Secrets of the Quran Prophecy of 19

6:31

22 Feb 2010

Numerology, Miracles / Ijaz

In this undated video, the unnamed narrator discusses al-Fātiḥa (The Opening), the first surah of the Qurʾān, in the context of the number 19.  The narrator indicates that Rashad Khalifa “discovered” the numerical machinations resulted in the number 19 in 1974. 

The numerology involves a system in which each Arabic letter is assigned a number value, as well as just counting the letters.

The last third of the video discusses the Arabic word wāḥid, one.

Evaluation:

Studying the Qurʾān in enormous detail has been common in the Muslim world for at least centuries.  Thus, in some ways this representation is within the bounds of what Muslims have historically understood as acceptable.  It is claimed that Rashad Khalifa had declared himself to be a prophet. This claim is distinctly outside the bounds of what Muslims accept, although there is nothing in this video mentioning this beyond the word “prophecy” in the video’s title.

Some of the numerical facts are incorrect.  For instance, 1 and 9 do not look alike in “all languages”, although in the modern world, numbers are becoming more homogenized.  Roman numerals, for instance, do not look anything like our present-day 1 and 9.  The word “one” in Arabic may be represented with two roots, w-ḥ-d, as noted in the video, and a-ḥ-d.  Even if we only look at wāḥid, according to A Concordance of the Qur’an (Kassis, 1983, a scholarly reference tool), the word appears 61 times in 60 different verses in 32 different surahs.

There is insufficient historical material on which to base an evaluation.