Main Properties of the Quran

John Davenport states the following when he mentions the Quran in his book, “An Apology for Mohammed and the Quran”:
‘The Quran is held by Mohammedans in the greatest reverence and respect. They dare not touch it without being first washed or legally purified; therefore, they write these words on its cover:
"None shall touch it, but they who are purified." (al-Waqia, 56/79)
Thus, they prevent people from touching it when they are not clean. They read it reverentially, kiss it, carry it with them in military expeditions; they inscribe sentences from it upon their banners, adorn it with gold and precious stone; they do not want it to be owned by a non-Muslim ’
The source of Islamic education is this book. The children in all schools are taught to recite and memorize it.
They study it, in order to find therein the light of their life.
They have mosques where the whole of it is read.
For twelve hundred years has the voice of the Quran been thus kept resounding, at all moments, through the ears and hearts of so many millions of believers.
The Quran repeatedly enjoins belief in Allah, resignation to His will, and perfect obedience to His commands, charity, mildness, abstinence from spirituous liquors, and toleration, ascribing particular merit to dying in the cause of religion.
As to practical duties, besides the obligation to propagate Islam, is alms, to which the one-fortieth part of a person's property must be appropriated and bestowed.
However, the injunctions of the Quran were not confined to religious and moral duties.
Gibbon says, “From the Atlantic to the Ganges, the Quran is acknowledged as the fundamental code, not only of theology, but of civil and criminal jurisprudence, and the laws which regulate the actions and the property of mankind are governed by the immutable sanctions of the will of Allah.
Or, in other words, the Quran is the general code of Muslims; a religious, social, civil, comercial, military, judicial, criminal, penal code.
The Quran regulates everything, from the ceremonies of religion to those of daily life; from the salvation of the soul to the health of the body ; from the rights of all to those of each individual ; from the interests of man to those of society ; from morality to crime ; from punishment here to that in the life to come.
The Quran, consequently, differs materially from the Old Testament.
As Combe states, "it contains no system of theology like the Old Testament.
It is composed chiefly of narratives, descriptions, sublime effusions of devotional emotions, and much sound morality bound together by no striking logical connection.
Nor is the Quran like the New Testament to be considered merely as the standard by which the religious opinions, the worship, and the practice of its followers are regulated.
The Quran is also a political system; for on this foundation the throne itself is erected.
Hence, every law of the State is derived, and by this authority every question of life and property is finally decided.
The Quran teaches, in the most explicit manner, the existence of one only God, eternal, who was imbegotten and has no children; without equal, Creator of all things, good and merciful, protecting those who are not ungrateful to Him, pardoning those who offend Him provided they repent, Sovereign Judge at the day of resurrection; He will render to every one, according to his works that is, to the good, and to those who fight and die in his cause eternal felicity.
The Quran also teaches the existence of angels, but it forbids that these as well as the Prophet should be objects of adoration.
Every man has two protecting angels, who watch over his actions.
Demons are the enemies of human kind.
Muslims also believe in the existence of jinn.
The morality of the Quran has not been less unjustly attacked than its dogmas. It condemns debauchery and excesses of every kind, hypocrisy, avarice, jealousy and the thirsting after worldly goods.
It ordains alms-giving, filial piety, gratitude towards God, fidelity to engagements, sincerity compassion towards orphans, justice, without respect of persons, chastity and decency even in words, patience and submission, the ransoming of captives, the returning of good for evil, benevolence, forgiveness of injuries; doing all of them not with the view of obtaining the approbation of the world, but for being acceptable unto God.
The Quran, as already said, is not only a religious code, but contains, in addition, the civil laws of Muslims.
Therefore, the Quran restrains polygamy by limiting the number of wives to four, prescribes the ceremonies to be observed at marriages, determines the matrimonial duties of the married pair, even the length of the time for suckling, that of widowhood, and regulates the dowry and jointure, as well as the course to be pursued in separations and divorces.
Inheritances, wills, guardianships, contracts are all mentioned in the Quran.
Lastly, punishments are pronounced against false witnesses, prevarication in judges, theft, infanticide, committing major sins, fraud, etc.
Therefore, Hazrat Muhammad is not only a prophet but also a legislator.
In order fully to appreciate the difference between Christianity and Islam, it must be borne in mindthat whereas the hold which the former has over its professors is naturally referred by them to its dogmas, thus causing religion and morals to be regarded as distinct from each other, in the latter, it is, on the contrary, not the dogmatic, but the practical portion which has influenced the moral, social, legal, and political ideas and circumstances of its believers. So, to the mind of a Muslim, patriotism, law, tradition, custom and constitution is expressed by one word; and that word is Islam.
