There are many resources and websites that discuss and explain the numerous miracles of the Quran. We can forward the links to our non-Muslims friends and let them explore, study them and make their own conclusions. I find this rather bland, and lack the ‘priceless jaw dropping’ moment. Me? I would like to have a little fun as well. Here’s what I sometimes do, works fairly well for ‘live’ forums, or even in real time demonstration.
Here is one example, may seem fairly long but once you go through it it should be fairly simple and straight forward:
Step 1:
Let the audience know that you are going to show them a miracle from the Quran and they need to absorb this short chapter from the Quran:
Give them a few minutes to ‘get the feel’ of the whole chapter
Step 2:
Tell the audience to pay special attention to the first 3 verses (subject matter changes in verse 4):
Go the Quran translation page and show them the translations from famous translators:
(You may want to open another window of the blog before clicking on links)
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/crcc/engagement/resources/texts/muslim/quran/086.qmt.html
Here’s a copy of the first 3 verses from that site:
086.001
YUSUFALI: By the Sky and the Night-Visitant (therein);-
PICKTHAL: By the heaven and the Morning Star
SHAKIR: I swear by the heaven and the comer by night;
086.002
YUSUFALI: And what will explain to thee what the Night-Visitant is?-
PICKTHAL: - Ah, what will tell thee what the Morning Star is!
SHAKIR: And what will make you know what the comer by night is?
086.003
YUSUFALI: (It is) the Star of piercing brightness;-
PICKTHAL: - The piercing Star!
SHAKIR: The star of piercing brightness;
Note that for verse 1, the word “Tariq” is translated as night visitor, morning star and night comer.
Now if we have an Arabic dictionary, we can actually look up the word “Tariq”, as it is quite normal for an Arabic word to have a range of meanings. We can go here for the online dictionary and see what are other meanings available for this particular word:
http://dict.findarabic.com/?message=طرق&submit=Search&tipe=ae&act=dict
Hint: if you don’t have Arabic keyboard, go English-arabic option and type “knock”. One of the word in arabic is “Thoriq”, copy this and paste and go Arabic-English and it will give the result below:
As we can see, the translators have choices from knock, hammer, bow, road etc.. knock seems to be fairly 'obvious'.
Now we can do the same thing for verse 3, Alnnajmu alththaqibu
We know najmu is a star, thaqib means “piercing”, similar if we poke a needle through a cloth, the needle would cut through.
Based on what we now know, it is quite easy to see why the translators used or opted for the actual meaning:
i.e Tariq is translated as a night visitor simply because a visitor usually comes ‘knocking’ on your door and since a reference is made in verse 3 that this refers to a star, the term night visitor or night comer is used. Make sense?
But we know Al-Tariq means “A Knocker”, hence a more direct meaning of the verses would be:
1: By the universe and “A knocker”
2: Do you know what “A knocker” is?
3: It is a “piercing” star
So there we have it, a miracle!. A night visitor comes knocking on your door and he is a 'piercing star'!
Ask the audience if this make any sense to them and Give them a few minutes to ponder over this.
Step 3:
For this step, I would specifically go to either academic sites, NASA or other astronomic sites for added credibility, just to show that this is not something that some Muslims made up.
You can google the term “Pulsar” and take your pick.
Here’s a few examples:
First we go here and familiarise ourselves with the term “Pulsars”
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/pulsars.html
Here are some quotes from the above site:
Neutron Stars
A neutron star is about 20 km in diameter and has the mass of about 1.4 times that of our Sun. This means that a neutron star is so dense that on Earth, one teaspoonful would weigh a billion tons!..
What is a Pulsar and What Makes it Pulse?
Simply put, pulsars are rotating neutron stars. And pulsars appear to pulse because they rotate!..
Pulsars were discovered in late 1967 by graduate student Jocelyn Bell Burnell as radio sources that blink on and off at a constant frequency. Now we observe the brightest ones at almost every wavelength of light. Pulsars are spinning neutron stars that have jets of particles moving almost at the speed of lightstreaming out above their magnetic poles. These jets produce very powerful beams of light.
Now what we need to stress here is that “Pulsar is a highly dense neutron star that pulse and send very powerful beams of light.
Another site is here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/18/pulsar_skeleton/
This site explains what a pulsar does, i.e eats a dead star and produces outbursts so bright it can be seen from earth!
