- published: 21 Aug 2014
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Muslims consider the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, as the word of God and a miracle. According to Islamic Faith, the Qur'an was revealed miraculously to Muhammad from Allah (God) through angel Jibrīl (Gabriel), as a perfect, verbatim copy of what was written in heaven and existed there from all eternity. Therefore the verses of the book are referred to as ayat, which also means "a sign" in the Arabic language. Muslims therefore believe that the Qur'an is the same as was revealed to Muhammad in the year 610. In the Qur'an is stated an open challenge for anyone who denies its claimed divine origin to produce a text like it. [Quran 17:88][11:12–13][2:23]
The Qur'an states that Muhammed was illiterate and neither read a book nor wrote a book [Quran 29:48] and that he did not know about past events [Quran 3:44][11:49][28:44]. However Critics believe that Muhammad was influenced by older Jewish and Christian traditions, and therefore included many of the wonders known from the Bible in the Qur'an. Some Muslims believe that Quran is a "a miracle of eloquence" rather than a source of scientific revelation; they consider scientific miracles as pseudoscience.
Zakir Abdul Karim Naik (Urdu: ذاکر عبدالکریم نائیک; born 18 October 1965) is an Indian public speaker on the subject of Islam and comparative religion. He is the founder and president of the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), a non-profit organisation that owns the Peace TV channel based in Dubai, UAE. He is sometimes referred to as a televangelist. Before becoming a public speaker, he trained as a doctor. He has written two booklets on Islam and comparative religion. He is regarded as an exponent of the Salafi ideology; he places a strong emphasis on individual scholarship and the rejection of "blind Taqlid", which has led him to repudiate the relevance of sectarian or Madh'hab designations, all the while reaffirming their importance.
Zakir Abdul Karim Naik was born on 18 October 1965 in Mumbai, India. He attended St. Peter's High School in Mumbai. Later he enrolled at Kishinchand Chellaram College, before studying medicine at Topiwala National Medical College and Nair Hospital and later the University of Mumbai, where he obtained a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (MBBS). His wife, Farhat Naik, works for the women's section of the IRF.
Hamza Yusuf Hanson is an American Islamic scholar, and (with Zaid Shakir and Hatem Bazian) is co-founder of Zaytuna College in Berkeley, California, United States. He is a convert to Islam, and is one of the signatories of A Common Word Between Us and You, an open letter by Islamic scholars to Christian leaders, calling for peace and understanding. He has described the 9/11 attacks as "an act of 'mass murder, pure and simple'". Condemning the attacks, he has also stated "Islam was hijacked ... on that plane as an innocent victim".The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom reported that he "is arguably the west's most influential Islamic scholar" and added that "many Muslims find his views hard to stomach."
Hamza Yusuf was born to two academics in Washington State and raised in Northern California. In 1977, he became Muslim and subsequently traveled to the Muslim world and studied for ten years in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, as well as North and West Africa. Hamza Yusuf spent four years studying in the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere in the Middle East. Later he traveled to West Africa and studied in Mauritania, Medina, Algeria, and Morocco under such scholars as Murabit al Haaj; Baya bin Salik, head of the Islamic court in Al-'Ain, United Arab Emirates; Muhammad Shaybani, Mufti of Abu Dhabi; Hamad al-Wali; and Muhammad al-Fatrati of Al Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt.[citation needed] After more than a decade abroad, he returned to the United States and earned degrees in nursing from Imperial Valley College and religious studies at San José State University.[citation needed]