Comments by "Leslie William" (@lesliewilliam3777) on "A British Christian Challenges The Quran" video.
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@Md.Kamarussalihin Your response avoided the very points I made and the issue at stake, namely, Is there any difference of MEANING between the Hafs and Warsh versions in the verses I compared?
Your avoidance can be discerned by the fact that you ask me “[h]ow does the meaning actually change” despite the fact that I showed you that the meanings are different. But just in case you didn’t understand the first time, I’ll simplify the verses and analyses.
Don’t forget that the Muslim defence is that there are NO DIFFERENCES between any and all texts. Once a single textual variant is discovered, the entire Islamic edifice of textual invariancy collapses. OK?
1. “Both of them are written as عبد (excuse the dot). How exactly does the meaning actually change exactly? Is "they" being referred not the same subject? Your talking about grammar not meaning.”
Response: Re 43:19, the ‘they’ has nothing to do with my argument, so this is just distraction.
In the Hafs qira'a the word is a noun and means ‘slaves’ while in the Warsh qira'a the word is a preposition and means ‘with’.
Are you claiming that the noun ‘slaves’ and the preposition ‘with’ are semantically equivalent? If so, can you explain how you arrived at that? I’m fascinated to understand this.
2. “Same thing both of them are written as يكد بون when there is no symbols. Is "they" referred here again another subject?”
Response: Re 2:10, in the Hafs the word is in the active case (i.e., the ‘they’ are the subject of the verb and thus are doing the action i.e., lying) while in the Warsh the word is in the passive case (i.e., the ‘they’ are the object of the verb and thus are receiving the action i.e., being lied to).
Are you claiming that the active voice and the passive voice are giving the exact same information, that the verb constructs are semantically equivalent? If so, can you explain how you arrived at that? I’m fascinated to understand this.
3. “Again, both written as سحر ان without symbols. How exactly does it changes the meaning? Is it a numerical mistake?”
Response: Re 28:48, the Hafs describes 2 acts of magic (no mention of how many magicians) while the Warsh informs us that there were 2 magicians (no mention of how many acts of magic were performed). Thus, in the former the verse is talking about a thing, in the latter, about persons.
Are you claiming that there is no difference in meaning between a thing and a person? Can you explain your reasoning?
4. “Written as قتل in the absence of symbols. This is one of the examples where one ahruf supplement or enrich each other ayah. There are more verses with similar concept. Again how does the meaning changes? For example, if we use Hafs "fought", does it mean those who died fighting excluded? But didn't those who died because they fought?”
Response: Re 3:146, you’ve tacitly admitted that the ahruf are different (“one of the examples where one ahruf supplement or enrich each other”). What more can I say?
The rest of your “explanation”, again, is a tacit admission that the Hafs and Warsh differ in meaning.
Whether the prophets who fought were killed is irrelevant to my argument and, indeed, the TWO texts. You’ve attempted to misdirect from the fact that the Hafs and Warsh are telling the reader 2 different bits of information. The Hafs is in the active voice (the subject of the verb and thus who does the action of fighting) and states who fought, while the Warsh is in the passive voice (the object of the verb and thus who receives the action of being killed) and who dies.
Please tell me how fighting and being killed are semantically equivalent, which is what you have to do, not just for this verse, but all the verses I’ve cited. Good luck.
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@Md.Kamarussalihin Before I begin I want to mention that I am a university-trained, professional language teacher. That’s my fulltime occupation. What I’ve drawn from your last post was that you really don’t understand linguistics or even basic grammar. You’ve invented terms, misused technical words and clearly not understood some fairly basic concepts.
1. “The statements you laid out only show the variants of grammars, of course that is something to occur when you have variation of dialects to assert a sentence.”
Response: I thought the Qur’an was the gold standard for Arabic grammar? If, as you’ve just admitted, there are grammar variants (whatever that means) in Qur’anic manuscripts, how can you use the Qur’an as the grammar textbook par excellence?
Furthermore, how do dialectical variations alter basic grammar?
