The Quran As A Divine Conscious Agent

More Evidence That Islam Does Not Affirm Unitarianism

Sam Shamoun & Jochen Katz

Introduction

In this article we are going to examine specific traditions attributed to Muhammad which clearly depict the Quran as a personal agent that speaks and even disputes. These narrations will show that the Quran is more than simply Allah’s spoken or written word, but is an actual independent conscious being which interacts with and speaks to both Allah and his followers. We will see how this teaching of Muhammad raises some major problems for the claim that Islam is a very strict monotheistic faith which prohibits the belief in the existence of a plurality of divine persons.

The Quran as Intercessor

Muhammad taught his companions that the Quran actually intercedes for all of its reciters:

The following link takes you to Aisha Bewley’s translation of this specific report.

Despite the claim made by the commentary that the Quran will be endowed with speech, something not stated in the hadiths themselves, this point remains crystal clear: Muhammad’s assertion that the Quran functions as an intercessor shows that he truly believed that the “revelation” is a living, conscious being.

There are a lot more narrations on this subject of the Quran speaking and interceding:

In this hadith, not only did Muhammad believe that the Quran is a conscious agent that speaks, he also thought the same of fasting!(1)

Moreover, this hadith clearly shows that the Quran will not perform a “bulk intercession” for an anonymous group of reciters, but it will be a personal intercessor for each specific individual. [Some more traditions reinforcing this point will be quoted below. Particularly Surahs 2, 3, 32 and 67 are said to specifically intercede for those who recited them often.] This has a number of important consequences.

The Quran must know the identity of every single person who recited it, which assumes that the Quran already possesses consciousness to be able to take note of all those who recite it throughout the centuries and remember them at the final judgment. This refutes any attempt of arguing that the Quran will only be given consciousness at the time of the resurrection.

It must also know their motives since merely reciting the Quran is not enough, especially if it is done for fame or fortune. Rather, reciting it with the sincere intention of pleasing Allah is what makes one’s recitation of the Quran acceptable.

Therefore, the Quran must be aware of the intentions of every reciter in order to know whether such a person’s recitation was sincerely done for the glory and pleasure of his lord.

This fact refutes the Muslim commentary on the first cited hadith that the Quran “will be given speech,” which assumes that it did not have consciousness prior to that moment.

This also implies that the Quran must be a divine being since it not only possesses omniscience, it must also have another specific attribute which belongs only to God. The Quran has to be omnipresent in order for it to be able to take note of every single individual that is reciting it wherever he or she may be, particularly as there are oftentimes thousands if not millions of Muslims all over the earth reciting simultaneously (e.g., during the prescribed prayer times). Otherwise, how would it be able to know who in fact has recited it and therefore intercede for that person?

Here are a couple of other hadiths which speak of the Quran’s intercession:

All of these ahadith raise some uncomfortable questions for the followers of Muhammad. As we already noted, these narrations presuppose that the Quran is a living conscious agent, much like humans and angels are.

Muslims further believe that the Quran is uncreated since it is the eternal speech of Allah:

This, therefore, shows that there is another uncreated person besides Allah according to Islam!

However, Muslims tell us that Allah is the only uncreated being and that there was a time when he existed all by himself. As the following internet dawagandist puts it:

In other words, before creation came into being Allah existed alone.

Yet since Muslims tell us that the Quran is uncreated also, this means that it must have always existed as well.

If, however, Allah existed alone and yet the Quran is uncreated as well, then the Quran must in some sense also be Allah.

Allah must therefore be a binitarian deity, e.g. there are two distinct, conscious, divine persons who together make up the being of Allah.

Yet the problem with this view is that no Muslim would ever dare say that the Quran is identical to Allah. After all, Allah in Islamic theology is not the name of a generic essence which can be shared by more than one entity. Rather, Allah is the actual name of the Islamic god and refers to a specific individual deity.

Moreover, the Quran is believed to be the speech of that specific divinity whose name is Allah. As such, the Quran cannot be called Allah.

