Is there a Mistake in the Koran?

Anyone who has ever talked to a Muslim will have heard several or even all of these claims:

The Koran is the literal word of god

The Koran is not corrupted

The Koran is uncreated

There are no variants

It is inerrant

Then you will be told that there is a built-in safety and reality check because if anyone can imitate it, this serves as proof it was human made – but since nobody can imitate it, it remains the word of a god.

By definition.

In the past I have deconstructed all these claims and have shown how ridiculously childish the inimitability claim actually is.

There are 1000s of Muslim apologists spreading the claim that there is not a single mistake in the Koran. They repeat this mantra-like, over and over, which does not make it true, of course. In 4:82 the Koran itself boasts that “had it been from any other than god, they surely would have found therein much discrepancy.”

If one reads the Koran, there are several things which become apparent very quickly: the monotonous sentences, the repetitions, the jumping of topics, the mentioning of a god in some way in almost every single sentence, the vague wording, nonsensical parts, irrelevant sentences, contradictions, omissions, vague references, factual errors and plain nonsense.

In the past, I think I have delivered examples for each of these to demonstrate what I mean and why I think the sentences in the Koran fit this description of mine. But I never spent a huge amount of time on them because they were so obvious. But maybe I need to be a bit more thorough with this, as I see more and more people coming up with these claims again that the Koran is peerless, miraculous and incredibly eloquent.

Anyone looking for the eloquence so often asserted to exist, will have to look hard for it, but it is there. Rare, but it does exist. The opposite, however, the clumsy, even primitive wording is abundant.

Things like

113:5 "and from the evil of an envier when he envies."

53:54 “they were covered over by what they were covered over”

don’t really make the text look sophisticated at all.

It doesn’t mean it wasn’t written by a god – but it also does not mean it is so great that it must have been written by a god. It is a fallacy to believe that inimitability or eloquence automatically lead to divine origins. It also does not mean that if a god decided to write a book that it can only be one, and only one, god. Wishful thinking, not more.

In this video I will demonstrate a single mistake in the Koran, because one, single, tiny mistake is all it takes to show it is not the perfect product of a perfect god and thus destroy the claim of divine origins the way it is worded by Muslim apologists.

I think it’s time to clarify this and – hopefully – kill this myth of inerrancy forever, just as the myth of the Koran accurately describing embryology has been killed decisively and forever. Out of the dozens of possibilities, I have chosen a textual mistake, one which renders the text incomprehensible.

So, let me now provide an example of what I consider to be a mistake, an embarrassing mistake, in fact, in the primary Islamic text, the Koran.

In chapter 6 there is a whole list of things, which this god would like to see in his slaves.

Taking 6:150-153 as a block and the context, we have a god providing the followers with things, only a few things, he would like to have them do, like the #1 priority, not having other gods because this is a jealous and capricious god.

So what are we told what we humans and followers should do, or what we are charged with? Well, things like

1.       not having more than one god

2.       being good to your parents

3.       not killing your children out of poverty

4.       don’t do indecent things

5.       don’t kill except as allowed

6.       stay away from the property of under-age orphans

7.       be just or whatever that means

8.       be just when speaking, and finally

9.       fulfil what god wants

10.   don’t divert from this straight path

Quite a list, but nothing unusual for religious texts. Vague references and ambiguous wording, but nothing that contemporary, human interpretation can’t fix. It is split into 3 sentences, all saying that this is what the god of Islam wants.

And this is where the mistake is. The repetition of what followers are supposed to do was accidentally turned into the opposite. So the “you must do this”, “you must do that” suddenly says “you are prohibited from” and this of course, renders the following part undecipherable and beyond repair.

It says in 6:151 in Arabic

} Arabic

According to the renowned Islam scholar and translator, Arthur John Arberry, this means

“Come, I will recite what your Lord has forbidden you: that you associate not anything with Him, and to be good to your parents, and not to slay your children because of poverty”

So what exactly is the mistake? Well, this says that there are things which are forbidden for believers and then we get a list of those forbidden things.

Then it carries on in a 2^nd part, saying “We will provide you and them and that you approach not any indecency outward or inward, and that you slay not the soul God has forbidden, except by right”

It continues in the following sentence, where some more examples are added and it concludes that “this is commanded to you, so that you may accept advice” or says that this is what you were “charged with” and then finally the last of these sentences, where it repeats “this is commanded to you, so that you may attain piety”

OK, so what have we got here? We have a list of what is forbidden, a couple of further instructions and then the conclusion that this is what was commanded.

Muslim apologists now say that everything we read here is covered by the term used in the 2^nd and 3^rd sentence, which says this is what was commanded or what you were charged with. Or they try the usual gimmick of saying I don’t speak ancient Arabic and this is a faulty translation. They also try and weasel out of this by bringing several examples of where the Koran commands the followers to NOT have other gods and to BE good to parents and that this wording in 6:151 would not make sense.

And they are right, it does, indeed, not make sense. So, my question is, what is the word prohibited doing there?

It says NOT having another god is prohibited.

