Islam and Miracles: Difference between revisions

Many Muslims 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.  

Some Muslims 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.

Muslims often propagate obscure natural occurrences as "Islamic miracles". One such claim involves the natural markings found on cows and other farm animals. For example, claims that certain cows are marked with "Allah" or "Muhammad" in Arabic. However, the Christian symbol of the Cross has also appeared on a cow and so has the Hindu symbol of Om. Considering the Cross and Om symbols are clearly more distinguishable than the Arabic words "Allah" and "Muhammad", do these markings persuade Muslims of the validity of Christianity or Hinduism? For a Muslim to accept these "miracles" as a sign from Allah, they must become polytheists and accept that Christians and Hindus have also been sent similar signs from Jesus and Brahman.

Allah supposedly decided to write his name in this eggplant. If you cut any egg plant as many times as you care to carry on, eventually you will get whatever writings you imagine that would suite your mind. If you look closely at the image, you will also notice the eggplant is browning and turning stale. What sort of a message is the word "Allah" written on an object that will eventually start to rot or die supposed to convey to Islam's followers? Is the message that Allah is rotten or dying? Or maybe that his revealed religion, after a period of growth, will start to die and eventually disappear?

Among other methods, Muslims sometimes use doctored or even entirely faked images to mislead people into believing in Islam. There are numerous well-known and lesser-known Islamic Hoaxes.

According to a huge number of online sources, a five year old Kenyan boy (sometimes he's claimed to be Tanzanian or Nigerian) can recite the entire Qur'an and preach in at least five languages. The boy is alleged to have converted thousands of people all over the world. However, according to many Muslims who have seen him in person, the whole Shariff Idd story is an elaborate hoax or money-making scheme. In reality, he can recite a surah or two. For example, one eyewitness says, "A translator then asked him to recite some suras such as Ar-Rahman, Al-Mulk, etc. and the boy replied, "I don't know that". They then asked him to recite suratul Ala, to which he replied again, "I don't know that". They then asked him to recite suratul Ihklas, he said, "I don't know that". It then became obvious to everyone that the boy knew nothing of the Quran, and was simply fooling everyone with an elaborate and well-conceived con. When the father returned and noticed what was going on, he quickly hustled the boy and his bodyguards out of the auditorium. Many attendees felt betrayed, especially when it was discovered that the boy and his "family" left town soon thereafter and their whereabouts were unknown."

Muslims sometimes claim various famous persons have converted to Islam. These stories are tenacious. Even after these conversion stories have been shown to be untrue: they continue to circulate the internet and are retold in newspapers and televisions shows throughout the Islamic world. They do this in order to boost morale, to prove that Islam is the “truth,” and that even rich Western celebrities can see this. In reality, people are leaving Islam by the millions.

Some Muslims say that during a speech made by Dr. Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri on the international Mawlid-un-Nabi Conference, the word "Muhammad" appeared near the Moon just as the Shaykh was spelling the name and said "I wish I had a board to write it on". As proof, they provide an image claimed to be from the event. This image clearly shows the clouds in front of the moon spelling out the word "Muhammad". However, when you view the actual video from the event, neither the image nor the words of Dr. Tahir-ul-Qadri match what is claimed. In this article we show how this image could have been artificially made using a graphics program. We also provide our own comparable miracle where Allah is apparently endorsing the message of WikiIslam.

Some Muslims believe bees can write in Arabic and have decided to profess their belief in Allah by jointly writing Allah on their hive. The writing is raised above the surface of the bee-wax. This means that it is artificially made by forming the letters manually. The picture can also be interpreted as if the writings are engraved (less likely), still this can be made manually.

Some Muslims claim Sunita Williams has converted to Islam after witnessing a miracle whilst on the moon, where the entire earth looked dark, except for Mecca and Medina, which were lit up like "sparks". The images that accompany many of these claims is a top-down picture of the most holiest sites of Islam, the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca and the Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina, both buildings looking like bright lights surrounded by darkness. These specific images have been circulating among Muslims over the internet from as early as May 2006. Williams launched with her crew on December 9, 2006, and docked with the International Space Station on December 11, 2006, more than six months after the "miracle" images surfaced. The actual source for the original, undoctored, images is spaceimaging.com, and are dated December 1999. Although the Masjid al-Haram and the Masjid al-Nabawi appear quite striking in these images, there is nothing supernatural about their reflective white marble construction, and they are not surrounded by darkness. Watermark-free versions of these images are offered for sale by spaceimaging.com as large 4MB downloads, but whoever was behind this hoax did not purchase them. If you look closely at the doctored images, you can clearly see the watermarking.

Some Muslims 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.