2. “even this first response already tells me how linguistically flawed your argument is. So you're looking at only a word while ignoring the sentences that are tied with the word? Again your argument is meaning, so how do you know a meaning just from a word not from a sentence? A linguist would find your point valid if that word doesn't make sense to be fitted with those verses in which I doubt it. To me you are making your own rules on this issue outside the standard of academics.
Response: Re 43:19,
a. “how do you know a meaning just from a word not from a sentence?”
Because we’re not looking at the meaning of a sentence but whether there are different textual variations brought about by different ARABIC words being used. This is not rocket science.
b. “A linguist would find your point valid if that word doesn't make sense to be fitted with those verses in which I doubt it.”
I have no idea what you’re saying here…and I doubt a linguist would either. (Hang on. Didn’t I train at university, including post-grad, to teach languages? I did too. BTW, what are your academic qualifications?)
c. “To me you are making your own rules on this issue outside the standard of academics.”
I’m not making any rules up. The Arabic is clear and has set rules. All I am pointing out, as have 100’s of Arabic linguists and sheiks (e.g., Yasir Qadi), are the 1000’s of textual variations that alter the meaning of the verses because there are different words in the different recitations and reading transmissions.
And what “standard” of academics are you directing my attention to? Have you even studied at university before (and I don’t mean business or IT)?
d. Returning to the text, what more can I add to make you understand there is a difference between a noun (‘slaves’) in the Hafs and a preposition (‘with’) in the Warsh? This is an elementary school lesson.
3. Re 2:10, “please entertaint me how are they change in overall meaning?”
Response: Your comment, more than any other, tells me you have zero training in linguistics. It’s obvious that you do not have any understanding as to the difference between the active and passive voices. This is Linguistics 101.
I clearly underscored that the Hafs and Warsh communicate two very different ideas. The former has the subject doing the lying, the latter has the lying being done to them.
Honestly, if you can’t grasp that, you won’t be able to grasp anything with a greater level of complexity.
4. Re 28:48,
a. “these are syntactic arrangement”
Response: What has this got to do with what we are discussing?
You do understand that merely saying something is not an argument, particularly if its relevance is obscure or irrelevant?
Do you actually understand what ‘syntax’ is?
b. “English only has verbal sentences. Arabic has verbal and nominal sentences.”
Response: This is about as wrong as you can get. English does not solely rely on verbal sentences. Verbal sentences begin with a gerund, infinitive or participle (do you know what these are?). For example, ‘Eating fruit every day helps you lose weight’ is an example of the former, and though grammatically correct, it’s hardly how we normally speak. The more common speaking and writing pattern in English is the subject+verb+object syntax.
Nominal sentences in Arabic can only occur in the present tense. English does use nominal sentences. They are found in newspaper headlines, proverbs, requests, commands, warnings, and a plethora of other instantiations.
c. “A complete and grammatically correct English sentence contains a subject, verb and object.”
Response: Sheer nonsense. (Are you cutting and pasting from some ignorant Muslim website?)
The S+V+O syntax is only one of many used in English. Here are several that demonstrate your error: ‘Sit!’, ‘I’ve eaten already’, ‘The boy is here’, ‘Help yourself’, ‘They were lied to’…
d. “In fact the word "Sihrani" and "Saahirani" does not have the word "two" in actuality. Those words in its root term 'Sihr' just mean Magic, the word two in arabic is 'Isnin' which is absent. It's a matter of the translator's choice of words in translating them.”
Response: Nonsense, again.
Sih’rani is a nominative masculine dual noun. It does not require the number two to be added because it has already been conjugated to communicate that number.
And it’s not up to a translator! Utter nonsense! Arabic grammar rules are plain enough, especially at this basic level of deciding with it’s singular, dual or plural.
5. Re 3:146, you’ve just admitted to there being a textual variation between the Hafs (‘fought’) and the Warsh (‘killed’).
Conclusion: There are different Arabic Qur’ans communicating different information.
BTW, you might want to look this book up: ‘Bridges Translation of the Ten Qiraat of the Noble Quran’. You an find a free copy online.