Among many excellencies of which the Quran may justly boast are two eminently conspicuous ; the one being the tone of awe and reverence which it always observes when speaking of or referring to the Deity, to whom it never attributes human frailties and passions ; the other the total absence throughout it of all impure, immoral and indecent ideas, expressions, narratives and blemishes.
So exempt, indeed, is the Quran from these undeniable defects, that it needs not the slightest castration, and may be read, from beginning to end, without causing a blush to suffuse the cheek of modesty itself.
The religion thus established by the Quran is a stern and severe monotheism.
The divinity described by the Quran is so far from being a mere philosophic first cause regulating the universe by established laws, while itself stands aloof in unapproachable majesty, is an ever-present, ever working energy….[30]
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As a result of his scientific studies on holy books, the head of French Medical Faculty of Surgery Department, Prof. Dr. Maurice Bucaille, who is both the author and publisher of the book titled “The Bible, The Qur'an & Science”, reached the happiness of selecting the Qur’an as his book and Islam as his religion; after having showed in his book that the scriptures of the Old Testament and the New Testament do not comply with modern sciences, he says;
The scientific considerations, which are very specific to the Qur'an, greatly surprised me at first.
Up until then, I had not thought it possible for one to find so many statements in a text compiled more than thirteen centuries ago referring to extremely diverse subjects and all of them totally in keeping with modern scientific knowledge.
In the beginning, I had no faith whatsoever in Islam. I began this examination of the texts with a completely open mind and a total objectivity.
If there was any influence acting upon me, it was gained from what I had been taught in my youth; people did not speak of Muslims, but of 'Muhammadans'.
To make it quite clear that what was meant was a religion founded by a man and which could not therefore have any kind of value in terms of God.
Like many in the West, I could have retained the same false notions about Islam; they are so widely- spread today, that I am indeed surprised when I come across anyone, other than a specialist, who can talk in an enlightened manner on this subject.
I therefore admit that before I was given a view of Islam different from the one received in the West, I was myself extremely ignorant.
I owe the fact that I was able to realize the false nature of the judgments generally made in the West about Islam to exceptional circumstances.
It was in Saudi Arabia itself that an inkling was given to me of the extent to which opinions held in the West on this subject are liable to error. The debt of gratitude I owe to the late King Faisal, whose memory I salute with deepest respect, is indeed very great.
The fact that I was given the signal honour of hearing him speak on Islam and was able to raise with him certain problems concerning the interpretation of the Qur'an in relation to modern science is a very cherished memory. It was an extremely great privilege for me to have gathered so much precious information from him personally and those around him.
Since I had now seen the wide gap separating the reality of Islam from the image we have of it in the West, I experienced a great need to learn Arabic (which I did not speak) to be sumciently well-equipped to progress in the study of such a misunderstood religion.
My first goal was to read the Qur'an and to make a sentence- by-sentence analysis of it with the help of various commentaries essential to a critical study.
My approach was to pay special attention to the description of numerous natural phenomena given in the Qur'an; the highly accurate nature of certain details referring to them in the Book, which was only apparent in the original, struck me by the fact that they were in keeping with present-day ideas, although a man living at the time of Muhammad could not have suspected this at all.
I subsequently read several works written by Muslim authors on the scientific aspects- of the Qur'anic text: they were extremely helpful in my appreciation of it, but I have not so far discovered a general study of this subject made in the West.
What initially strikes the reader confronted for the first time with a text of this kind is the sheer abundance of subjects discussed: the Creation, astronomy, the explanation of certain matters concerning the earth, and the animal and vegetable kingdoms, human reproduction.
Whereas monumental errors are to be found in the Bible, I could not find a single error in the Qur'an. I had to stop and ask myself:
If a man was the author of the Qur'an, how could he have written facts in the Seventh century A.D. that today are shown to be in keeping with modern scientific knowledge?
There was absolutely no doubt about it: the text of the Qur'an we have today is most definitely a text of the period.
What human explanation can there be for this observation?
In my opinion there is no explanation!
There is no special reason why an inhabitant of the Arabian Peninsula should, at a time when King Dagobert was reigning in France (629-639 A.D.), have had scientific knowledge on certain subjects that was ten centuries ahead of our own.
By the same token, I have tried to find references in the Qur'an to phenomena accessible to human comprehension but which have not been confirmed by modern science. In this context, I think I may have found references in the Qur'an to the presence of planets in the Universe that are similar to the Earth.
It must be added that many scientists think this is a perfectly feasible fact, although modern data cannot provide any hint of certainty.
