Number
Patterns
in Qur'an

If you haven't seen this before

know that the Revelation of the Qur'an was a miraculous event,

but in this cynical scientific age it is hard to accept the reality of miracles

so when the Qur'an displays its miraculous nature

in a way appropriate for the modern world

it is important enough to warrant being introduced to it

from whichever way you choose to reach it.

That can be the Eternity Well,

or the Numbers of the Court of Knowledge,

or here in the Observatory.

Same words, same miracle, just different ways to get there.

Enjoy

It must be recognised

that almost the entire body of Qur'anic study and commentary

since its revelation

has been linguistic,

in as much as it has considered the meaning of the words,

and that is inevitable,

as humans use words to express

almost the entirety of their understandings.

Words embrace all the other languages humans use

to express understandings and imaginings and emotions,

the evanescent like music and movement,

and the rationally constrained

like science and mathematics.

Words are used to describe them all,

words are always formed to contain them all.

But mathematics

and the scientific structures that are based on its logical nature,

show an obvious power when applied to creation,

and despite the innate intangibility of number systems themselves,

they are often seen as the only understandings that can be relied on,

with anything that falls outside the domain of number

being seen as essentially unreal.

So in the world, those who look at the world through words

and those who use numbers

can sometimes see each other as opponents

challenging their personal truths.

So it has been over the centuries,

and in the field of Qur'anic studies

with the vast new power of computers

greatly enhancing mathematical studies in the field,

this clash of disciplines has come to a head.

Muslims have applied computers to their study of the Qur'an

and come up with extraordinary patterns

in the use of words and letters,

that in their totality are so unlikely to be by chance

that they would seem to be evident signs

of the Qur'an's miraculous nature.

And yet these studies have proved so controversial

in the eyes of traditional scholars of the words,

that they have been discredited and suppressed by muslim clerics,

and in one particularly distressing case

a gathering of clerics in Saudi Arabia

declared an academic to be an apostate

and sanctioned his assassination.

The trouble is, that it is not possible

to kill an idea by killing everyone who agrees with it,

it is impossible to change the maths behind a statement,

so it will remain there no matter how much you try to hide it

or how many people you assassinate

to try to keep it out of people's minds.

The numbers will always be the same for someone else to find.

So ultimately muslims have to find a way

to come to terms with what the numbers show,

and come up with ways to integrate it

into more traditional understandings.

How can a recognition of the perfect preservation of the Qur'an

live alongside a view that for completion

requires some change to the canonical text?

Is there a way we can see these two texts

as somehow not contradictory but connected,

one casting light on the other

in a way that is necessary for this particular time?

How can computer analysis give us

new insights into an eternal and universal Qur'an

for people in all times and places?

Is it even considered possible

for there to be new insights,

or has everything we need to know already been said?

Were those that preceded us inevitably more knowledgeable than us

by nature of their being closer to the revelation in time,

no matter how limited their knowledge and experience of the world might have been?

For those who see the Qur'an as a guide

for human behaviour in all its global, cultural and temporal contexts

this makes no sense whatsoever.

Is it not necessary to apply

our current knowledge and understandings of the creation

to our understandings of the Qur'an?

We don't have to change the Qur'an as we know it

only the way that we see and understand it.

non 19 patterns

19 patterns