ahadun

Lin­guis­tic Rebut­tal to Polem­i­cal Dis­tor­tions : The Mean­ing of Ahad”

Recent­ly we were intro­duced to a new amus­ing polemic from the Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies, name­ly with regard to the word ahad(un)”. To quote the mis­sion­ar­ies, the use of the word ahad :

    …shows that the Quran is far from being a mas­ter­piece, or the pin­na­cle of Ara­bic elo­quence. The wrong use of a word in a very cru­cial text which relates to the nature of Allah is clear proof that God is not the author of the Quran.

To achieve this end, the mis­sion­ar­ies cite an online text from a Chris­t­ian Arab polemi­cist who claims that the word does not mean one”, but one of”. 

Is it true what they claim ? 

We seek to answer this alle­ga­tion in the fol­low­ing, insha’allah.

Does Ahad” real­ly mean One of”?

Accord­ing to the missionaries :

    Amaz­ing­ly, the actu­al Ara­bic of verse 1 does not say that Allah is One, but lit­er­al­ly says Allah is One of. This is due to the word used for one in the sen­tence, name­ly ahad.

What is actu­al­ly amaz­ing” in this state­ment is their extreme idio­cy and igno­rance with regard to the mean­ing of the word ahad”, which is actu­al­ly an adjec­tive, as opposed to one of” which is a pro­noun. The mis­sion­ar­ies in their haste to twist the mean­ing of ahad” has failed to dis­tin­guish between these two obvi­ous opposites !

First, let us refer to the estab­lished mean­ing of ahad” as estab­lished by the lex­i­cal authorities. 

Hans Wehr in his def­i­n­i­tion says that :

Note that the mean­ing of ahad” varies from one” to some­one”, but cer­tain­ly they all agree on the same mean­ing, which is the adjec­tive one”, and not the pro­noun one of”! 

Elias & Elias also con­curs with Wehr in their fol­low­ing entry :

Hence we have estab­lished that ahad(un)” does indeed mean one” and the debate should just stop there. 

How­ev­er, the mis­sion­ary has com­piled a list of vers­es, which he claims mean one of”, occur­ring in the Qur’an­ic text. To add a fur­ther blow to the mis­sion­ary pro­pa­gan­da, we pro­duce the fol­low­ing entry from a Qur’an­ic con­cor­dance which dis­tin­guish­es between the word ahad” and ihda”, accom­pa­nied by the Qur’an­ic verse num­bers in where they occur.

It is indeed clear from the above that the mis­sion­ary has no case to fol­low. Ahad” does indeed mean one” and it occurs fre­quent­ly through­out the Qur’an­ic text. Where­as the word ihda” (which means one of”) only occurs thrice in the Qur’an.

What About Wahid”?

The mis­sion­ar­ies have charged the fol­low­ing regard­ing the usage of the word ahad”:

    In every sin­gle case, ahad is used to refer to one of some­thing, to one mem­ber of a spe­cif­ic group. None of the exam­ples used this word to mean one, alone, sin­gle etc.

Iron­i­cal­ly, this alle­ga­tion of the mis­sion­ary is only true for the very word which the mis­sion­ary is try­ing hard to pro­mote, i.e. wahid”!

The fol­low­ing entry from Wehr shows the def­i­n­i­tion of wahid”:

Has the mis­sion­ary con­fused him­self ? The above entry clear­ly states that wahid can mean “…each one of them” or every one of them” which cer­tain­ly shows that it can refer a mem­ber of a spe­cif­ic group. What is the mis­sion­ary try­ing to say and what exact­ly does he want to achieve by this point­less polemic ?

With regard to the mis­sion­ary alle­ga­tion that wahid” is a bet­ter sub­sti­tute for ahad”, we say that the mis­sion­ary has cer­tain­ly nev­er heard this Sura’ being recit­ed when he made this idi­ot­ic claim. 