I thought I owed it to myself to mention this, whilst retaining all the attendant reservations that might be applied.
Had this study been made thirty years ago, it would have been necessary to add another fact predicted by the Qur'an to what would have been cited concerning astronomy; this fact is the conquest of space.
At that time, subsequent to the first trials of ballistic missiles, people imagined a day when man would perhaps have the material possibility of leaving his earthly habitat and exploring space.
It was then known that a verse existed in the Qur'an (25) predicting how one day man would make this conquest. This statement has now been verified. (26)
We have tried to report the serious and appreciative views on the Quran and Islam of some Muslim and non-Muslim scientists, scholars and philosophers that studied the Quran and Islam.
Our aim is not to support the Quran and Islam by the views of foreigners but to help some intellectuals that have no essential information about the Quran and Islam to abandon their negative thoughts about Islam.[27]
The part that we quoted from the valuable book of Mustafa Asım Köksal called "Hazreti Muhammed ve İslamiyet" work ends here. We want to end this issue with a prayer:
“O Allah! Make the Quran a friend of us in the world, a comrade in the grave, an intercessor in the Day of Judgment, a light on Sirat bridge, a shelter and covering against Hell fire, a friend in Paradise and a guide and a leader for all good deeds. For the sake of the person (pbuh) to whom the Quran was sent down, make the evidence of the Quran clear for us. Amin.”
[1] Ibn Ishaq, V. 4, p. 251, Malik, V. 2, p. 899, Tabari, V. 3, p. 169, Dhahabi, p. 589.
[2] an-Nisa: 59.
[3] Ahmad b. Hanbal, Musnad, V. 2, p. 451, Bukhari, Sahih, V. 6, p. 97, Muslim, V. 1,p.134.
[4] Badruddin Ayni, Umdatu'l-Kari, V. 19, p. 13.
[5] Badruddin Ayni, V. 19, p. 13, Ibn Hajar, Fathu'l-Bari, V. 9, p. 5.
[6] Ibn Hajar, V. 9, p. 5.
[7] Qadi Iyad, Shifa, V. 1, p. 215-216.
[8] Badruddin Ayni, V. 19, p. 13.
[9] Raghib, Mufradatu'l-Qur'an, p. 402.
[10] H. Sayyid Sharif, Ta'rifat, p. 116.
[11] Tirmidhi, V. 5, p. 172-1 73, Darimi, V. 2, p. 31 2, Haythami, Majmau'z-Zawaid, V. 7, p. 164.
[12] Hakim, Mustadrak, V. 1, p. 553, Ibn Hajar, Matalibu'l-Aliya, V. 3, p. 284, .
[13] Haythami reporting from Tabarani, Majmau'z-zawaid, V. 7, p. 165, Ibn Athir, Nihaya, V. 1, p. 229, Badruddin Zarkashi, Burhan, V. 1,5.454, Ibn Hajar, Matalib, V. 3, p. 133.
[14] Suyuti, al-Itqan.V.2, p. 125-126.
[15] Tabari, Tafsir, V. 25, p. 6.
[16] Ibnu'n-Nadim, Index, p. 56- 65.
[17] Fakhru'r-Razi. Tafsiru'l-kabir. V. 1. p. 3.
[18] The chapters of al-Baqara, Aal-i Imran, an-Nisa, al-Maida, al-An'am, al-A'raf and Yunus
[19] The chapters of at-Tawba, an-Nahl, Hud, Yusuf, al-Kahf, Beni Israel (al-Isra), al-Anbiya, Taha, al-Mu'minun, ash-Shuara and as-Saffat.
[20] 42 chapters, which have fewer than a hundred verses.
[21] 60 short chapters, which come after the chapters that have fewer than one hundred chapters and called "mufassal".
[22] Ahmad b. Hanbal, Musnad, V. 4, p. 107.
[23] Tirmidhi Sunan, V. 5, p. 155-156, Hakim , Mustadrak, V. 1, p. 558.
[24] Sulaiman Nadvi, İslâm Târihi, V. 4, p. 1575-1577.
[25] ar-Rahman: 33.
[26] M. Bucaille. p. 179-184
[27] M.Asım Köksal, Hazreti Muhammed ve İslamiyet, V.4, p.841.
[28] Ömer Rıza Doğrul, Kur'an Nedir?, p.97-137.
[29] Yeni Sabah Newspaper 23.4.1958 an 4.5.1958 .
[30] John Davenport, Hazreti Muhammed ve Kur'an-ı Kerim, Turkish Translation, p.72-81.