Re (1) : Exchanges with non-muslims about Islam - Quran's claim that it is clear and easy to understand and solving it's apparent contradictions

Question:
Aprakat: Thank you for allowing me to publish this exchange. I hope both of us will benefit from this exchange. I also hope you will continue publishing this on your website. I do have one complaint however (not a serious one). You published your response on your site on 29th July but did not send me the email till date. It was only by chance that I visited your site today and saw that you have already addressed my questions. Please do send me the mail as it may not be possible for me to visit your site daily to see whether you have responded to me.

Now that it seems we are getting into exchanging our ideas about Islam, let me first state one of the claims from Quran. I will go on presenting some more whenever they are required. Only if you agree with these claims, we shall proceed, otherwise please say so and we will stop these exchanges.

One claim which has been repeated more than once in Quran is that Quran is very clear and easy to understand. I would not quote the verses as you must be well aware of the verses where these claims have been made.

Do you agree with this claim? If yes, let us proceed.

1. The question I asked was not only related to Muslims making friends with non-believers, though it certainly appeared so. There are lots of related issues like the status of non-believers in Islam. There are numerous verses in Quran which establish beyond any doubt that non-believers should to be treated like criminals by the Muslims. Not believing in the pillars of Islam is the most heinous crime in the eyes of Allah. They are to pay taxes which Muslims are not required to pay. The punishments for the same crime committed by a Muslim and a non-Muslim are different, etc. It would suffice to say that Allah discriminated between believers in him and non believers. For example:

a) On unbelievers is the curse of Allah. (The Cow: 161 )

b) Allah is an enemy to unbelievers. (The Cow: 15)

c) Oh ye who believe! the non-Muslims are unclean. (Repentance:17)

d) Oh ye who believe! Murder those of the disbelievers and let them find harshness in you. (Repentance: 123)

e) Intermarriage is forbidden. (2:221)

There are many more verses like these and therefore pardon me if I took your claim of your religion not teaching you to doubt the intentions of "ANYONE" with a pinch of salt. Apparently, what Islam teaches Muslims about non-Muslims is far more damaging, demeaning, threatening and dangerous than "not doubting their intentions" which is far more innocuous. In one of your articles, you said Islam permits Muslims to marry non-believers, but doesn't the verse 2:221 say not to marry them till they believe? And once the would be spouses accept Islam they no longer remain non-Muslims. Can you please tell me, keeping your Islamic funda apart, why should it matter to the Almighty, the creator of the universe, if some human being does not believe in Him? For a correct perspective, just try comparing the whole being of a human to that of universe. If you do, you may start wondering if the creator of this universe is even aware of the existence of an individual human being. If you wish I can send you some scientific data on how our earth compares to the magnitude of our universe.

Allow me to say that Quran contains many contradictions. You may say that there is no contradiction if it is read in correct context; and you may interpret it differently. But what then happens to the claims that it is very clear and easy to understand? If majority of Muslims misunderstand it (except for a few like you) along with all the non-believers (that makes up a huge majority of human beings on this earth), does it not mean that Quran is not very clear and easy to understand? What then happens to the Quran's claim of being clear and easy to understand? Does it prove that at least one of the claims or Quran is false?

I saw you debating with Ali Sina in defense of Islam, but have you debated with any reputed Muslim scholar who interprets Quran and Ahadith differently than you? This is what I call being proactive.

Response:
KZaheer: For my convenience and I guess for the convenience of many readers, I am breaking your last message into several parts. If I were to respond to all your statements in one go, it would take a lot of time and considerable space. Both would work against the interest this discussion is likely to generate. This response is therefore only accommodating the first point you have raised. I am responding in the same order as you have mentioned.

It was an inadvertent omission that you didn’t get my response directly. I am sorry for that and I promise that I will try not to repeat such a silly mistake.

If I were to summarize your point, I would put it this way: If Qur’an is easy to understand and clear why then is the fact that non-Muslims are not to be treated harshly, as I claim, not understood by most of the Muslims from its text? Most Muslims believe otherwise and the Qur’an too seems to be saying the same thing. So either my claim was wrong or was Quran’s claim.

