I'm sure you all know by now the story of rock god and all-round hairy good guy, Cat Steven's conversion to Islam in December 1977. The man who gave the world such classics as Tea for the Tillerman and Father and Son promptly sold all his guitars, changed his name to Yusuf Islam and devoted himself to good works and charity organisations within the Muslim community.
I've always been intrigued by such conversion stories. I suppose having a close friend who went through the same process which, of course led me on my journey of discovery in Islam... and to the conclusion that the Qur'an was nothing more than the writings of a 7th century desert dweller which have been hijacked by a well organised campaign originating in Saudi to convince westerners that there are "SCIENTIFIC MIRACLES" therein which PROVE the Qur'an was written by Allah.
Anyway, back to Yusuf/Cat. So what prompted or convinced Yusuf that Islam was the one and only religion and that he should abandon his previous existence which had given so much pleasure to so many millions of people for a life of prayer and "good works"?
Regular readers of this blog will probably have guessed the answer by now...our old friend Maurice Bucaille and the "miracle" of the preserved Pharaoh. Here's what you find when you visit Mountain of Light, the dawah page of Yusuf's website:
Let's read on:
Dr. Maurice Bucaille is an eminent French surgeon, scientist, scholar and author of "THE BIBLE, THE QUR'AN AND SCIENCE" which contains the result of his research into the Judeo-Christian Revelation and the Qur'an. It is a unique contribution in the field of religion and science.Oh Cat Stevens, how could you - of all people - have fallen for this rubbish? Well, I suppose in some ways it was inevitable - a young hippy millionaire looking for meaning to his existence -thoughtful, sensitive and ripe for exploitation by Saudi miracle machine.
Being an outstanding scientist, he was selected to treat the mummy of Merneptah (Pharaoh), which he did. During his visit to Saudi Arabia he was shown the verses of the Holy Qur'an in which Allah says that the dead body of the Pharaoh will be preserved as a "Sign" for posterity. An impartial scientist like Dr. Bucaille, who (being also a Christian) was conversant with the Biblical version of Pharaoh's story as being drowned in pursuit of Prophet Moses. He was pleasantly surprised to learn that unknown to the world till only of late, the Holy Qur'an made definite prediction about the preservation of the body of that same Pharaoh of Moses' time. This led Dr. Bucaille to study the Holy Qur'an thoroughly after learning the Arabic language. The final conclusion of his comparative study of Qur'an and the Bible is that the statements about scientific phenomena in the Holy Qur'an are perfectly in conformity with the modern sciences whereas the Biblical narrations on the same subjects are scientifically entirely unacceptable...
"we're on the way to find out..."It's just a pity you didn't, isn't it...
"and to the conclusion that the Qur'an was nothing more than the writings of a 7th century desert dweller which have been hijacked by a well organised campaign originating in Saudi to convince westerners that there are "SCIENTIFIC MIRACLES" therein which PROVE the Qur'an was written by Allah"
ReplyDeletewhats your proof?
My Muslim friend used to say, when trying to explain why he had converted, "All the arrows point to the Qur'an being the word of God".
DeleteAll I'm saying is that as far as I'm concerned, all the arrows (evidence) point to a very human author.
For the evidence please read my posts.
As is usual the description of these miracles of the Koran give a meaningless or mistranslated Koran verse followed by a non sequitur non cogent garbled version of some modern science.
DeleteExample.
Some Muslims claim that the Cat's eye nebula was foretold in the Qur'an (55:37-38) “And when the heaven splitteth asunder and becometh rosy like red hide.” As evidence, they provide photographs taken by the NASA Hubble Space Telescope. The pictures are captured in infrared or X-ray spectrum. So, the photos that you see are actually invisible most times to the naked eye (since we cannot see infrared and X-ray as colors). False colors are then added by NASA at the time of releasing the pictures. The way the false color algorithms work is that you can give any color and it will shade the picture accordingly in that spectrum or band. So the explosion is not actually rosy. NASA has given this color to the picture but they could have given it any color, thus the entire argument is baseless.
Don't see any evidence either
ReplyDeletefor a divine author or a human author?
Delete