Dr. Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips

By

© Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, 1987/1407 AH

2^nd Edition 2002

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface
Foreword
Introduction
	Interpretation out of Context
	Letter Count: Totals
	Letter Count: Inconsistency
	Letter Count: Manipulation
	Letter Count: Data Falsification
	Word Count: Grammatical Inconsistencies
	Word Count: Data Falsification
	Soorah Qaf: False Claims
	Why Nineteen?
	Number 19: A Platform for Deviation
	The Prefixed Letters (al-Muqatt‘at)
	The Miracle of the Qur’aan
Conclusion
Bibliography

PREFACE

S

ince the publication of my refutation of Rashad Khalifa’s 19 theory in 1987, some new developments have taken place with regard to his personal claims. However, the arguments for his “miraculous” number theory have not changed. Consequently, as Professor Yvonne Haddad put it, “The fact remains that Philips’s work is generally accepted among Sunni Muslims as the most exhaustive rebuttal of Khalifa.”[1]

After three reprints of my refutation, The Qur’an’s Numerical Miracle: Hoax and Heresy, I allowed it to go out of print in the early 1990s due to the steadily decreasing impact of the cults’ ideas. However, with the arrival of the Internet in the past decade and its subsequent spread, Khalifa’s ideas have found a new channel by which to spread its falsehood in a number of unsuspecting communities around the world, from India to Nigeria, and Australia to Austria. Thus, every year, there are some people around the world, unaware of my thorough refutation, who become ensnarled by his claims. These claims are vigorously propagated by his cult which operates under the title of the United Submitters International.

From an historical perspective, the most significant development in Khalifa’s heretical movement since my book’s publication was his assassination in his temple in Tucson, Arizona on January 31, 1990. When the temple secretary arrived to meet him for morning prayers, she discovered his body in the kitchen, bloody and lying on top of a handgun he carried for his personal protection.[2] It is worth noting that following a series of death-threats Khalifa had claimed in one of the editions of the cult’s official newsletter, Muslim Perspective, in the late 1980s that since he was a messenger of Allah he would never be assassinated but would die a natural death.

Due to many recent requests from Malaysia to Nigeria for copies of my refutation mentioned on my website, www.bilalphilips.com, I decided to republish it with the this update and a few minor adjustments and additions. The following is a brief history of the false-prophet/messenger, Rashad Khalifa.

Rashad Khalifa was born in 1935 in a small village in Egypt to a father was supposed to be a master of the Shadhili Sufi order. Rashad came to the United States in 1959 and received his doctorate in biochemistry from the University of California at Riverside in the early 1960s. In 1963 he married Stephanie Hoefle, a native of Tucson, and later became a U.S. citizen. In the mid 1970s he was sent as a United Nations agricultural adviser to Libya and from 1980 to 1986 he served as supervising chemist in the pesticides section of the Arizona Commission of Agriculture and Horticulture.

Khalifa began working on his interpretation of the Qur’aan’s mathematical code from 1968. In 1973 he published his first booklet explaining his theory, Miracle of the Quran: Significance of the Mysterious Alphabets. As a result of that work and of the many talks and lectures he gave on the mathematical composition of the Qur’aan, he became widely known in Muslim communities in the United States and in English speaking communities in the Islamic world. The first reports of his findings published in Arabic were in Egypt in the middle 1970s. However, there where many Arab Muslim scholars who immediately recognized the inherent deviation in his claims. Consequently, a number of warnings by scholars were published in the Arab media in response to his claims.

The work that first attracted the attention of an even wider audience was Khalifa’s 1981 volume The Computer Speaks: God’s Message to the World. In this volume he presented his first claim, cited on page 1, that he had “physical, touchable, verifiable and utterly indisputable proof for: (1) the existence of God, (2) a message from God to you, and (3) the exact year when this world will end.”[3] The book itself was written on a Hewlett-Packard HP-1000 E-Series computer and appeared irrefutable at a first glance. In 1981 Khalifa also published his first English translation of the Qur’an, which he claimed to be “the first translation of the sacred scripture of Islam into English by a native speaker of Arabic.” He called it: Quran: The Final Scripture. (Two revised translations were published in 1989 and 1992.)

In the following year, 1982, the materials already presented in his previous writings were published in a work, initially designed to be shown through a series of photographic slides, entitled Quran: Visual Presentation of the Miracle. In the same year he wrote a vehement attack on the Sunnah entitled Quran, Hadith, and Islam, in which claimed that the whole Muslim world had fallen into idolatry by believing and following the Sunnah of Prophet Muhammad (r). In it, he claimed that the only legitimate h adeeth was the Qur’aan itself. Subsequently, in his community in Tucson, Arizona, he eliminated the female dress code, segregation of men and women (i.e., men and women prayed side-by-side in his temple called Masjid Tucson).

Three years later in 1985, as opposition to his claims among Muslims steadily increased and his popularity had fallen to an all-time low, Khalifa claimed that his 19 code had revealed that there were two false verses in the Qur’an; the last two verses of Chapter 9. This stirred up a great resentment to him among Muslims in America and caused even some of his own followers to abandon him. Such a claim is unanimously held among Muslims to be a statement of disbelief.

