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Is Quran An Outdated Book?
A non-muslim friend of mine asked me why muslims follow an outdated book “Quran” which is full of tales from past.
How to properly answer this question? Considering that the person has a very negative image of Islam in mind.
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5 Replies
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Is Quran An Outdated Book?
updated 3 years, 9 months ago
3 Members
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5
Replies
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A book can’t be called false just because it contains “tales from past”. This argument is faulty. If they think that Qur’an is false, they should prove it through proper arguments, and I don’t think calling a book outdated is a logical argument.
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It would be better if you could please further elaborate this point “outdated book” and “tales from past” in terms of criticism from your Non-Muslim friend?
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My point was that Quran tells us how to live our lives and teaches us discipline. It is not like Bible which has been modified over the time. My friend’s argument was Quran describes the the events which are hardly relateable to the present time. You cannot implement for today’s life. Well She also thinks there is no evidence about the existence of other prophets. No one knows what happened in 16th century BCE.
She was born christian and now an athiest.
My answer was it depends how we interpret. It is a miracle that no one could change Quran. However I could not convince her due to my lack of knowledge/ never been asked such questions in Pakistan.
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I know some athiests are even too lazy to find answers and explore Islam. But I think it is my responsibilty to at least correct her views about Islam.
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This argument mainly arises because of misunderstanding of the genre of Quran i.e. what kind of book Quran actually is?
Traditional scholars usually don’t focus on this issue because this is not some kind of issue they have to deal with everyday. Mostly, they are focused on giving fiqh injunctions to Muslims in the community. Quran according to them is a collection of isolated verses, some related to shariah, some related to belief system etc etc. Hence, it has no coherence or no nazm whatsoever.
But for a person who wants to approach religion independently of any such pre-existing religious beliefs, this whole scheme of verses makes no sense at all and instead of Quran making any sense to that person, it starts having a counter effect.
Coming back to what kind of book is Quran. Actually, it mainly has two major component:
1) Documentation of the journey of last Prophet’s ‘Inzaar” in an ‘as is’ format.
The main reason why Prophethood came to an end can be summed up in two points:
– Conditions conducive to Quran’s permanent preservation happened.
– The incident of Shadah (itmam-e-hujjat , completion of proof) happened in the light of known and established history.
It is this journey of Prophet (sws) that Quran is mainly depicting as a proof of its itmam-e-hujjat (completion of proof) that happened in the known history. As Ghamidi Sahab has described it as “Nabi ki sar-guzisht-e-inzar”. If you look at Quran from this perspective, all the history will light up in front of you; how Prophet stood up as a single person, claiming to be a prophet of God and prophesying His dominance at a time when all the odds were against Him. And all of this on the basis of philosophy of monotheism and to achieve tazkiya/purity in everyday life. And all the events unfolded and eventually all those prophesies came true and the same Prophet who had no one by His side at that time, gained dominance and leadership all over the Arabia and established monotheism and the most righteous government.
Although, one can say that no one knows what happened in 16th century BC, but because of this event mentioned above, no one can say that they don’t know what happened in 7th century AD and it has all been documented in the Holy Quran with its transmission happening under the most reliable means of transmission i.e. Ijma (consensus) and Quoli Tawatur (Perpetual recitation) of the masses from one generation to another.
2) To provide necessary guidance for the humanity till the day of judgement.
The ultimate purpose of religion is to submit one’s will to the God and in order to achieve that submission, the tazkiya/purity of human existence has been kept as the objective of that submission. All the guidance in the Quran related to human beings, whether in their capacity as an individual or collectively as a society, addresses the same domain of tazkiya/purity; whether it be purity of soul (ikhlaqi), purity of body and purity of meal. If you dissect every injunction of religion, it will point you towards tazkiya/purity of one of these kinds. So when you start looking at all the guidance in Quran from this perspective, it all starts making sense to you and every piece fits in its right place.
I hope this will clarify some points.
In order to fully understand the premise of religion, arguments for existence of God and arguments that religion puts forward to a human intellect, you can spend some time here as well:
To understand the arguments for Belief in God, you can see this as well:
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