#19 and The Qur'an

This is  my impression of the whole thing and I pray to Allah SWT to forgive Brother Khalifa and look over his sins. He had a strong feeling against Hadeeth and Sunnah and made no attempt to hide his feelings. The other such person I have known is  Ghulam Ahmed Pervaiz (Interesting that both Ghulam Ahmads are same name one is a new prophet 'the Mirza' and the other is Munker-e-Hadeeth)

  Dr. Rashad Khalifa has written books about his 'discovery' and claims his own English translation of Quran that he calls   "Official" (some schizophrenic tendency?)
 He has a Ph D in Chemistry, married to some local woman probably "convert' to Islam, was Imam of  a Mosque in Tucsan Arizona some years ago and I later heard somebody killed him and also that the mosque was burned. I do not know details. He considered himself to be "discoverer of #19 and its relation to Quran" and claimed that Rasoolullah SAWS did not know it nor did Sahaba because they did not have access to computer which remained for him (so God chose him) to "discover" in 1980, Hijra year 1400
 However we find that the figure of 19 was known to Bahai sect and they have their own "scripture" for following and NOT Quran
 Let me come to the basic "discovery".  There are 19 letters (of Arabic) in Bismillahirrahmanirrahim (Bismalah) and that is correct because the way Rahman and Bism is written in Arabic. (Remember that these traditions of writing were established by those persons who did not know anything about #19) The first revelation "Iqra bisme Rabbik" is written with alif but "Bismalah" is written without alif. Then he claims there is a repetition of 19 and or its multiples in many situations he had quoted and some of them are definitely correct but some are not.
I will give only one example; I have made a thorough check personally
 He claims that as there are four words in Bismala (as it is called)) -- Ism, Allah, Rahman and Raheem
 Each of these in the Quran is mentioned 19 times or in multiples of nineteen such as
" Ism"  - - 19 times  = correct (we have to ignore Bism which occurs three times in Q)
"Allah" - - 2698 times (But according to "Mu'jam-ul-Mufahris" of Fuad AbdulBaqi it occurs 2697 times)
                19x 142 = 2698. This is because the "Allah" of Bismillah of Sura Fateha is not counted by Fuad A-Baqi whereas Rashad Khalifa is counting so that the multiplication is correct. However there are two opinions about the first Bismillah One considers is part of the sura but the other considers it NOT part of Sura because it occurs before every sura except sura number nine. ( Here I may also mention that because it is mentioned in the middle of sura Namal the numer of BISMILLAHIRRAHMANIRRAHIM rmeains 114 -again a multiple of 19 which is correct)
 Next word is "Rahman" it occurs 57 times - 19x3=57. Interesting thing is AbdulBaqi also now includes the Rahman of Bismillah of 1st sura and agrees  with ''57" (
 The late Fuad AbdulBaqi (Egyptian) is writing before the advent of computers (first published in 1938. So he had no idea of number nineteen.
The last word for counting is "Raheem" and it occurs 114 times  (19x6)  counting the first from Bismillah of first sura--that is according to Rashad Khalifa and according to Baqi it occurs 95 times including the one in the first Bismala but Rashad 's book is counting Raheeman or Raheema also which occurs 20 times so making it up to 115 with Baqi and 114 with Rashad because his in book he fails to mention one aya--
missed one --aya in sura 9,  (Hareesun alaikum bil-momineena raoof-ur-Raheem)
 So we see that there is  tendency to count such things to make them fall into the "wanted figure". I will give you, my readers, that this is human. Please read on.
 Now if we go on and see all the other examples he has collected there may be more miscalculations
 He has calculated that the first revelation consists of 19 words . I count them as 20 because he uses ma and lum as one word whereas they are two. Then he goes on to count all the letters of this revelation which comes to77 but he does not use insaan with alif (after seen) so he counts 76 which is a multiple of 19.
 I can go on more examples but all I am doing is bringing out his method of "forcing" his calculation to the multiple of 19. (Amazing thing is he calls Insan writers with alif as wrong, the standard Usmani method))
   I had read an article by a maulana Qudoos who argued about the fallacy of Khalifa's book  and another one who wrote against his number nineteen and its key position for making humans see the miracle of Qur'an (as Khalifa asserts). However they fail to point out real problems and they seem to be more occupied for Khalifa being Munker of Hadeeth (where I agree with them)
 However more recently I have read in a book (Ashara Mubashshara) written by some  "Bashir Sajid" a lot of support in favor of Khalifa and does not mention about his "munker-e-hadeeth position. Actually his writing is what induced me to revisit Khalifa Rashad's books (Translation of Qur'an and "the computer speaks: God's message to the world") which I bought many years ago.
 Looking at the situation yes the number nineteen does have a 'miraculous" repetition in the Qur'an and  our friend Bashir Sajid and the maulana quote some other examples of such miraculous "numbers" which leads me to think that there indeed may be more to such numbers than Khalifa or others are saying.
 However THAT by itself is NOT a proof that this book is indeed a miracle but as many ulama have found the substance, the beauty and so many other things of the Qur'anic language are more convincing that it was Not written by human beings.
 The Maulana makes a point that it is writing of such words in Arabic that makes it 19 letters otherwise there are 21 letters in the Bismala and says that the Qur'an was revealed in oral form, not written form.
 here, I must say that although he is right  it was orally revealed BUT Rasool-Ullah SAWS  clearly DICTATED HOW TO WRITE WHAT, THROUGH THE INSTRUCTIONS OF JIBREEL ALAIHISSALAM. So it  can be said that also revealed in written form i.e. where Rasoolullah SAWS asked the writers to write seen on suad--example "Musaiter" (Sura Ghashia aya 22).
 My last point : I read somehwere that somebody challenged Hazrat Ali RA to give a speech and there should be no word with alif in it. He took the challenge  right on the spot and spoke for some minutes with people and in his whole speech there was no word containing 'alif'.
 So such abilities did exist in those days and the writers of Wahi were no ordinary 'literates' and Sahaba were no ordinary Arab people for they were very proud of their Mastery of language or expression and that is why they called all non-Arabic speaking as "Ajami"- meaning 'dumb", "unable to speak correct Arabic" "Barbarian"
 So I do give some credit to our friend the late Khalifa Rashad even though he made some exaggerated claims but such exaggerated claims you will find in so many people--Like the two Ghulam Ahmeds I mentions in the beginning.
More thoughts next.

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