A Very Concerned Reader and Islamic Tabrir 101

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Apr 10, 2021 at 09:52

A Very Concerned Reader:

>The citation in regards to this finding is needed though. I would have liked to know the source!

Well, there is a word in Arabic called التبرير or al-Tabrir and the word means: to justify/defend/make things up and obfuscate and the end result is to defend Islam.

I will give you an example: Arabic speaking Muslims today, if you tell them that in Q20:63 you will find the most celebrated grammatical mistake in the Qur'an and it is: ان هذان لساحران which by the standards of Arabic grammar in the 3rd century it should be: ان هاذين لساحران. Still the meaning did not change but it is a grammatical error. If you check al-Tabari's tafsir, he does not tell readers that it is a grammatical error and then he provides several grammatical explanations and non of them make any sense. So if the reader is not well versed in Arabic grammar he/she will not realize that this is an error in grammar. Now, a few hundred years later Ibn kathir avoids getting into the grammar of the sentence and instead he tells the reader TO WRITE it as: ان هذان لساحران (after all how can anyone changes Allah's words) and RECITE it as: ان هاذين لساحران and problem solved through al-Tabrir. Or is it solved? Now back to modern Arabic speakers: They have no clue that this is a mistake in grammar. Did you get it?

And the same happens to finding Meccan verses in Medinan Suras and vice versa. The Muslim 'Ulama know about it but never discuss it openly. And you can see what happened to 'Ali Dashti for writing about the fact that the Qur'an is not a linguistic miracle in the least. Most astonishing is that you will never find a Mufasir (singular of Mufasereen) that tells you that ان هذين لساحران is a grammatical error.

And what is most astonishing is that al-Mufasereen do not even agree what is Meccan and what is Medinan chapters and verses and case in point in al-Qurtubi's exegesis of Surat al-'Adiyat where he makes it clear that he is not sure if it Meccan or Medinan chapter

I hope this helped

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