The word which a Muslim would have to use if s/he wanted to communicated the fact that the Quran is also divine is ilah, e.g. god, deity etc., since this is a generic word which can be used for any so-called divinity.

Yet to identify the Quran as an ilah would imply that there is another god besides Allah and that the latter did not exist alone since something other than him also existed alongside him even before creation came into being.

This would in turn contradict the Islamic confession which states that there is no other ilah besides Allah!

If this is the case then this means that Islam is not the monotheistic religion that Muslims make it out to be since it ends up affirming that there are two separate eternal conscious beings, thereby violating monotheism.

Or Muslims can stop interpreting Allah as the proper name of an individual deity, but start viewing it as a term which refers to two distinct divine persons who together make up the single being of the Muslim god.

In other words, since the god of Islam is actually multi-personal, as opposed to being uni-personal, then the name Allah refers to all of these divine persons collectively or individually, i.e. the Quran is Allah and Allah is also both the Quran and the one who uttered the Quran.

If so then this refutes the assertion that is often made by Muslim dawagandists that Islam actually affirms unitarianism, or the belief that God is a singular consciousness or person, and not just a singular being.

This also implies that to say that Allah existed alone really doesn’t mean anything since Allah is a multi-personal being. Therefore, he really wasn’t alone in the way that a single person would be since Allah and the Quran exist as a single being that have always been in fellowship with each other.

The Quran as a Multi-Personal Entity

The problems are from over. Not only did Muhammad believe that the Quran is a living entity which could communicate, he even taught that the surahs themselves are independent conscious agents as well!

In the following tradition, Muhammad is reported to have said a surah with 30 verses will act as an intercessor, but didn’t bother to say which surah he had in mind:

This next one has Muhammad claiming that surahs 2 and 3 would intercede for believers who recited them:

In these next hadiths, Muhammad states that surahs 2 and 3 will actually go before and/or precede the Quran in interceding for Muslims!

Moreover, “Two flocks of birds” is an interesting image or analogy, since flocks in turn are made of multiple entities, as if each of these suras has multiple personalities in and of themselves. Perhaps this is referring to the multiple verses contained in each surah as having a conscious personality of their own? More on this point later.

And:

It seems that some of the Muslims were troubled with the notion of the surahs of the Quran coming to their people and therefore decided to explain this away by claiming that Muhammad really meant that their rewards would come to them. However, that is not the plain reading of the text and it is quite obvious from Muhammad’s reported words that he actually thought that the surahs themselves would come forth to defend those who recited them.

It seems that Muhammad wanted to depict the Quran as a tribe or an army that is marching, and that these two particular suras would be at the front of the group. As such, the surahs do not have to be “separate/separated” from the rest of the group by a distance, but simply need to be walking in the front position of the army. Whatever the case, Muhammad’s statements imply some sort of “individualism,” or individual distinction among these surahs that are contained within the Quran.

In other words, in order for surahs 2 and 3 to go ahead of the Quran they must be distinct from it in some sense. Yet for these surahs to be distinct from it, as well as from one another, implies that the Quran is a composition which consists of individual surahs that speak and intercede. In other words, this suggests there are at least 114 independent, conscious persons which make up the unity of the Quran!

And if this is what Muhammad believed about the individual surahs then is it possible that he also believed this about the indvidual verses?

To put it another way, is it possible that Muhammad may have actually thought that each individual ayah was also a personal consciousness agent, much like he thought of each individual surah?

If this is the case then this means that there are over 6,000 independent personal agents which make up the unity and personhood of the Quran!

Here is a breakdown of what Muhammad taught, and the implications of what he is reported to have said, so that the readers (specifically the Muslims) will be able to follow this more closely:

The Quran intercedes for believers, thereby implying that it is a living, conscious personality.

Certain individual surahs also intercede and will actually precede the Quran itself in defending believers on the Day of Judgment.

These traditions seem to suggest that even the verses of the Quran are capable of interceding for Muslims.

This would mean that Muhammad thought that all of the verses contained within these individual surahs have consciousness, which indicates that he considered all of them to be personal agents that could communicate with others.