It says NOT killing your children out of poverty is prohibited.

It says GOOD treatment of your parents is prohibited.

Only then do we get something I would accept as a break, talking about killing souls. Then adding some things and saying this is what is commanded.

The first part, however, clearly says: this is prohibited.

Can this be a translation error?

If we look at other possibilities of translating this, we find that most of the translators agree with this. Some of them notice the mistake and do their best to repair the mistake, but can’t.

(6:151:5) ḥarrama

has prohibited

قُلْ تَعَالَوْا أَتْلُ مَا حَرَّمَ رَبُّكُمْ عَلَيْكُمْ

Looking at several translations we see the same words being used again and again as the translators don’t care about the mistake.

Some, like Pickthall, see the mistake and change the word to what was “made a sacred duty for you”.
Say: Come, I will recite unto you that which your Lord hath made a sacred duty for you: that ye ascribe no thing as partner unto Him and that ye do good to parents

Other translators use different work-arounds, but let’s ignore the translations and look at the ancient Arabic text itself.

If we go to the different word-for-word translations we can easily see that the word used here, harrama, means only one thing: forbidden, prohibited.

(6:119:14) ḥarrama	He (has) forbidden	وَقَدْ فَصَّلَ لَكُمْ مَا حَرَّمَ عَلَيْكُمْ إِلَّا مَا اضْطُرِرْتُمْ إِلَيْهِ
(6:138:13) ḥurrimat	forbidden	وَأَنْعَامٌ حُرِّمَتْ ظُهُورُهَا وَأَنْعَامٌ لَا يَذْكُرُونَ اسْمَ اللَّهِ عَلَيْهَا
(6:140:9) waḥarramū	and forbid	وَحَرَّمُوا مَا رَزَقَهُمُ اللَّهُ افْتِرَاءً عَلَى اللَّهِ
(6:143:11) ḥarrama	He has forbidden	قُلْ آلذَّكَرَيْنِ حَرَّمَ أَمِ الْأُنْثَيَيْنِ
(6:144:9) ḥarrama	He (has) forbidden	قُلْ آلذَّكَرَيْنِ حَرَّمَ أَمِ الْأُنْثَيَيْنِ
(6:146:4) ḥarramnā	We forbade	وَعَلَى الَّذِينَ هَادُوا حَرَّمْنَا كُلَّ ذِي ظُفُرٍ
(6:146:11) ḥarramnā	We forbade	وَمِنَ الْبَقَرِ وَالْغَنَمِ حَرَّمْنَا عَلَيْهِمْ شُحُومَهُمَا
(6:148:12) ḥarramnā	we (would) have forbidden	لَوْ شَاءَ اللَّهُ مَا أَشْرَكْنَا وَلَا آبَاؤُنَا وَلَا حَرَّمْنَا مِنْ شَيْءٍ
(6:150:8) ḥarrama	prohibited	قُلْ هَلُمَّ شُهَدَاءَكُمُ الَّذِينَ يَشْهَدُونَ أَنَّ اللَّهَ حَرَّمَ هَٰذَا
(6:151:5) ḥarrama	has prohibited	قُلْ تَعَالَوْا أَتْلُ مَا حَرَّمَ رَبُّكُمْ عَلَيْكُمْ
(6:151:34) ḥarrama	has (been) forbidden	وَلَا تَقْتُلُوا النَّفْسَ الَّتِي حَرَّمَ اللَّهُ إِلَّا بِالْحَقِّ
(7:32:3) ḥarrama	has forbidden	قُلْ مَنْ حَرَّمَ زِينَةَ اللَّهِ الَّتِي أَخْرَجَ لِعِبَادِهِ وَالطَّيِّبَاتِ مِنَ الرِّزْقِ
(7:33:3) ḥarrama	(had) forbidden	قُلْ إِنَّمَا حَرَّمَ رَبِّيَ الْفَوَاحِشَ مَا ظَهَرَ مِنْهَا وَمَا بَطَنَ

It should say you are commanded to NOT have another god, treat your parents well and NOT kill your children out of poverty.
Instead, it says you are forbidden from NOT having another god, treating your parents well and NOT killing your children out of poverty.

Can it really mean: you are prohibited or forbidden from treating your parents well?

There is no way to turn this or twist this, it means to not do something, which, in this case, can’t be the true meaning. The word should not be “forbidden” but “commanded” or “charged with”, the opposite and thus represents a mistake in the Koran.

The commentaries don’t help because they simply ignore the word forbidden.

So can we now put this myth of an inerrant Koran to rest and have Muslims stop embarrassing themselves over such a stupid and actually quite trivial claim?

The Koran is full of mistakes and this is just one of them. Does this in any way prove this text was not written by a god? Well, if you believe in the existence of a god, you can still believe the text was written by this god. Because the belief in a god and everything associated with this god is based on faith not facts.

And what is more important than flawless spelling is the contents, the meaning of the words. Yes, I agree, I would also expect a god to be better than a human at spelling and eloquent wording, but who knows, maybe this god excels at other things.