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@Md.Kamarussalihin You took umbrage that I wrote; “Before I begin I want to mention that I am a university-trained, professional language teacher. That’s my fulltime occupation. What I’ve drawn from your last post was that you really don’t understand linguistics or even basic grammar. You’ve invented terms, misused technical words and clearly not understood some fairly basic concepts.”
I did not make this comment in a vacuum. I put it up because you wrote, “To me you are making your own rules on this issue outside the standard of academics…Again you didn't address the issue in the arabic format only in the sense of grammatical[sic] English[sic] which you find problematic.” (BTW, I don’t find the “grammatical english” problematic.)
Your problem is that you apparently don’t have any training in linguistics. This is where meta-linguistics comes in to help you understand the grounding in ANY language. The Warsh and Hafs versions of the Qur’an display multiple examples where the grammar differs for the same verse. When the grammar differs extraordinarily, usually meaning similarly changes.
I cited one verse where the passive is used in one Qur’an while the active voice is used in the other. You claim that there is no difference between “they lied” and “they were lied to”. You’ve attempted to explain away the difference, using far from convincing arguments. Any less-than-competent speaker of ANY language would conclude that you are either thick or dishonest. I think it’s the latter, done so because you want to defend the impossible: there are no Qur’anic variations delivering different meanings.
But what do the grammarians say?
The Hafs version has “In their hearts is sickness, so Allah increased their sickness, and for them is a painful punishment on account of how they used to lie.”
However Nafieʻ, Ibn Kathir, Abu ʻAmr, Ibn ʻAmer, Abu Jaʻfar and Yaʻqub have the text claiming that the ‘they’ “used to disbelieve.”
Regardless whether you want to claim the message is the same, this is a textual VARIATION. We have many different Qur’ans with 1000’s of variations. Why is it so difficult for a Muslim to admit this?
There is a six volume encyclopedia set titled, Mu'jam al-qiraa'aat al-Quraaneeyah, ma'a maqaddimah fee qiraa'aat wa ashhar al-qurraa (The Encyclopedia of the Quranic Readings with an Introduction to Readings and Famous Readers), which records most of the known variants. The author records 10243 variations.
Whether the meanings change (many do) or they don’t is neither here nor there for me. What is important is that there are variant texts, something that ignorant Muslims argue is impossible. Their argument runs like this: The Qur’an’s text has been preserved; consequently there are no variant Qur’anic texts because the Qur’an text has been preserved…and even when variants are brought to our notice, there is always a reason that proves this is not a variant, despite it clearly presenting as one, something in any case we must deny in public.
As to the Bible, we don’t have to perform mental gymnastics as Muslims do because Christendom has always acknowledged Bible variants. Furthermore, because no variant contradicts Jesus being God incarnate, Jesus being killed by crucifixion and Jesus resurrecting physically from the dead, Christian theology and soteriology have remained the same for the last 2000 years. OK?
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@Durray13 1. “Q: Who is God?
A: Jesus”
First Mistake: The question has been phrased incorrectly. (In fact it is the first straw man in a lengthy series of straw men.) A Christian does NOT frame Jesus’s relation to the Godhead in the way you have. Rather, she would ask it in this manner: Is Jesus God?
Furthermore, the answer to ‘Who is God?’ is: The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are God.
You’re off to a really poor start.
2. Straw man alert: “God Jesus was born from the mother he created (Mary)”
Second Mistake: By omitting crucial information, you’ve arrived at a fallacious conclusion.
The Bible tells us that, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth…No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” (John 1)
This is Christian theology 101. You should maybe read the Bible first before cutting and pasting from a nonsense site.
3. “Q: Who is Jesus’s father?
A: God”
Third Mistake: The complete and accurate answer is God the Father.
4. “God Jesus is the father of God Jesus and the creator of the mother he was born from her the son of his wife”
Fourth Mistake: In this one sentence you’ve demonstrated you do NOT understand Christianity. In fact, the sentence makes no sense whatsoever. This is what you get when you rely on the Qur’an and your false prophet instead of Christian theology and the Bible.
