Islam’s Real Iron Miracle (Exposed, Explained, Smelted)

14:22

3 Oct 2010

Miracle / Ijaz

Philhellenes

This second vlog by Philhellenes indicates that it intends to use humor to help people see evidence in ways that rationality cannot.  His goal is to demonstrate that one might find interpretable material anywhere.

The “real” iron miracle, he suggests (humorously) is that 57, the number of the surah named “Iron”, and in which the verse about iron (57:25) is so often quoted, is mere coincidence.  To demonstrate this, he finds a sentence about iron in Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers in chapter 57, and a verse about iron in chapter 57 of Moby Dick.

The format of the vlog is one of compilation; he has pulled pieces from several places in on the Web, opening with a vlog clip of an iron (the kind you press clothing with) falling and the vlogger laughing.

An evaluation of Philhellenes other video on the miracles of iron may be found here.

Evaluation:

The vlogger, Philhellenes (perhaps Phil Hellenes) urges his viewers not to interpret what he’s saying as addressing all Muslims, only those who prefer the iʿjāz interpretations.  Although he’s asserting humor and rationality, he’s also suggesting a desire to deceive where it is unnecessary.  He repeatedly directs viewers to look at the comments, although the comments would not yet have been written when he created the video.

The science of what he presents is accurate.  His representation of iron as one of the most important metals of a period he repeatedly calls the “Bronze Age” is incorrect; the Bronze Age, which preceded the Iron Age, ended somewhere around 1000 BCE, or 1700 years before Muḥammad, when the Iron Age began with the beginning of iron smelting.  Scholars today indicate the close of the Iron Age in the Middle East around the time of the rise of the Islamic empires.