Memorizing Qur'an and divinity!

Syed Kamran Mirza

email : Syed_mirza@hotmail.com 

Recently, Brother Fatemolla raised the question: Does memorizing capacity of Quran makes it a divine book? My answer to this question is a being "NO". Memorizing capacity or literary value does not make anything divine. Shakespeare's essay could be superior most in literary sense, but that does
not make it divine. Fatemolla is wrong by claiming that, "Quran is the only book memorized by human beings". Many Hindu purohit (Thakur) memorized Gita and Upanishad or Veda. Many Christian priests memorized entire Bible. Remember David Quraish who was burnt along with his accomplices in Waco, Texas? This fanatic Christian Cult leader memorized entire Bible from dot to dot. Did it make Bible a divine book? Many village poets (Boyatti, Ghayeen) in Bangladesh Country side memorized entire voluminous book of Puthi (such as Shama Ruup, Behula-Lakhindar, Laili-Maznu, Shiri-Farhad, Rahim badsha etc.), and not just one book of puthi, several puthi books by a single person. I have personally witnessed one such poet named Mukshad Ali Boyatti ( from Gouripur, Comilla) who could recite puthi in a continuous dancing motion with a sweet melody and rhythm for entire night and entire day. Was that puthi recited by Mukshad Ali a divine puthi because of which he was able to memorize such a voluminous book? Certainly not.

Another attempt by Islamists to prove divinity of Quran is to claim Prophet Mohammed's illiteracy. There are considerable debatable ambiguities about this myth/assertion of Mohammed's illiteracy which I would like to deal separately. Prophet Muhammad's illiteracy does not prove anything regarding Quranic divinity. The great Greek poet/ philosopher Homer was born-blind and hence could not read or write. But this blind Homer composed one of the most famous pieces of literature in the history of mankind, yet it did not make Homer a Prophet! Poet Nazrul Islam never attended any school, nor has he received any educational certificate. But we all know very well what kind of mighty wealth of 'poetry and literatures' in Bengali were produced by him! Yet that did not make Poet Nazrul a Prophet.

Nevertheless, we can agree to the fact that, perhaps Quran was memorized by more individuals than any other books. There are very genuine reasons why more peoples memorized Quran than any other books. These are as follows:

(a) Islam is a religion heavily laden with innumerable quantities of superstitions and myth. No major religions (Christian, Judaism, Hinduism) do believe in "Suaab" (Gain) in just reading or memorizing their religious book. Muslims strongly believe that if they recite or memorize Quran, even without understanding a word of it, they will earn enormous amount of "Suaab" (Gain). Not only Quran reading brings Suaab to Muslims, those hundreds of Islamic books readily available in the book stores or even street vendors-make thousands of ridiculous promises of such "Suaab" simply if a Muslim read this or that Sura or verses from the Quran or Hadiths. Surprisingly Islam's edict widely preaches that, if a Muslim can just memorize (does not have to understand a word) whole Quran then he along with his entire family will surely get the ticket to the paradise! A blind belief indeed! This blind-faith brain-washed fanatical zeal is the primary driving force behind memorizing Qur'an.

(b) It is mostly (99%) the young , poor and half educated Muslims who do this memorizing job. We can hardly find any rich and affluent Muslim who has memorized Quran. These young half educated poor Muslims dedicate their entire energy and efforts to memorize Quran only to gain paradise in afterlife. An young brain can easily memorize a big book when he strongly believes that the book is the ward of Allah and ample rewards are awaiting for him.

(c) Quran is a book written with ancient style of poetic Arabic with a definite rhythm of song. Poetry was very favorite among the Ancient Arab, and they used to converse between them in poetry. Even the message of hatred used to be in Poetry. Many pagans used to criticize Prophet Muhammad in Arabic poetry. One such incidence a Jewish old woman used to write poetry to defame Prophet Muhammad and later that old Jewish lady was assassinated by Prophet Muhammad's agent. There are sahi hadiths in favor of this incidence. Quran is the only book which is loaded with redundancies, that is, same word or same sentence can be found again and again, over and over everywhere throughout the whole Quran. At the beginning of every Sura (except a few)-there is the same rhythmic sentence ("In the name of God, Most merciful, Most gracious") again and again. Therefore by memorizing this sentence just once, one can finish memorizing job of 114 sentences. Likewise, throughout the whole Quran there are innumerous redundancies of the words and sentences makes it easier job for anybody to memorize most of the book.

(d) We only know there are some people who call themselves Hafiz or "Quran-e-Hafez", right? But how do we know whether he really memorized entire Qur'an (a to z) ,or not? Is there any test to determine that?

Most of all it is the fanatical zeal and strong will-force of ignorant makes it quite possible to memorize Quran. One believer wrote me that according to him, the Criss-cross changing of the subject and innumerable redundant style of Quran makes it a divine book! A brain-washed wish full thinking of course! To me there is very little in the way of intrinsic wisdom to be found in Quran. An honest and neutral reading clearly reveals verses after verses promising ridiculous reward (virgin huries, wine, honey, bird's meat, plenty of material wealth etc.) followed by brutal threatening with punishments for non-believers makes it of course non-divine and human origin. What is very clear in the Quran is the slavish devotion demanded upon mankind by a pathologically jealous and cruel deity, a rather barbaric and neurotic portrayal of the creator of the universe. There is nothing particularly praiseworthy about the Quran in terms of it's literary content or it's philosophical, moral, political and scientific premises. The only real power of this Qur'an is that 1.2 billion people mistakenly perceived it to be the unchanging word of Allah! Yet, I am not surprised or impressed by this. Because, until Copernicas's bomb-shell in the Sixteen century-entire race of the mankind thought this earth is fixed !

===================================================================

Published in Muktomona : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mukto-mona/message/571