Scientific Inconsistencies in the Quran: A Greater Challenge Than Its Violent Verses?
In contemporary critical discourse on Islam, significant attention is often devoted to the violence associated with this religion—whether through the history of Arab-Islamic conquests, modern terrorist acts committed in the name of Allah, or Quranic verses calling for religious warfare and corporal punishments. For many critics of the foundational sacred texts of Islam, the physical violence endorsed in these scriptures appears to be the most obvious problem to demonstrate and denounce.
Thus, for example, when Allah states, in verse 34 of surah 4 of the Quran, that husbands must strike disobedient wives, one should easily conclude that domestic violence is compatible with Islam. Likewise, when Allah states, in verse 2 of surah 24, that those who engage in sexual intercourse outside of marriage must be punished with one hundred lashes, it should be concluded that private sexual life is subject to surveillance and even sanction in Islam.
I am, of course, able to distinguish between the sacred texts of Islam and those who believe in them. A religion should not necessarily be held responsible for the behavior of its followers. However, everything Allah says in the Quran necessarily commits Islam, since the only official and supreme author of Islam, capable of defining what Islam is or is not, is Allah himself. This paradigm is the founding dogma of the Quran, which is claimed to be, from the first to the last verse, the word of a perfect God who neither lies nor errs, valid at all times and in all places until the Day of Judgment. It is therefore impossible, for example, to reform the criminalization of freedom of conscience in Islam, because, according to the Quran, Allah has declared that those who do not believe in the Quranic verses (surah 4, verse 56) or in Allah and His Prophet Muhammad (surah 48, verse 13), will be eternally tortured in Hell after death.
This eternal promise, which will be fulfilled at the end of times, cannot logically be revoked by any human, temporal, or earthly decision preceding that end. Moreover, reforming Islam would amount to asking inherently weak, flawed, and sinful humans (surah 4, verse 28) to contradict and disavow Allah, the best of judges (surah 7, verse 87), who sent down a book whose verses are perfect (surah 11, verse 1); such a request is absurd from the perspective of this religion.
Most of the peaceful and Westernized Muslims I have encountered in my life rarely seem shaken in their faith by the most violent Quranic passages that call for hatred and punishment of innocent people condemned merely for their freedom or differences. The apparent casualness of peaceful believers in the face of their god’s warlike words often has a psychological root: cognitive dissonance.
The contradictions and scientific errors of an infallible god, supposed to know everything and never err, are harder to dispute.
Faith in Islam rests, among other things, on the belief that the Quran is a perfect text revealed by a just God who fights injustice. Yet for a Muslim living in a modern Western society where nonviolence, freedom of conscience, and equality of rights are sacred values, the violence advocated by Allah in the Quran contradicts the ideal of peace, which is the most consensual political and social argument possible. To resolve this dissonance, the peaceful Muslim generally adopts the strategy of avoidance. And what better way to deny the cause or consequence of a problem than to deny its very existence—or worse, to present it as a benefit?
In order to survive in the 21st century where fact-checking scrutinizes religious texts as thoroughly as political discourse, apologists of Islam have mastered the art of reinterpreting Quranic verses. These rhetorical sleights of hand—transforming every instance of the verbs “kill” or “fight” in Allah’s speech into a plea for tolerance and dialogue—obviously comfort peaceful and Westernized Muslims in their idealistic—yet illusory—vision of Islam. Many Muslims who follow a “religion of peace, love, and tolerance” will tell themselves that “The unbelievers to be fought must have been violent people against whom Allah called for self-defense” or “The domestic violence encouraged by Allah must surely consist of using purely symbolic violence through oratorical eloquence to bring reason to an unreasonable wife.”
As an ex-Muslim who has devoted many years to studying the logic and meaning of Quranic verses, I argue that it is more effective to discuss faith with other Muslims by speaking of science rather than violence. Muslims today often dismiss criticisms of the violence in Allah’s words as merely subjective, whereas science, facts, evidence, and even mathematics are seen as more objective.
The best apologists for Islam have certainly developed a whole arsenal of sophisms to relativize or justify the slightest violent word in the Quran, but the contradictions and scientific errors of an infallible god, supposed to know everything and never err, are harder to dispute. For this reason, in my book 100 Contradictions and Scientific Errors in the Quran (which is my best-known work, here in France), I have thoroughly identified and analyzed an encyclopedic list of the 100 greatest lexical, scientific, narrative, mathematical, dialectical, and historical contradictions found in the Quran. I present two of them here, starting with a Quranic narrative contradiction. Allah, in the Quran, sometimes recounts the same historical event in two different surahs, such as when He announces to Zachariah through His angels that the latter will have a son, named John. But in both of these surahs the human behind Allah’s pen made the mistake of presenting the event with verbatim quotations, specifically first-person statements.