This, therefore, implies that the Quran is a conscious being consisting of over 6,000 individual personal agents!

But now this introduces additional problems for the Muslim conception of Allah.

If Allah is the only being who is uncreated, and yet the Quran is also uncreated, then Quran must be Allah in some sense.

However, if the Quran is a unity of 114 surahs consisting of more than 6,000 individual conscious agents then this means that Allah is composed of over 6,000 distinct personal entities!

At the very least this means that Allah is a being composed of 115 personal entities, e.g. the person whom Muslims typically refer to Allah and the 114 surahs together make up the being of the Islamic god.

This leads us to our next discussion.

The Quran Assumes Human Form

Muhammad further taught that on the day of resurrection the Quran would actually appear in human form to its adherents!

Here is the English translation of Ibn Majah’s version of this report:

And this is what the renowned Muslim scholar and expositor Al-Suyuti said concerning this hadith in his commentary (2/1242):

How ironic! Muslims decry the notion of Allah either appearing or becoming a man, claiming that this is beneath his dignity and majesty, and yet Muslims (particularly Muhammad) had no problem with Allah’s uncreated speech assuming human likeness in order to communicate with its adherents!

However, since we have already established that the Quran must also be Allah then this means that Allah does appear in human form!

Notice the logic behind this:

Only Allah is uncreated.

The Quran is uncreated.

The Quran must therefore be Allah.

The Quran appears in human form.

Since the Quran is Allah then this means that it is Allah who is appearing in human form!

Which version of the Quran will actually intercede?

To make this all the more confusing, it is no secret that according to the Islamic sources there are a number of variant Arabic readings of the Quran which are still in circulation and used by various Muslims all over the world:

The following is taken from a website called Islamic Question Online with Mufti Ebrahim Desai which answers common questions. It claims that the actual number of qiraat or Arabic versions were much more than seven:

In light of the foregoing we are left asking which reading of the Quran (e.g. Hafs, Warsh etc.) will actually act as an intercessor? Or will it be a mixture of all of these reading, e.g. will it be the Hafs reading of surah 2, but the Warsh reading of surah 3 and the Qalun reading of surah 32? And what happens if a Muslim has been reciting the wrong version? Is it still going to intercede for that person?

Is the Quran uncreated after all?

Just when the Muslims thought that the problems couldn’t get any worse for them, the Quran comes along and testifies that it is a creation of Allah!

The following hadith further supports this view:

Muhammad’s statement implies that the verse called Ayat Al-Kursi (Q. 2:255) is a part of that which Allah has created, in fact the most magnificent thing which he has created. To claim otherwise would suggest that Muhammad is guilty of a false comparison and of failing to communicate effectively since his words, on the surface, clearly refer to the most magnificent thing that has been made. His choice of words expressly show that he is comparing created things with each other, not with things that are uncreated.

As such, it is evident that the Quran is a creation of Allah.

But if it is a creation of Allah then this means that Allah’s speech is not eternal. After all, Muslims keep insisting that the Quran is Allah’s very own speech, which means that they must now contend with the fact that Allah had to create one of his own essential attributes. Yet if he had to create his attribute of speech then that means that Allah wasn’t always perfect and cannot be a changeless being. Allah went from lacking something to later acquiring it, and therefore experienced a fundamental change in his nature, something which a perfect being wouldn’t need to undergo or experience.

The Quran’s Lord and God

To top it off, Muhammad believed that the Quran prays to Allah and worships him as its Lord!

Not only does this show that the Quran is personally distinct from Allah (since it even disputes with him!), it even indicates that it is a conscious being capable of praying and worshiping!(3)

It makes perfect sense for the Quran to worship Allah as its Lord if it were in fact one of his creatures. However, since Muslims insist that the Quran cannot be created since it is eternal speech of Allah then this places them in quite a conundrum.

This means that Islam teaches that there are actually two separate deities, Allah and the Quran, and that one of them is subordinate to the other and has a god over it/him!

A book existed before creation even came into being?

A Muslim may wish to argue that the Quran actually consists of two natures, a created and uncreated one. As the speech of Allah it is uncreated, and yet the Quran is also a book which Allah caused to be written down. The written aspect of the Quran is what is created.

