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My First Parameter: If it is God’s Religion I am Looking
for, the Sacred Scripture Must be From God
In my study of other religions, one of my goals was to read
each religion’s sacred scriptures directly, in order to understand directly
from the source what the religion was all about. This is obviously what
piqued my curiosity in the Quran.
I already had a strong belief in God and was convinced of
the existence of a Supreme Being. In fact, for a while, I was sometimes a
Christian and sometimes simply a deist, following in the footsteps of Voltaire
and many of the “founding fathers” of the United States .
Already believing in God, therefore, my first parameter for
a true religion was that the religion must have God as its original
source. No one can know the details about God except God. He is
above and beyond the realm of human experience. More importantly, no one
knows how He should be worshipped except Him. No one knows what way of
life is pleasing to Him except Him. Although humans are able to come to
many sound conclusions about God, no human could logically claim that he has
somehow—independent of revelation from God—discovered the way in which God
should be worshipped and the way that is pleasing to God. Thus, if the
ultimate goal in one’s heart is to truly please and worship God as He should be
worshipped, then one has no alternative but to turn to Him for guidance and
direction.
Based on this first premise, any man-made religion is not a
logical alternative. No matter how hard humans may try, they cannot
authoritatively speak about how God is supposed to be worshipped.
It is important to note that this parameter does not mean
that one time God played a role in the formation of a specific religion.
No, this parameter means that the entire scope of the teachings come from
God. There are some religions that may have originated from God but,
afterwards, their adherents felt free to rely upon human reasoning to adjust,
modify or alter the religion. In the process, they actually created a new
religion, different from that which God had revealed. This, once again,
completely defeats the purpose. What God revealed does not need any
improvement or change from humankind. Any such change or alteration means
a deviation away from what God revealed. Thus, any change or alteration
will only take humankind away from the true and proper way of worshipping
God. Furthermore, God is more than capable of revealing a perfect
revelation for any time or circumstance. If there were any need to alter
or change any of God’s laws, the authority for that also rests only with God.
In other words, God is free to change some of His laws due to His wisdom and
knowledge, for example, out of mercy or as a form of punishment upon His
servants. He may do this by sending a new revelation or even by sending a
new prophet. With that, there is no logical problem. But there is a
grave problem when humans take it upon themselves to “fix” God’s revelation.
Thus, the first parameter states that the religion
originates with God. However, this is not sufficient. The second
parameter is that the teachings from God must be preserved in their original
form. The logic behind this point should be obvious. If the
original revelation came from God but was then later tampered and distorted by
humans, one now has a mixture of God’s religion and human interpolation.
This is no longer God’s pure religion. Although this may seem like an
obvious premise, it is amazing to see many people who have not even considered
this point, blindly following scriptures or teachings that cannot be
historically authenticated.
The First Miraculous Aspect of the Quran: Its Detailed
Preservation
In fact, this is one of the first things that impressed me
concerning the Quran. Even those who were clearly anti-Islam in their
writings, such as Sir William Muir, would admit that the Quran that we have
today was preserved since the time of the Prophet, may the mercy and blessings
of God be upon him.[1] In fact, even those who
tried to be most critical and cast doubt upon the complete authenticity of the
Quran, such as Jeffery, impressed me even further as to the amount of
information that we have concerning the history of this text.
To fully appreciate this point, one must put it into the
context of my Christian background. Incidentally, this paper is in no way
meant to be a critique of Christianity. However, it is the background
from which I came and it was the litmus test by which I examined other religions.
Therefore, I did a lot of cross comparisons between Christianity and other
religions, including Islam. Hence, I have no choice but to refer to
Christianity during the course of this paper as this is a paper about my
experience.
Footnotes:
[1] For
quotes from numerous non-Muslim writers affirming the authenticity of the
Quran, seeDialogue Between Islam and Christianity: Discussion of Religious
Dogma Between Intellectuals from the Two Religions (Fairfax, VA: Institute
of Islamic and Arabic Sciences in America, 1999), pp. 295f.
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