My first response is that I don’t know how to answer it

You see, I never approached the Qur’an as a book that was being understood by others too. To me it was a book that had thrown a challenge at me: It claimed that it was from God. I had to respond to that challenge. It wasn’t an ordinary claim, because there were many aspects of it that made it worthy of at least being considered seriously. The following are some of the reasons why its message couldn’t be ignored easily:

The fact that it remained fully preserved since day one; that its predictions came true regarding the claim that its message would soon dominate over the rest of the ideologies of its time in the Arabian Peninsula; that it contained verses that were simply brilliant; and that the understanding of God’s plan for this life offered by it made more sense than any other alternative understanding.

To me, Qur’an was indeed a little unclear to begin with. However, once I started reading it with the help of the teachers and guides I came across, its initial lack of clarity gradually began to disappear. There were apparent contradictions, I agree, to begin with. However, they all turned out to be unreal. So my response to the claim that Qur’an is unclear is this question: Where is it unclear? If people haven’t understood it properly then there could be one of two reasons for it: Either the Qur’an is vague or the people have not done enough to understand it. I insist that the latter is the case.

Clarity of a message is its intrinsic attribute which an open-minded person can appreciate and uncover. Counting of heads would not prove whether a certain text was clear or unclear.

The question however would still remain bothering many minds that if the Qur’an was really clear, as I claim, why then was it badly misunderstood in some of its vital teachings by even the most devoted of its readers? The answer to this question has been provided by the Qur’an itself: This life is a trial for all humans. If one were to seek the truth one would get it; if one were not to seek it, one would not get it. This principle is true both in case of total truth as well as partial truth.

If an individual has gone against the truth completely and is not interested to know it, he will not get to know it by any means. Likewise, if in some partial aspect of truth, a person avoids knowing it and therefore doesn’t concentrate fully to uncover it, he would miss the opportunity of getting it. However, in case truth, total or partial, is not discovered, it is not the fault of the truth that it didn’t appear clearly; it was in fact the fault of those who didn’t do enough to uncover it that they couldn’t get the glimpse of it.

As regards the verses you have quoted to show that Qur’an condemns non-Muslims and discriminates against them, let me clarify that they were all revealed to condemn such disbelieving non-Muslims who had learnt about the fact that the Islamic message was truly from God and yet they were not willing to accept it. Indeed God condemns them as criminals. However, there were other non-Muslims too who were mentioned in Qur’an whose truthfulness and good character has been applauded. Take for instance the following verses:

“Among the people of the Book (Jews and Christians) there are those who if you trust them with a treasure, will return it to you; and among them there are those who, if you trust them with a dinar, will not return it to you, unless you keep standing over them.” (3:75)

“They are not all alike. Among the people of the Book there is a party who stand by their covenant; they recite the Word of God in the hours of night and prostrate themselves before Him. They believe in God and the Last Day, and enjoin good and forbid evil, and hasten to vie with one another in good works. And these are among the righteous.” (3:113)

“And surely among the People of the Book there are some who (truly) believe in God and in what has been sent down to you and in what was sent down to them, humbling themselves before Allah. They trade not the signs of God for a paltry price. It is these who shall have their reward with their Lord. Surely God is swift in settling account.” (3:199)

The condemning expressions for non-Muslims in verses you have quoted from Qur’an are for such people who were Kafir: those who denied the message of God despite knowing it to be from Him. Take the following two verses that describe the reason why such non-Muslims were considered Kafir:

“They (the people of the book) recognize him (the prophet) the way they recognize their children.” (Qur’an; 6:20)

“And they (the disbelieving non-Muslims) denied them (the signs brought by prophet Moses) even though they were convinced about their (truthfulness) out of unfairness and arrogance.” (Qur’an; 27:14)

You have raised a point that this universe is so big that it seems quite improbable that God would be worried about the tiny little creature called humans. I honestly didn’t quite understand the logic behind your statement. Are you stating that if we humans would have been taller, bigger, and heavier then it would have made sense that God Almighty was concerned about what we were doing? The fact of the matter is that to God the significant thing is neither the bigness nor the smallness of things; to Him what matters is the purposefulness in things. To Him the huge heavenly bodies with enormously bigger sizes than our earth’s are not as significant as we humans are because they don’t carry the kind of purpose we humans carry because of our intellect, appreciation of what is good and what is bad, and our ability to take decisions on the basis of virtues.

As for your suggestion that I engage in a dialogue with a traditional scholar like I am doing with you and I did with Ali Sina, my response is that I don’t want to do anything artificially. If there will be a need and opportunity to do so, I will, God willing, not hesitate to engage in it.

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