Introduction
As an atheist who was Muslim for 25 years, I have recited parts of the Quran while praying, before starting an exam, or just randomly throughout the day since I began to learn them by heart at the age of seven. For those who are startled about my early age, I would like to say that religious families teach their children their religion at the same time children start to learn reading. In Belgium, a child learns to read at the age of six, and for a Muslim child, the knowledge about their religion is bombarded and aligned at the same time. The use of the word 'bombarded' is a very conscious choice, as the child learns to read Arabic letters and words without understanding their meaning and is told very biased stories about Mohamed and his life. I trusted my religious teachers' criticism and sympathy when they taught me to learn the chapters of God's direct revelation to humankind, the Quran, by heart, to communicate with God during prayers. I also trusted my religious teachers with the idea that reading the Quran at any moment would give me spiritual growth. Little did I know that I was reading very random things at times, in these poetic Arabic verses, that I thought were specifically and carefully chosen words of God. After finishing reading or reciting parts of the Quran, I was then manipulating myself with a satisfactory and peaceful feeling for accomplishing what God had commanded me to do. Iqra! Read.
In this post, together with the ones coming soon that will form a whole series, I will clarify some reasons why I left Islam. I will discuss verses in the Quran and question whether these words can be those of a God or simply of a (group of) human(s). To understand verses, I will not use books or volumes of books to interpret what God 'actually' meant. I will use the Quran 'as it is', thus 'as God communicated with humans (in Arabic)'. With modern-day knowledge and technology, we humans have deciphered old languages that are not spoken anymore and even interpreted some texts from scratch. The argument that 'the mysterious old Arabic language that is used in the Quran will never have a precise translation' to constantly cover up controversial verses and make miracles where there are none is no longer acceptable. With that being said, in this post, there will be no approach that respects the change or adaptation of words' meanings, new symbolic meanings of verses, or interpretations that are not there. The Quran will be approached as the all-knowing God revealed to humankind in its most perfect way.
A lot of Muslim scholars say that the more we discover about nature and the universe scientifically, the more we realize the Quran is the word of God because the verses that did not make sense or that were difficult to decipher, suddenly get a meaning. Any critical Muslim who is open to question and who continues to read this series of posts on understanding the Quran might soon realize one of the most powerful tools the Muslim community has: storytelling and manipulation built on fallacies, which are misleading types of common, tempting, and poor arguments.
A brief difference between science and Islam
Active and progressive versus passive and conservative
Science works in different ways to actively try to get an answer to a question. If after 15 years the given answer needs an update or a complete change because of new findings, as science is a progressive field that is not worried about admitting or removing wrong approaches, it will not hesitate to do so. What the Quran and the Muslim community do is have a book full of statements and wait passively for outside active work, to put like a sticker one of the answers of, for example, science, onto a statement in their book to make the specific verse valid, less complicated, or miraculous.
Before starting: the essentials
While reading my arguments about why I left Islam, I would like the reader to keep the following questions in mind, which were inspired by Efe Aydal's video on 'Understanding atheists', to be conscious of the bare minimum form of questioning for trusting a source or labelling it as a reliable source:
Even if verses are controversial because they are 'mistranslated', they do not affect the idea that the perfect God created humans to worship Him and would burn them in the fire if they don't worship Him.
Controversial verses create a vicious circle:
if verses can be controversial because of translation problems or a wrong interpretation, why does God repeat in a lot of verses that He revealed the verses clearly?
if you read the Quran in your own language other than Arabic, and it is said to be 'insufficient' as a translation, why are the translations into other languages all the same and have the same message?
if all these translations are wrong and only specific ones are correct, why are the verses that are supposed to be revealed 'so clearly by God', so susceptible to wrong translation?
if the verses are perfect words of God, but our minds are unable to understand them, why are they written in a way that the majority cannot understand? Why are people who are not able to understand a magnificent Book being held responsible for it?
and if we say that every verse that contradicts science and ethics is a 'wrong translation', instead of saying that it is a wrong and problematic verse, then do we really derive our morality from the verses or do we attribute our own morality to the verses?