In May 1988 he made the ultimate pronouncement of heresy in a special bulletin of Muslim Perspective entitled “GOD INSISTS” in which he confirmed “God has provided powerful, physical proof in support of my mission as His commissioned messenger to the New World. ” He claimed that America, the new world, had never had a messenger commissioned by God. The time had now come. Khalifa pointed to the physical evidence that he had brought of the miracle of the Qur’aan as supportive proof for his mission. He concocted nineteen more “facts” based on his inconsistent numerical system showing that his name Rashad Khalifa was a part of the 19 miracle mentioned in the Qur’aan. Subsequent issues of Muslim Perspective devoted considerable attention to the reaffirmation of his claim to be a messenger of Allaah. Khalifa affirmed that Prophet Muhammad (r) was the last prophet (nabi), but claimed that there was no Qur’anic affirmation that Muhammad (r) was the last messenger (rasul). This word game, while sounding reasonable to the non-Arab speaker, or the ignorant Arab, is obviously false to the religiously educated Arab speaker[4].

In the same year, Khalifa made another incredible announcement in support of his claim to messengership. He announced that he had encountered the previous prophets who all confirmed his identity as the Messenger of the Covenant. In the September 1988 issue of Muslim Perspectives he stated: “On Tuesday, the third day of Zul-Hijja, 1391 (December 21, 1971), I, Rashad Khalifa, the soul, the real person, not the body, was taken somewhere in the universe, where I was introduced to all the prophets … All of them, one by one, declared that they believe in me as the ‘Apostle of the Covenant.’ ”[5]

In his 1989 revision of his translation of the Qur’aan Quran: The Final Testament, he rejected the second half of the Muslim declaration of faith: Muhammadur rasoolullaah (Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah) and mention of Prophet Muhammad (r) in the A th an was removed.He moved toward a kind of universalism, insisting that Islaam was not a name but a description of the act of submitting to God, saying: “a Muslim is anyone who submits to God, be they Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists … One can be a Muslim Jew, a Muslim Christian, a Muslim Hindu, or a Muslim Muslim.”[6] In the middle of 1989 the name of the bulletin of the Tucson temple was changed from Muslim Perspective to Submission Perspective and then to Submitters Perspective.

Since his death in 1990, no new leader has emerged to take his place in the cult. However, Edip Yuksel, a well educated Turk provided religious leadership during the 1990s (His father is a Muslim scholar who has condemned his son’s writings.) Followers of Rashad Khalifa are currently located in such places as Phoenix, Arizona; Riverside and the Bay area in California; Vancouver, British Columbia; and other parts of the world. [7]

Dr. Bilal Philips

Ajman, August 2002
FOREWORD

O

ne hot Fall day in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in the year 1986, one of my students excitedly gave me a video-taped copy of Ahmed Deedat’s presentation of Dr. Rashad Khalifa’s theory of the miraculous numerical code of the Qur’aan[8] and asked my opinion of it. Although a good friend of mine, Abu Bilal Mustafa al-Kanadi, who was doing his M.A. thesis on Numerical Exegesis of the Qur’aan at that time, had previously mentioned to me that the theory seemed to be based on falsified data, I reserved comment and instead showed the tape to my grade 10, 11 and 12 Islamic Studies classes and asked their opinion about it. Most students were thoroughly convinced of its authenticity, so I made the issue a research project for my grade 10 students and supplied them with a copy of Ahmed Deedat’s book on it entitled, Al-Qur’aan The Ultimate Miracle,[9] as well as facts and figures from Dr. Rashad Khalifa’s own book on the subject, Qur’aan: Visual Presentation of the Miracle. [10]Most of the students enthusiastically embarked on the project of checking the accuracy of the data. Some initially used an IBM program in which the whole Qur’aan had been loaded, however, the program proved to be unreliable and thus most of the crosschecking and counting had to be done by hand.

Their research uncovered many inconsistencies and errors which raised doubts in their minds about the authenticity of the whole theory. When I confirmed their doubts and informed them of some of Dr. Khalifa’s heretical claims, most of them concluded that the theory was totally false and that something should be done to inform others. At this point, I considered writing a thorough refutation of the theory, but I was told that a number of articles and booklets had already been written so I gave up the idea.

During this period I also came across a plea written by a reader of the magazine, “Islamic Horizons” for clarity on Rashad Khalifa’s claim.[11] There was a reply in the issue of the magazine,[12] however, it did not tackle the core of the claim to my satisfaction. I then set about gathering whatever articles and booklets were in circulation, most of which was from South Africa, but, to my disappointment, I found them to be more emotional than factual. Most dealt with only a few of Dr. Khalifa’s claims, many had errors in their rebuttals and perhaps the most comprehensive of them all was written in very poor English. Consequently, I decided to make a thorough study of the theory in order to present a comprehensive factual refutation of its claim.

At this point, I would like to thank all those who contributed to the preparation of this booklet, especially my grade 10 class of 1986/87 at Manaret ar-Riyadh School. And, of all those who took part in its preparation, I would like to make special mention of Omar al-Musa, Ahmed Qteishat, Ghassan Kashmiri, M. Akif Rahman, Mohammed Tahir Qureshi and lastly Syed Osman of Grade 6A.

May Allaah accept this effort as one done solely for His pleasure in defense of His religion, Islaam, and make it reach and benefit those who are in most need of it.

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