Thank you for the post and I will respond your 3,000 word copied essay though I did wonder if you had actually read it?τhε ṿαlε'ṡ lïlÿ;1371282 said:you on the other hand aren't worthy of being dignified with a response, given that it goes completely over your head and for obvious reasons!
1. The essay mostly states things not shows them to be sound doctrine and we see this in the first line where the writer decides that 'infallibility' is a necessary attribute of a prophet. Whether he take that to also mean perfection is never made clear. It is also unclear whether one is born infallible/perfect or that somehow God purges you sins somehow along ones life. It is not made clear in the post but "sinlessness" of the prophets in Islam implies only a protection from errors of judgement in action and character as distinguished from the Biblical doctrine which holds that true sinlessness not only means a freedom from wrong doing but an actual state of heart, soul and mind that reflects all the goodness of God's holiness, love and righteousness.
2. His argument hinges on the word 'isma' and its use or near use in Qu'ranic verses. The argument is weak and in one case Q12.13 the word is used by a pagan (Aziz or Poitipher) about Joseph so here we have a whole dogma based on the word of a pagan? The hadith are hardly referred to and one wonders why this was avoided?
3. The writer then mentions, and it is unavoidable because it is in the Qu'ran, that some prophets committed zalla. Meaning they were just lapses or small errors and God corrected them. It is not possible to defy the written sources of Islam entirely and so the records of the sins of the prophets in the Qur'an and Hadith became watered down into "mistakes (khati'ati)", or "acts of forgetfulness", are constantly used by Muslim writers today to account for these misdemeanours which the Scripture and traditions of Islam record.This is coupled with a list of what what can only I think be described as unavoidable sins. So in Muslim writings we have such things as "There was no intention on the part of Adam to disobey the Divine commandment; it was simply forgetfulness that brought about the disobedience." Similarly, if we take the word istaghfir which, throughout the Qur'an, means to "ask forgiveness" but, in Muhammad's case, it is usually claimed it means to ask "protection (waqihim) from sin. The Hadith openly support the teaching of the Qur'an that Muhammad needed to ask for the forgiveness of his sins and record a prayer of Muhammad, part of which reads as follows:
So please forgive the sins which I have done in the past or I will do in the future, and also those (sins) which I did in secret or in public, and that which You know better than I. None has the right to be worshiped but you. (Sahih al-Bukhari, Vol. 9, p. 403).
4. He further argues that prophets are like mirrors and so must be perfect but surely we are to pass on Gods message and that does not become more true because of who gives it? We then have Mohammed referred to but of course it is circular, Mohammed is perfect because the Qu'ran says so but we only know that because Mohammed told us? He then refers to the traditions the prove infallibility though he does not as far as I can see mention any.
5. We have what to me is are complete oddities which can hardly be more than fable such as it being said that Jesus in his youth helped his uncles with the restoration of the Ka'ba. Or another case where we are told that God may cause someone legs to be broken to avoid sin but why God would be so vicious and selective (why God protect some from sin and not others) is not explained.
Summary and Critique
Early Muslims soon discovered that the Bible taught that Jesus was the only sinless man and confronted with this evidence, deemed it necessary regard all prophets as sinless. Secondly, Islam holds that the scriptures were dictated directly to the prophets so prophets must be of impeccable character for, if they could not keep themselves from error how could they be trusted to communicate God's revelations without error? But logically this is no more than a presupposition that puts a limit on how God may work.
One supposes that the purpose of at-nubuwwa (the prophets) could be defeated if the people to whom they are sent regarded it as permissible for the prophets to commit sins and tell falsehoods, because then they would also think the same about their teachings and their commands and interdictions. Muslim orthodoxy, therefore, drew the logically correct conclusion that the prophets must be regarded as immune from serious errors (doctrine of isma). In short it puts the onus on the prophet not the message. But it was in my view not one which comes from an objective analysis of the teaching of the Qur'an and Hadith and cannot be traced back to the teachings of Mohammed.
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