By Cyril Anderson

A claim often made by certain militant Arabic Christians, particularly, for some unclear reason, Egyptian Christians, that the Qu’ran contains “numerous grammatical errors,” with some of these people claiming up to a hundred such errors.  This is a ridiculous claim, as is seen by a cursory examination of the relevant issues.  For the specifics of why those who claim grammatical errors are really just ignorant themselves of grammar, I will refer the reader to a qualified scholar of the language’s grammar.  This article will focus on some of the flaws in this way of thinking that can be seen even without getting into the complicated grammatical specifics.

 One must not be too easily impressed by the claims of these people; these people prey on unsuspecting Muslims, usually those new to the religion or weak in their knowledge, using their Arabic mother tongue as a badge of credibility.  However, the Qu’ran is not an ordinary Arabic text, but rather the highest literary achievement of the Arabic language, and there is of course a great difference between basic literacy and literary literacy, particularly literacy of high literature of a Classical dialect of the language no longer widely used.  Just because someone speaks and understands modern Arabic enough to listen to a newscast, read a newspaper, carry a conversation, and write a simple letter doesn’t mean he is an expert in the grammar of the language.

 For an analogy, just because someone speaks English doesn’t mean he is an expert in Shakespeare or English grammar.  We are talking different levels of literacy, and different levels of linguistic understanding.  And Arabic, it should be noted, has one of the most complicated grammars of all the languages on the planet.

 The first argument against the claim of widespread grammatical error is the simple fact that the Qu’ran became accepted as a Divine text amongst the Arabs of the Classical period.  If there had been a hundred grammar errors in the 6000 lines of the Qu’ran (i.e. one error for roughly every 60 verses), the tribal leaders of the Quraysh, who were well aware of how the language was supposed to be used from their love of poetry, and who were great opponents of Muhammad, would have used this as a clear argument against the Qu’ran.  But history doesn’t record them doing so.

Indeed, the claims of these people show an ignorance of the basics of what a grammar is.  In Arabic, as in any language, the grammar comes from the language, not the language from the grammar.  What does this mean?

 Languages evolve naturally from one another as they meet each other and as the people who speak them change.  At some point, Arabic appeared as a new Semitic language.  Was the grammar of it planned out ahead of time consciously by the humans who spoke it, directing their use of the language?  No.  No language appears in such a way.  Rather, the language naturally diverged from whatever language or languages it came from.  Now, of course, for a group of humans speaking a common language to be to be able to understand each other, and for the language to be learnable and sensible to people, there has to be some sort of grammatical structure and order to it.  But usually, people’s understanding of this order is not conscious; that is, they understand how to speak properly from practice and experience in conversation.

So, eventually, as a result of this evolutionary process, a language now known as Classical Arabic appeared amongst the people of central Arabia.

Systematized formal grammars of Classical Arabic came about only after the language had already developed, so as to try to describe how the language worked as it was actually used. 

 This is much like a scientist trying to uncover the existing laws of nature by observing how nature functions.  The linguist who tries to deduce such laws needs a source, a text or set of texts that are the best, “gold standard” examples of the way the language is used.

 What was the main source used by early writers of Arabic grammars?  The Qu’ran.  The Qu’ran was the principal source from which the laws of Classical Arabic grammar were used.  These grammarians were Muslims.  The purpose of the writing down formally of the rules of Arabic grammar was to describe and systematize the grammatical understanding of the first major work of broad importance in Classical Arabic literature: the Qu’ran.

 The first textbooks of Classical Arabic grammar were written to describe how Arabic was used in the Qu’ran, using the Qu’ran as the standard for correct Arabic usage.  So in this light, for someone to claim that it has “grammatical errors” is logically absurd.  How can a document fail rules that were developed based on that text in the first place?  If the Qu’ran was used as the standard of proper Classical Arabic grammar by those first to systematize and record Arabic grammar, how can it be claimed that there are mistakes in the Qu’ran’s usage of the language?  It makes no sense.

 If someone was attacking Christianity by claiming that the Gospel texts had grammatical errors in the Greek text, we would probably be critical of the claim, and say that the person would need a high burden of proof to justify the claims, but nonetheless admit that it is a claim that is at least minimally possible, and worth perhaps looking into.  After all, Classical Greek existed as a literary language for close to a thousand years before the Gospel texts came along, and because of the huge Greek culture started with ancient Athens and the city states, Greek grammars were already in existence and taught systematically before the Gospels were written.  But such was not the case with the Arabic grammar, which was not systematized until after the Qu’ran built an Arabic language-based culture that made learning Arabic important.

 The people who make such embarrassingly foolish arguments should reflect on the fact that no one would ever have cared to document the complex grammar of Meccan Bedouin traders had it not been for the culture built around the Qu’ran.  The culture built around the Qu’ran is the reason why 500 million people speak Arabic as a primary language, and why over a billion Muslims strive to learn the language.

 The people making such arguments should also reflect on why they can’t think of any better way to promote their religion than making lame attacks on the religion of others.