a divinely inspired religion. The question "Where's the proof of Islam" has been asked since the days of Prophet Muhammad and numerous works have been written about it, both old and recent. I intend to compile a list of such books for anyone interested.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all available proofs. It's not even a complete list of the evidence *I know of*. It is merely a sample of what one Muslim knows about his religion. If for some reason my arguments didn't convince you that would hardly be "proof Islam is wrong".

A final disclaimer: I'm not an Islamic scholar. I can make mistakes. I spent a lot of time to research and fact check everything but still mistakes happen.


The need for evidence
----------------------

Some people from other religions claim that "God's existence can neither be proved or disproved". I completely disagree with this. Even the Qur'an repeatedly asked attackers of Islam to provide evidence for their claims. This is why prophets through history have come accompanied with miracles. Since Prophet Muhammad was the final prophet, the primary evidence needed to be intellectual in nature so that it can propagate through different times and areas to reach the rest of humanity without the need to have a prophet alive to perform visible miracles. Hence the primary evidence for Islam's truth is the Qur'an. It's miracles include scientific, linguistic, and other aspects.

Critics of religion like to say that holy books always use circular logic and are thus not falsifiable. In the case of the Qur'an, however, the Qur'an actually provides multiple challenges to non-believers so that if the non-believers were capable of meeting the challenge, they would have proven Islam false. Examples of such challenges was the challenge to come up with something similar to even a single Sura of the Qur'an, the challenge to create a fly, and others.

Predictions that came true
---------------------------

Moving on to actual evidence: The Qur'an and Ahadeeth (quotes of The Prophet) include many predictions that came true. I intend to present some samples of them. For the evidence to be rigorous, we'll need to agree on what constitutes a 'prediction'. A rough set of requirements is that a prediction:

1- Be well specified and not vague.
2- Be of an unlikely event: "The sun will rise" is hardly a prediction. (This is related to #3 below)
3- Be of an event that cannot be forecast by normal analytical methods.
4- Obviously, it must actually come true.

The guarding of the Qur'an
-----------------------------

Allah told us that the Qur'an, which he sent down, will be preserved:

From the Qur'an, Sura 15 (Al-Hijr), Aya 9:
YUSUFALI: We have, without doubt, sent down the Message; and We will assuredly guard it (from corruption).
PICKTHAL: Lo! We, even We, reveal the Reminder, and lo! We verily are its Guardian.
SHAKIR: Surely We have revealed the Reminder and We will most surely be its guardian.

So Allah is reassuring his prophet that upon Allah himself is the task of guarding the Qur'an. Did that happen?

The collection of the Qur'an was after The Prophet's death by his companions . It was collected in both written form from the people who wrote after The Prophet and from the people who memorized it (described in this [hadeeth](http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamen...ml#006.060.201) ). In both cases The Prophet revised and verified what was written or memorized by the companions and how its spoken when he was alive. Thus the Qur'an was indeed preserved. Comparing historical written mushafs (Qur'an books) they have always been the same and unmodified. Take any two mushafs in the world today and they will be identical. But the story is much bigger than that.

Preservation beyond writing
---------------------------

The primary method of Qur'an preservation has always been memorizing. Transferred from generation to generation, millions of Muslims today know the Qur'an word for word from cover to cover (it's hundreds of pages long). As far as I know, *no other book in history* has had this treatment. Some of the huffaz are even 8 year old children, and they know all of it. If someone tried to propagate a modified Qur'an today, it would be noticed by a lot of Muslims.