A Muslim may argue that the Quran addresses and worships Allah as its lord by virtue of having a created aspect to it. In other words, the Muslim may reason that it only makes perfect sense that the Quran addresses Allah as its lord in acknowledgment of the fact that one of its essential components was created by Allah.

The problem with this logic is that Muhammad taught that the book in which Allah wrote the Quran(4) is not a part of creation:

Muhammad says here that the book in which Allah wrote existed before the creation of the heavens and the earth. In fact, he clearly says that he wrote in it two thousand years before he created the heavens and earth, which is an interesting assertion since this indicates that this book existed before Allah wrote in it.

This now raises even more problems for Muhammad’s followers.

Since this book existed before the creation of the heavens and the earth then this means that it existed before there was space and place.

However, in order for it to be a book in which one can write it must be composed of space and place since books are solid objects that cannot simply be suspended in nothing or nowhere.

Yet if it is an object that has spatial dimensions then how it could it have existed before the heavens and earth were created?

Didn’t space and place only come into being when the heavens and earth were made?

Furthermore, to say that Allah wrote something down 2,000 years before the creation of the heavens and earth implies that there was time even before creation came into being.

However, isn’t Allah supposed to be timeless? And isn’t time a thing which Allah created seeing that the Quran says that Allah created all things?

If so then how can Muhammad speak of past time before creation came into being when there was no time at that time?

Does this mean that Muhammad thought that Allah is bound by time as well?

If so then is time another thing which Allah didn’t create, and therefore not within his control, even though the Quran says that Allah has power over all things?

More importantly, if this book which contains the Quran is not a part of creation then that means that the Quran as scripture is also uncreated. This would then indicate that there are no aspects of it which can be said to be created.

In light of this, trying to explain away the hadiths which refer to the Quran as a creature that worships Allah by appealing to its created aspect will not solve the problem for Muslims. The Quran is not supposed to contain any component which is created.

Thus, the major problems and contradictions remain.

Concluding Remarks

According to the teachings of Muhammad as found in the hadith collections, the Quran is not simply Allah’s spoken word. Rather, the reports which we examined demonstrated that Muhammad actually believed that the Quran is a living, conscious being which could personally speak and interact with Allah.

Muhammad’s statements concerning the Quran create major problems for the oft-repeated assertion that Islam maintains a rather strict form of monotheism by insisting that there is only one god, and that this singular deity is a single person or consciousness.

The fact of the matter is that the words attributed to Muhammad indicate that the Quran is another divine person that is subordinate to Allah himself.

It is now left to the Muslims, especially the dawagandists, to try and reconcile this belief with their view that there is no god besides Allah.

As far as the reported words of Muhammad are concerned, the Islamic creed should really be that there are other gods or divine persons besides Allah such as the Quran.

Related Articles

• The Uncreatedness of the Quran and the Unity of Allah: A Brief Critique of Islamic Monotheism
• Responses to Islamic Awareness – Tafsîr Of The Verse 5:73 by Muhammad Ghoniem
• Exposing the False Analogies and Irrational Arguments of a Muslim Dawagandist

Endnotes

(1) Muslims may argue that this report concerning fasting interceding proves that those hadiths which speak of the Quran or its surahs speaking or interceding are metaphorical, and are not meant to be understood literally.

There are two main problems with this assertion. First, it is clear from the contexts of the ahadith, and from the statements of some of the commentators, that Muhammad truly believed that the Quran would actually speak and defend believers before Allah. In light of this fact, we should understand that Muhammad also thought the same thing about fasting, i.e. fasting is not simply an act one does but a thing which will be endowed with personhood in order to speak in defense of Muslims.

This leads us to our next. Muhammad erroneously thought that virtually all inanimate objects were endowed with personhood!

For instance, Muhammad believed that things such as trees, herbs and stars actually prostrate to Allah:

Here is what the translator Dr. Muhammad Muhsin Khan had to say regarding this phenomenon:

Muhammad also thought that trees and stones could speak as humans do!