So we learn a little about pulsars.
Now for the kicker, we go here (or you could search for “Sounds of Pulsars”):
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~pulsar/Education/Sounds/sounds.html
Now ask the audience to click the first “Play sound” button and close their eyes. What sound are they hearing? Is that from a star or someone knocking?
Step 4:
Savour the “jaw dropping moment” ;-)
Go through our point in step 1, which is:
1: By the universe and “A knocker”
2: Do you know what “A knocker” is?
3: It is a “piercing” star
Now these verses should make a complete sense and would make sense if we translate it this way:
1) By the universe and a pulsar
2) Do you know what a pulsar is?
3) It is a star with piercing brightness
Some other points to drive home: The first pulsar was only discovered in 1967, so how could ‘the author’ of the Quran knew about it 1400 years ago;that there are stars that ‘knock’?
And we could close with the following hadith:
The Prophet of Islam said:
Every Prophet was given signs because of which people believed in him. Indeed, I have been given the Divine Revelation that God has inspired to me. So, I hope to have the most followers of all the prophets on the Day of Resurrection.(Saheeh Al-Bukhari)
End.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
ard
We know najmu is a star, thaqib means “piercing”, similar if we poke a needle through a cloth, the needle would cut through.
Based on what we now know, it is quite easy to see why the translators used or opted for the actual meaning:
i.e Tariq is translated as a night visitor simply because a visitor usually comes ‘knocking’ on your door and since a reference is made in verse 3 that this refers to a star, the term night visitor or night comer is used. Make sense?
But we know Al-Tariq means “A Knocker”, hence a more direct meaning of the verses would be:
1: By the universe and “A knocker”
2: Do you know what “A knocker” is?
3: It is a “piercing” star
So there we have it, a miracle!. A night visitor comes knocking on your door and he is a 'piercing star'!
Ask the audience if this make any sense to them and Give them a few minutes to ponder over this.
Step 3:
For this step, I would specifically go to either academic sites, NASA or other astronomic sites for added credibility, just to show that this is not something that some Muslims made up.
You can google the term “Pulsar” and take your pick.
Here’s a few examples:
First we go here and familiarise ourselves with the term “Pulsars”
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/know_l1/pulsars.html
Here are some quotes from the above site:
Neutron Stars
A neutron star is about 20 km in diameter and has the mass of about 1.4 times that of our Sun. This means that a neutron star is so dense that on Earth, one teaspoonful would weigh a billion tons!..
What is a Pulsar and What Makes it Pulse?
Simply put, pulsars are rotating neutron stars. And pulsars appear to pulse because they rotate!..
Pulsars were discovered in late 1967 by graduate student Jocelyn Bell Burnell as radio sources that blink on and off at a constant frequency. Now we observe the brightest ones at almost every wavelength of light. Pulsars are spinning neutron stars that have jets of particles moving almost at the speed of lightstreaming out above their magnetic poles. These jets produce very powerful beams of light.
Now what we need to stress here is that “Pulsar is a highly dense neutron star that pulse and send very powerful beams of light.
Another site is here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/18/pulsar_skeleton/
This site explains what a pulsar does, i.e eats a dead star and produces outbursts so bright it can be seen from earth!
So we learn a little about pulsars.
Now for the kicker, we go here (or you could search for “Sounds of Pulsars”):
http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~pulsar/Education/Sounds/sounds.html
Now ask the audience to click the first “Play sound” button and close their eyes. What sound are they hearing? Is that from a star or someone knocking?
Step 4:
Savour the “jaw dropping moment” ;-)
Go through our point in step 1, which is:
1: By the universe and “A knocker”
2: Do you know what “A knocker” is?
3: It is a “piercing” star
Now these verses should make a complete sense and would make sense if we translate it this way:
1) By the universe and a pulsar
2) Do you know what a pulsar is?
3) It is a star with piercing brightness
Some other points to drive home: The first pulsar was only discovered in 1967, so how could ‘the author’ of the Quran knew about it 1400 years ago;that there are stars that ‘knock’?
And we could close with the following hadith:
The Prophet of Islam said:
Every Prophet was given signs because of which people believed in him. Indeed, I have been given the Divine Revelation that God has inspired to me. So, I hope to have the most followers of all the prophets on the Day of Resurrection.(Saheeh Al-Bukhari)
End.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes.
ard
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