Islam and Miracles

Many apologists claim that the Qur'an contains information that could not have been known to people at the time the Qur'an was created, and that it contains within its pages many other miracles.

Scientific miracles

Scientific miracles are claims that the Quran talks about things that weren't known 1400 years ago and therefore Muhammad couldn't be the author of the Quran. Usually after science discovers something new, promoters of "scientific miracles" re-interpret some vague Quranic verse and claim that this was predicted in the Quran. Although the Quran supposedly had this knowledge before it was discovered, for some reason, no Muslim derived these facts from the Quran before those facts were discovered by science.

Word Count Miracles in the Qur'an

One of the most popular claims of miracles is that the word yawm (singular of day) is repeated 365 times in the Qur'an, its plural and dual forms "days (ayyam and yawmayn)" together are repeated 30 times, while the number of repetitions of the word "month" (shahar) is 12. The first flaw with this is that the Islamic calendar consists of 355 days, so these apologists are essentially favoring Christianity. Secondly, these counts are manipulated, generally in unstated ways, to produce the striking totals. Most people do not have the time or energy to count so they just assume it is true.

The Miracle of 19

Some Muslims and Submitters believe that Qur'an 74:30 is proof that the occurrence of observed "19" related facts in Islam is a confirmation of the truth of the religion. However, when we analyze the claims, we find this miracle of 19 is not a miracle. The actual chance of finding this miracle is 1 in 19 which is not an impressive probability at all. Additionally, an equal number of miracles, sometimes more, are found in anti-Islamic texts. Where the Qur'an says, "over it are Nineteen," it was simply talking about the number of angels in Hell. This is also confirmed by Muslim websites. Even Rashad Khalifa, the inventor of 19 'miracles' believes that 19 is the number of Angels in heaven (for him, he sees it as a 'miracle' that everything is 19).

Odd-Even Mathematical Miracle

There is a widely spread claim, circulating on the web at least since 1998, that there is a “mathematical miracle” in the Qur’an concerning the sums of the surah numbers, and the sums of the ayats, or verses. It is sometimes called a binary, odd-even, or checksum miracle. It consists of two apparently remarkable coincidences. Some might imagine the odds of this are thousands to one, but they are not. Both parts of the “miracle” are really just two ways to describe the same single coincidence. And as the article shows, due to various factors, the likelihood of its occurrence by chance is not so low that anyone should be impressed by it and proclaim it a miracle.

Splitting the Moon

Muslims believe that while Muhammad was in Mecca, Allah split the Moon as a miracle to the Meccans. This claim is made in the Hadith and some say that the evidence for this is on the Moon itself. To back up this claim, they use close-up pictures of the moon taken by NASA as evidence. These images of a "spilt" are actually lunar rilles. Rilles are long and deep gorges resembling canyons. A rille is typically several kilometers wide and hundreds of kilometers in length. Similar formations are found on a number of planets in the solar system, including Mars, Venus, and on a number of moons. Rilles can be found all over the lunar surface and they do not form a belt and therefore do not in anyway support the claim that the moon had been split asunder.

The Cat's Eye Nebula in the Qur'an

Some apologists claim that the Cat's eye nebula was foretold in the Qur'an (55:37-38) “And when the heaven splitteth asunder and becometh rosy like red hide.” As evidence, they provide photographs taken by the NASA Hubble Space Telescope. The pictures are captured in infrared or X-ray spectrum. So, the photos that you see are actually invisible most times to the naked eye (since we cannot see infrared and X-ray as colors). False colors are then added by NASA at the time of releasing the pictures. The way the false color algorithms work is that you can give any color and it will shade the picture accordingly in that spectrum or band. So the explosion is not actually rosy. NASA has given this color to the picture but they could have given it any color, thus the entire argument is baseless.

Standing Mosques

When mosques are left standing in natural disasters, Muslims often claim it's a miracle and attribute it to an intervention by Allah. But there is nothing miraculous about strongly built structures with open architecture allowing water and wind to flow through, surviving waves and high winds better than weaker buildings. Nature is indiscriminate about what it damages during natural disasters, and mosques are no exception to this rule. This is proven by the hundreds of mosques which have been destroyed in natural disasters, and by the fact that non-Muslim buildings have also "miraculously" been left unharmed or standing during similar incidents. The "standing mosques" are no more miraculous than Morocco's 2010 "collapsing mosque" which only killed worshipers and left others unharmed. If the former can be used to claim Islam is the true faith, the latter can be used to prove it is a false faith

Dog Responds to the Adhan

Some apologists are claiming another animal-related miracle. This time it is a video of a dog in Jerusalem responding (or "singing") to the adhan (the Muslim call to prayer). According to its description, "Every natural being on the planet praises Allah and remembers him. This dog is just one example, and god is all knowing!" The content of the sound (the call to prayer) is not what the dog is actually responding to. This type of howling that dogs do, which is sometimes referred to as "singing" or "talking", is caused when a dog is irritated by something it hears - whether it be because of the volume or the pitch (or a combination of both). This is because a dog's hearing is much more sensitive than our own - what we may find comfortable to listen to (volume or pitch wise) may bother them quite quickly, and they howl in response to it. So what you really witness happening in the video is the opposite of what is being claimed about it. If you watch the dog's ears closely, you can see he is visibly irritated by the noise.

Google Earth Proves Islam

These are articles on Islamic miracles.

• Cosmology of the Qur'an
• Muhammad's Miracles
• Witnessing the Moon Splitting Miracle

Articles

• Islamic Prophecies - This in-depth study refutes false claims of fulfilled Qur'anic prophecies
• How Islamic Inventors Did Not Change The World - This article refutes false claims of inventions attributed to Islamic inventors

Other Core Articles

Core articles contain an overview of other articles related to a specific issue, and serve as a starting point for anyone wishing to learn about Islam:

• Islam and Apostasy
• Islam and Homosexuality
• Islam and Pedophilia
• Islam and Propaganda
• Islam and Science
• Islam and Scripture
• Islam and the People of the Book
• Islam and Violence
• Islam and Women

• A Goat Suffering from Birth-Defects Resulting in 6 Legs, 4 Testicles and 3 Penises, Hailed as a Miracle of Islam
• Scrutinizing Rumors And Exposing Hoaxes - Answering Islam