Not only do impersonal objects like trees speak according to Muhammad, they can also cry!

A tree is even said to have relayed information regarding the unseen to Muhammad!

Food itself can speak and glorify Allah as testified to by Muhammad and his companions!

In light of the foregoing it comes as no surprise that the renowned Muslim commentator and scholar Ibn Kathir could say the following in his explanation of Q. 2:74:

It is obvious that both the author(s) of the Quran and Muhammad believed that inanimate objects such as trees, stars, sun etc., were rational beings with emotions and intellect. In other words, Muhammad wasn’t merely personifying impersonal objects, but erroneously thought that they possessed conscious intelligence!

Besides, it isn’t just “material objects” that have a conscious existence but even abstract concepts. Fasting isn’t something you can touch, it is a concept, an action (or rather, a non-action, since it means NOT doing something, i.e. eating and drinking). But even that is conscious.

And one cannot easily dismiss the property of consciousness for "fasting", yet keep it for the Quran, because the Quran is not really so different. A Muslim can only touch the Quran when it is written into a book, but the Quran itself is a message, a mental and immaterial entity.

One could therefore ask: Which copy of the Quran is going to speak and intercede? The obvious answer would be: It is not my or your copy, let alone millions of copies of the Quran, but only “the one” Quran that will intercede. In other words, it will not be a certain copy or material entity, but it will be the abstract content of the Quran that will intercede. So, if a non-material Quran can have a personality and speak and intercede, why not “Fasting”?

Finally, just to show ridiculous this teaching truly is let assume that stones are personal beings. What would then happen when a person breaks a stone into two or more pieces? How many personal conscious stones would we end up with? And would these stones be able to disagree and argue with each other?

These questions are meant to highlight the obvious. Islam’s position that inanimate objects have consciousness is so ludicrous that the more an open-minded person thinks about it, the more irrational and nonsensical Islam appears.

(2) This hadith is rather strange since it implies that some of the suras of the Quran were actually taken from the tablets of Moses! Yet, we are not told which tablets Muhammad had in mind. The two tablets mentioned in the Bible contained only the Ten Commandments. Did Muhammad think there were some surahs on them as well? Or did he imagine that the whole of the Torah was inscribed on stone tablets? That would be quite a load to haul around! And it would still be wrong since those suras are not found anywhere in the Torah. So, what is Muhammad talking about?

Moreover, if different parts of the Quran came from different places, e.g. certain suras from Moses tablets, at least one from beneath the throne, and the rest from unspecified locations, and it happened “in time” that they came together after they were given to Muhammad, then how could the Quran be eternal? Does this mean that the Quran is a distributed and divided conscious being?

In the context of this present discussion: Would this not be further evidence that Muhammad thought that each individual surah was a personal agent all of which were then brought together to make up the being of the Quran? To say that Muhammad’s teachings are rather strange and baffling would be quite an understatement.

(3) This particular narrative further highlights the wickedness and capriciousness of the Muslim deity. Notice the following part carefully:

Here we see how the Islamic god will exalt a person for every sin s/he has committed!

Instead of repaying a person for every sin s/he DID do, Allah will actually record a good deed that s/he did NOT do. It really pays to sin much, if every sin is rewarded by Allah simply because the sinner regularly recited Surah 32. This is nothing more than a gross perversion and travesty of justice, and only proves that Allah is not the God of the Holy Bible.

(4) Our discussion in the main text is based on the assumption that the unnamed book mentioned in this next narration is the Al-Lauh Al-Mahfuz of which the Quran states:

It is a Quranic teaching that the whole of the Quran is (also) on this heavenly tablet. Many Muslims believe that this tablet is the same as “the Mother of the Book” (Q. 13:39; 43:4) and “the Book of Decrees” (Q. 33:6; 34:3; 35:11; 57:22) – as can be seen in Al-Hilali & Khan’s translation of these verses – and it does not only contain the Quran but also a record of everything that happens on this earth and in our lives since everything is pre-determined or decreed by Allah.