5. “God Jesus was crucified & ascended to God Jesus”
Fifth Mistake: You not only have failed to understand Christianity, but you’ve misrepresented it by confusing it with a number of early heresies (you’ve got some theological salad!), namely, Monarchianism, Sabellianism and Modalism. (I honestly can’t decide which takes priority.)
6. “God Jesus was the messenger of God Jesus. God sends himself as a Messenger of himself”
Sixth Mistake: See point 5.
7. “God Jesus worships God Jesus himself”
Seventh Mistake: See point 5.
8. “God Jesus is eternal before everything but he was born in 25th Dec”
Eight Mistake: As expressed in point 2, the Word of God took on flesh and lived among us.
Another straw man. Astounding!
9. “He is sitting on the right of God.”
Ninth Mistake: You’ve misrepresented what Jesus said. He said he would sit at the right HAND of God, a ubiquitous metaphor intending to communicate privilege.
Unlike Islam which states that its god actually has hands (or is it only one hand?), in Christianity “God is Spirit”, as Jesus stated in John 4.
10. “Is Jesus a God? A: Yes”
Tenth Mistake: No, Jesus is not ‘a’ god, but God
11. “Are they sitting on the same chair?”
Eleventh Mistake: If you believe that Christians believe there is a physical chair in heaven, then you must believe that there are people who actually live in actual glass houses and they’ve been actually instructed never to throw actual stones.
I suggest you read a Bible before posting such nonsense again.
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@Durray13 1. “Q: Who is God?
A: Jesus”
First Mistake: The question has been phrased incorrectly. (In fact it is the first straw man in a lengthy series of straw men.) A Christian does NOT frame Jesus’s relation to the Godhead in the way you have. Rather, she would ask it in this manner: Is Jesus God?
Furthermore, the answer to ‘Who is God?’ is: The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are God.
You’re off to a really poor start.
2. Straw man alert: “God Jesus was born from the mother he created (Mary)”
Second Mistake: By omitting crucial information, you’ve arrived at a fallacious conclusion.
The Bible tells us that, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth…No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” (John 1)
This is Christian theology 101. You should maybe read the Bible first before cutting and pasting from a nonsense site.
3. “Q: Who is Jesus’s father?
A: God”
Third Mistake: The complete and accurate answer is God the Father.
4. “God Jesus is the father of God Jesus and the creator of the mother he was born from her the son of his wife”
Fourth Mistake: In this one sentence you’ve demonstrated you do NOT understand Christianity. In fact, the sentence makes no sense whatsoever. This is what you get when you rely on the Qur’an and your false prophet instead of Christian theology and the Bible.
5. “God Jesus was crucified & ascended to God Jesus”
Fifth Mistake: You not only have failed to understand Christianity, but you’ve misrepresented it by confusing it with a number of early heresies (you’ve got some theological salad!), namely, Monarchianism, Sabellianism and Modalism. (I honestly can’t decide which takes priority.)
6. “God Jesus was the messenger of God Jesus. God sends himself as a Messenger of himself”
Sixth Mistake: See point 5.
7. “God Jesus worships God Jesus himself”
Seventh Mistake: See point 5.
8. “God Jesus is eternal before everything but he was born in 25th Dec”
Eight Mistake: As expressed in point 2, the Word of God took on flesh and lived among us.
Another straw man. Astounding!
9. “He is sitting on the right of God.”
Ninth Mistake: You’ve misrepresented what Jesus said. He said he would sit at the right HAND of God, a ubiquitous metaphor intending to communicate privilege.
Unlike Islam which states that its god actually has hands (or is it only one hand?), in Christianity “God is Spirit”, as Jesus stated in John 4.
10. “Is Jesus a God? A: Yes”
Tenth Mistake: No, Jesus is not ‘a’ god, but God
11. “Are they sitting on the same chair?”
Eleventh Mistake: If you believe that Christians believe there is a physical chair in heaven, then you must believe that there are people who actually live in actual glass houses and they’ve been actually instructed never to throw actual stones.
I suggest you read a Bible before posting such nonsense again.
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