The discrepancy between these verbatim quotes demonstrates that if the author of the Quran can contradict his own work, even his most fervent believers can do so as well.
So what did Zachariah reply when Allah sent him the announcement of John’s birth? According to verse 40 of surah 3, Allah claims that Zachariah, surprised, responded: “My Lord, how will I have a boy when I have reached old age and my wife is barren?” Yet in verse 8 of surah 19, Allah claims that Zachariah at that same moment said: “My Lord, how will I have a boy when my wife is barren and I have reached extreme old age?” These two Quranic citations, between surahs 3 and 19, supposedly quoting the same statement made by Zachariah during a unique and precise event, should have been word-for-word identical. However, they invert the order of the two arguments relative to one another and feature a differing adjective—present in one but absent in the other. Each version of the historical and factual truth contradicts and invalidates the other, even though both are meant to be equally divine. The discrepancy between these verbatim quotes demonstrates that if the author of the Quran can contradict his own work, even his most fervent believers can do so as well.
Let us take another example of incoherence in the Quran, which leaves little room for subjectivity: mathematical errors. Several of Allah’s Quranic instructions regarding the calculation of inheritance shares are simply impossible to apply, as they contradict one another. For instance, in verse 12 of surah 4, Allah affirms that if a person dies without leaving any parent or child, but has a brother or a sister, then each of them is to receive one sixth of the inheritance: “And if a man or woman dies leaving no father, no mother and no child, but has a brother or a sister, then for each one of them is a sixth.”
Let us now consider the two only possible interpretations of this instruction, which contains a subtle ambiguity that is difficult to discern at a glance. First, let us assume that the word “or” in the phrase “a brother or a sister” implies there is only one heir—either a brother or a sister. This would mean, according to verse 12 of surah 4, that Allah grants “a sixth” of the inheritance to the sister of a deceased person with no parent or child. However, later in the same surah, in verse 176, Allah states that the sister of a deceased person without parent or child must receive “half” of the inheritance: “Say Allah gives you a ruling about one who dies leaving no father, no mother and no child: if someone dies and has no child but has a sister, she shall have half of what he leaves.” This creates a blatant contradiction: in the same inheritance scenario, a single sister receives either one sixth or half of the estate.
To resolve this contradiction, Muslims might then be tempted to adopt the second (and only other) possible interpretation of the word “or” in “[if he] has a brother or a sister, then for each one of them is a sixth,” namely that Allah is referring to two individuals: one brother plus one sister. This would mean that the brother and sister are each to receive an equal share—namely one sixth. Yet, in verse 176 of surah 4, Allah explains that in a situation involving a deceased person, if there are brothers and sisters: “a male will have the share of two females.”
Rational critique of the Quran, the hadiths, and the Prophet’s biography has become vastly more accessible and widespread than at any time in history.
There is no coherent logic underlying these contradictory instructions. How can Allah explain that a brother must receive the same share as a sister, and then that two brothers must receive the same as four sisters? Either the Prophet Muhammad became confused with the Quran that emerged from his fallible human imagination, or other humans—careless or deceitful—completed the Quran after him as they saw fit, despite the dogma of the Quran’s inviolability which attributes its authorship to Allah alone.
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Until the late twentieth century, intellectual criticism of Islam’s sacred texts by ex-Muslims remained confined to discreet discussions, books of testimonies, or academic works that struggled to find a place in the public debate. But with the democratization of the internet, everything changed. Rational critique of the Quran, the hadiths, and the Prophet’s biography has become vastly more accessible and widespread than at any time in history.
More and more critics of Islam—ex-Muslims or not, anonymous or not—now dare to speak publicly about everything that worries them in Islam: its intolerance toward any dissenting thought, its violence, its misogyny, its scientific absurdities. Yet whether in Islamic countries, Europe, or elsewhere, ex-Muslims who criticize Islam openly remain few and often must live in hiding. Whether they live in countries where apostasy is illegal or in Western countries where they risk social death or even physical violence, many ex-Muslims fear revealing their departure from Islam to their families. Some pretend to remain Muslim.
The “battle of ideas” challenging Islam remains, even today, as stormy in the media as it is perilous to one’s personal safety. According to the sacred texts and legal tradition of Islam, leaving the religion and criticizing its foundations constitutes a religious crime whose legally prescribed punishment may extend up to death. This position derives directly from hadiths—the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad—classified as Sahih (authentic), such as Bukhari numbers 6878 and 6922, in which the Prophet Muhammad, defined by Allah (surah 33, verse 21) as a universal behavioral model for all Muslims, declared: “Whoever changes his religion, kill him!” These sacralized statements, criminalizing the loss of faith in Islam or the conversion of a Muslim to another religion, explain why even today, among the 42 Islamic countries (by constitution or by their predominantly Muslim population), not a single one recognizes or defends the right of a Muslim to leave Islam.