By: Maged Taman
I doubt bad intention by the people who are posing the contradictions. I can not exclude bias but I could have done the same if I am non-Muslim particularly with the geopolitical struggles over the years. However, if we are really searching for God we have to forget about what is our original faith, country or political views. The common causes for the findings of potential contradictions in the Quran:
1- Linguistic barrier particularly the translation may not reflect correctly the meaning of words.
2- Half-full and half-empty cup: you can say about the same cup it is half-full and/or half-empty. It is like in Quran in a verse "man is created in suffering" and in another "the here-now life is a false-enjoyment". Both are right statements.
3- Two different situations are made contradictions like John ate an apple and John ate an orange. The fact can be he ate at certain time the apple and in another time the orange.
4- Comparing the Bible to Quran. Both are God's books. But the more accurate is the Quran. No bias, the question is: The Quran from God or not. I tried to disprove it and I failed severely. Then I enjoyed its power, music, comfort, miracles and truth. I enjoyed reading the bible since you feel he is the same God of the Quran.
5- Failure to appreciate multiplicity: like man is created of dust, water, mud, clay, sperm,.... Like the orange you can say it has cellulose,it has vitamin C, it has sugars....
6- Failure to appreciate default: like God's wrath is the default before he sent most of his messengers and so forth.
7- Failure to understand the balance between his compassion and wrath & his goodness and justice & his love and hate.
8- Failure to appreciate his forgiveness of sins and the arrogance of humans to deny his right to make the roles.
9- Comparing Jesus to Muhammad: God states to the prophets many times what to do in their life. He even determined their reproducibility: Who will marry and what children they will have if any. Their reproducibility is his right to determine. The thing most important for all of them is the obedience to God. They are the best of us and the most to suffer.
10- Abrogated verses in the Quran are if present very few. Some Muslim scholars for their shallow understanding they put a lot of abrogated verses. It is very likely motivated by their desire to be more intellectual, God forgive them and me. These abrogated verses when I looked at definitely talk about two different situations.
11- Enthusiasm in some in the west to disprove the Quran. I was raised as a Muslim since I was child and I loved it and as I grow up I find it continued to make sense to me. However in my early twenties I posed this question to myself what if Muhammad was a great man and made the Quran so he can get people to be moralistic and achieve social justice?. So I red the Quran again with this in my mind to prove that. Early on my re-reading I discovered the verse " and Those who went through our verses to defeat them are in hell gathered". This what you expect from a great creator you have to be respectful you can doubt the Quran but to read it in order to defeat it and not finding the truth is unfair to the creator and for him you will be the worse of his creation.