With these questions in mind, we can start looking at verses in the Quran by reading its translation and understanding the meaning of certain words that are manipulated and adapted by Muslim scholars. We will then see that controversies and mistakes are openly covered up and any Muslim that understands this will only realize for how long he has been fooled. After that, we can ask ourselves the most important question: can God make mistakes in the Book He revealed?
Astronomy & Cosmology
1. Earth created first, before the stars
(2:29) هُوَ ٱلَّذِى خَلَقَ لَكُم مَّا فِى ٱلْأَرْضِ جَمِيعًۭا ثُمَّ ٱسْتَوَىٰٓ إِلَى ٱلسَّمَآءِ فَسَوَّىٰهُنَّ سَبْعَ سَمَـٰوَٰتٍۢ ۚ وَهُوَ بِكُلِّ شَىْءٍ عَلِيمٌۭ
Chapter 2: Al-Baqara (2:29) "He is the One Who created everything in the earth for you. Then He turned towards the heaven, forming it into seven heavens. And He has ˹perfect˺ knowledge of all things."
Allah (God) tells us in this verse how He created everything on Earth for us, 'then' He turned towards the heaven. The chronology, which is expressed by the usage of the word 'then', implies clearly that the Earth was created before what is clarified in the next statement, which is about Allah creating seven heavens. Like many other verses in the Quran, Allah ends this verse by reminding us how He has perfect knowledge of all things, thus reminding us not to question Him and his knowledge, but that is nostalgia for the mind behind this screen and for this blog.
The above verse also implies that the stars were created after the Earth, as stars are found in the 'heaven' outside the Earth. Allah clarifies it clearly in the Quran, in Chapter 41 called Fussilat, by stating that He adorned the closest heaven with lamps (stars) after heaven's creation.
(41:12) فَقَضَىٰهُنَّ سَبْعَ سَمَـٰوَاتٍۢ فِى يَوْمَيْنِ وَأَوْحَىٰ فِى كُلِّ سَمَآءٍ أَمْرَهَا ۚ وَزَيَّنَّا ٱلسَّمَآءَ ٱلدُّنْيَا بِمَصَـٰبِيحَ وَحِفْظًۭا ۚ ذَٰلِكَ تَقْدِيرُ ٱلْعَزِيزِ ٱلْعَلِيمِ
Chapter 41: Fussilat (41:12) "So He formed the heaven into seven heavens in two Days, assigning to each its mandate. And We adorned the lowest heaven with ˹stars like˺ lamps ˹for beauty˺ and for protection. That is the design of the Almighty, All-Knowing."
Cosmology, which is the study of the origin, as well as the future of the universe, shows us that these verses are far from the truth. The Earth is not the protagonist of the universe for it to be formed first. The Earth's crust and core have elements that were first formed in stars. The process of the forming of a star is called nucleosynthesis and when they explode as supernovas, they spread and expel the basic elements that will later turn into planets, in this case, become a future solar system and include the planet Earth. When Allah says in the Quran that He first created the Earth and everything in it and then turned to heaven, He implies He created space, galaxies, and everything else outside the Earth after Earth's creation. This is a scientific mistake and a chronologic error in approaching the understanding of the universe and the planets.
Humans and other living beings have bits of elements inside themselves that are found in space. We are formed by the elements that are found in the stars and, thus also in other planets. As Neil Degrasse Tyson said, "When I look at the night sky, I know that we are part of this universe and that we are in this universe. The fact is, the universe is in us." The contrary is not the case. Every single part of space, be it stars, planets, gas, or meteors, is not created one by one by Allah, independently from Earth. Everything in the universe has parts of each other, in a very chaotic and unorganized way. If the Quran claims the contrary, which is scientifically false, then why did God clarify His creation in the wrong chronology if He is Almighty and all-knowing? Can God make a mistake? Or is this book... simply written by a man from the 7th century with the same worldview and knowledge as the people from the 7th century? This question will be answered by you and by me throughout this series of understanding the Quran.
Next part: Quran: Why is the word of God Arabic? (pt.2)
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