Even more so, not only were the words themselves preserved in memories and mushafs, but the way they *are pronounced*, to very precise levels of detail. The companions of The Prophet learned directly from him the pronounciation of every word and there was no disagreement about them on how they're pronounced after The Prophet's death. Afterwords they taught it to their own followers. To guarantee the authenticity of the information across the centuries the rigorous science of "Isnad" has been formed. Isnad is all about trustworthy propagation of information. It is worthy of notice that the Isnad of the Qur'an is continuous from a number of known Qur'an reciters today until Prophet Muhammad himself. One way of transferring Isnad is the Ijaza; literally "a permission", obtained by a reciter when he has correctly read aloud *all of the Qur'an* in front of another reputable authenticated reciter. (Some even go further and give Ijaza only for multiple read-alouds to the same authorizer, read alouds to more than one reputable reciter or that the Ijaza seeker also memorizes the whole Qur'an..and so on). So that means that the Qur'an is being spoken today in the same way The Prophet was speaking it, despite the fact that reputable Qur'an reciters today come from different backgrounds and countries (including non-Arab countries). It's a very interesting experience how you could be talking to, say, an Egyptian Muslim scholar speaking in the usual Egyptian dialect of Arabic, but when he reads the Qur'an aloud, he switches completely to the original style of Arabic as spoken by native Arabs from the Arab peninsula.

Incidentally, there is an ordering of Qur'an receiters based on the number links in the chain of Isnad for a specific person. The shorter the chain, the higher the person's Isnad. For example among the current highest level receiters of the Qur'an are ones who have only 27 links between each of them and Prophet Muhammad. It is very interesting to read a famous Qari's biography and witness the names of everyone in the complete chain of Isnad from him or her to The Prophet.

Furthermore, the Arabic language has been kept alive, intact and spoken by millions so that the Qur'an is not only well preserved but well understood. The Arabs themselves didn't have an official grammar and mastered their language intuitively, but shortly after the death of The Prophet many people accepted Islam from non-Arab areas and the science of Arabic linguistics had to evolve rapidly to cope with the new needs of non-Arabs. The science of Arabic grammar was formed and it and many other forms of Arabic linguistics kept evolving since then until they became prestigious sciences people competed to master.

Is it really evidence?
----------------------

So, the Qur'an was well preserved in all possible ways. How does this relate to it being an evidence of Islam's truth? Some people argue that the mere preservation of the Qur'an is not sufficient evidence. My point is that it's not just the preservation but the *prediction*.

The Qur'an mentions in itself that it will be preserved, and until today and for almost 1400 years the prediction has been true. It cannot be a coincidence or a simple event taken for granted because of many reasons, including:

1) The long time involved
2) For most of that time, the Qur'an was copied by hand, which is usually error prone yet it wasn't changed.
3) The uniquely high thoroughness of the preservation
4) The Qur'an is the primary source for what all Muslims believe and how they act. Changing it could be a means to control and influence all Muslims (indeed, among the people who changed the Bible were those motivated by the dreams of power and influence). Thus there's might be a strong motivation to change it.
5) The intactness of the Qur'an is one of it's falsifiable claims. If someone wanted to prove that Islam is wrong he would simply prove that the Qur'an has been changed or corrupted. No attempt to change it succeeded.

Could it be argued that this preservation is simply the result of Muslims being powerful enough to enforce it? Not so:
- The Muslim world has been dominated by the West in the recent few centuries (and colonized for a long period) while Europe and the USA have been much more powerful and resourceful and could strongly influence how Muslims think and what they read (and they did in some areas).

- Even among the Muslims themselves there are those who have stopped having a strong allegiance to the teaching of Islam
and adopted a Westernized view to the world.

- Other holy books like the Bible have been corrupted, despite having strong followers and powerful supporting nations.

No one could forecast that among the changes and secularization of much of the Islamic nations that Muslims would still strive preserve their holy book to the point that a big number of the population of Islamic countries completely memorized it.


Going back to our criteria of what constitutes "prediction as evidence":

**Specific**: Yes. Predicted to be guarded from corruption.
**Came true**: Yes. Fervently preserved in multiple and sometimes unique ways.
**Unlikely event, can't be forecast**: Yes. Guarded for centuries so far, even after the nations of its believers has weakened and powerful parties have interest in modifying it. Other holy books were quickly modified so it can't be claimed that preservation is a naturally expected state for all holy books.

So in summary: Prediction came true in every possible way, even if it was unlikely to be preserved if it wasn't divinely guarded. That concludes my first argument; until I write the second your feedback is welcome.

(to be continued).