The Quran is eternal, but then it was also “written in this book”, i.e. it took on book form. This hadith now adds the information that this book was written before the creation of the heavens and earth, i.e. the book form is itself pre-creational, i.e. eternal.

In this understanding of the hadith, the movement is from the Quran to the book. The Quran that was “in the mind of Allah” (so to speak) became a book by virtue of writing it into a book (similarly to how the ideas of a human author become a book by way of formulating the ideas and writing them down, whether by hand or typewriter on paper, or by typing them into an electronic file in a computer). After writing it down, the book then has its own existence, outside of and separate from its author.

But does that assumption really fit with what we find stated in this narration? Here is the text again:

Note the following: First, this book is unnamed. It is not identified as the Al-Lauh Al-Mahfuz. Second, the narration does not say that Allah wrote the Quran in this book. These two points are assumptions not found in the hadith, but read into it. This may be okay as long as they are not contradicted by the narration itself.

Third, the emphasis in this narration is clearly not a movement of content from the Quran into the (unnamed) book, but from this eternal book into the Quran.

Fourth, and most importantly, the formulation in this narration only makes sense if the entirety of Surat Al-Baqarah (and thus the Quran) is not in this book. The argument is that these two final verses of Surah 2 are particularly powerful (to keep Satan away) because they have been specifically sent down from this other book, in which Allah had written 2,000 years before creation. If all of Surat Al-Baqarah was in this book, then this would not explain why these verses are more powerful than any other verses in this surah, or in the Quran in general. In that case, the emphasis that these two verses came from this particular book would be pointless, since all the verses in the Quran had come from this book.

Taking this narration at face-value, i.e. without assuming that it has to speak of the Al-Lauh Al-Mahfuz which is mentioned in other parts of the Quran and hadith, then this narration speaks of a book (unnamed) which is the source of (at least) two verses of the Quran, but the way this statement is formulated presumes that these two books are not identical. Neither is the whole of the Quran found in or taken from this book, nor is the whole of this book in the Quran. They are separate and distinct entities but there was a certain transfer of content from this book into the Quran.

However, this interpretation raises a whole host of other problems.

Assuming the eternality of Allah and of the Quran as asserted in classical Islam, and the fact that this book is also a pre-creation entity and is distinct from the Quran, we now have at least three eternal beings.

Next, the phrase “He sent down” usually refers to the time when the Quran was sent down from Allah in order to be revealed to Muhammad. That happened at a certain point in time, AFTER the creation of the heavens and the earth, since before then it would not make any sense to speak of a sending DOWN when there was no space in existence, and thus no up and no down.

In this case, however, it is not the Quran that is sent down to the lowest heaven and then to Muhammad and mankind, but something else is sent down to be added to the Quran, to the end of the second surah.

As just noted, the verb “to send down” necessarily presumes that there already exists a “down” and something down there to send it to. This implies that these two verses were sent down by Allah to become part of the Quran AFTER the creation of heaven and earth. Whether these verses were sent down to the lowest heaven and joined to the Quran there, or down to earth and joined to the Quran on earth does not matter. The issue is that the Quran (so far without those two verses) was sent down, and those two verses were sent down from this other book at a certain point in time, and then the Quran was expanded (and improved) by adding those two verses.

This spells trouble for the Muslim doctrine of the eternality of the Quran because this means the Quran did not always have the same shape or content. Whether these two verses were added to the Quran during Muhammad’s lifetime, or before Gabriel started to reveal the Quran to Muhammad, the problem remains that this addition to the Quran happened AFTER space and time began to exist in the creation of the heavens and the earth. The two verses from this other book were not included in the Quran while it was still “up there” but only after they were sent down. Therefore, the Quran is of a composite nature coming from different sources [cf. endnote (2)] and only came together into the shape it has today at a certain point in time.

In other words, the Quran cannot be unchangeable and eternal because it has been added to at a certain point in time. This also means, the Quran has been imperfect and incomplete up to that time. In fact, it was still incomplete after it had already been sent down and Allah had to send down something else that was so far not part of the Quran in order to add to it those verses that can keep Satan away from people’s houses.