To lis­ten to Sura’ al-Ikhlas, we implore our read­ers to down­load and lis­ten to the Sura’ recita­tion by Sheikh Abdul Rah­man As-Sudais here [.mp3 for­mat].

Read­ers can eas­i­ly note how the Sura’ is struc­tural­ly pro­nounced and the over­all tone of the Sura’ is rhyth­mi­cal­ly con­sis­tent in the usage of the word ahad”.

Hence, this mis­sion­ary polemic is dis­mis­si­ble and can now be dis­card­ed as noth­ing more than inflat­ed nonsense.

Echad” and the Mis­sion­ary’s Folly

In their futile attempt in try­ing to deter­mine” the ori­gin of ahad, the mis­sion­ary made the fol­low­ing laugh­able claim :

    One pos­si­ble, and even prob­a­ble, expla­na­tion as to why Muham­mad, or the author of the Quran, used the word ahad is because of his inter­ac­tion with the Jews. Muham­mad may have heard the Jew­ish She­ma, the monothe­is­tic creed of faith found in Deuteron­o­my 6:4, recit­ed which uses the word echad to refer to Yah­we­h’s unity.

Any stu­dent of the Semit­ic lan­guages will be gap­ing in awe at this sweep­ing state­ment. It is known that Ara­bic and Hebrew are sis­ter lan­guages, hence there are many words in both lan­guages which share the same lan­guage. Brown-Dri­ver-Brig­gs’ lex­i­con exhibits this under­stand­ing with the fol­low­ing entry :

Please note that the BDB have includ­ed ahad in its entry of echad”, and both are iden­ti­fied as adjec­tives. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for the mis­sion­ary, there is no mean­ing one of” record­ed by this cel­e­brat­ed lexicon.

With regard to the word echad, Strong’s con­cor­dance also agrees with the BDB :

A Man­u­fac­tured Dilemma

In his sum­ma­ry, the mis­sion­ary made the fol­low­ing fatu­ous claim :

    In any case, Mus­lims are in a dilem­ma. Since the data shows that the lit­er­al ren­der­ing of Sura 112:1 is that Allah is one of,” the ques­tion remains one of what ? Is he one of many gods ?

We had shown in the above that the mis­sion­ary is con­fused between an adjec­tive (“ahad”) and a pro­noun (“ihda”), two dif­fer­ent Ara­bic words that have lit­tle cor­re­la­tion to each oth­er and cer­tain­ly the lat­ter does not exist in Sura’ al-Ikhlas (Qur’an, 112). Hence from where did this mis­sion­ary got his lit­er­al read­ing” from if the word ihda” is non-exis­tent in the above-men­tioned Sura’? Cer­tain­ly, the mis­sion­ary is hard-pressed to pro­vide such evi­dence apart from his blink­ered view of Islam. It is indeed under­stood that God is, as explained by Ibn Katheer in his inter­pre­ta­tion of Sura’ al-Ikhlas :

He is the One and Only with­out equal, nor any min­is­ter or part­ner, nor any like or par­al­lel ; and this descrip­tion can­not be applied to any­one save Allah(T) because He(T) is Per­fect in all His Attrib­ut­es and all His Actions.“7

It is also equal­ly obvi­ous that the mis­sion­ary is des­per­ate enough to read into” the Qur’an­ic text for evi­dence of the non-exis­tent Trini­tar­i­an doc­trine as held by Chris­tians. Worse still for the mis­sion­ary, we have shown from his own Bible that the Hebrew echad (which is also an adjec­tive) is under­stood as one” and is syn­ony­mous with the Ara­bic ahad, and its accom­pa­ny­ing inter­pre­ta­tion from Jew­ish schol­ars. There is no room for a Trini­tar­i­an inter­pre­ta­tion for echad”, and like­wise, there can­not be any form of the pseu­do-monothe­is­tic Trin­i­ty in its sis­ter equiv­a­lent, ahad”.

Con­clud­ing Reflections

In light of our thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion into the lin­guis­tic con­no­ta­tions, his­tor­i­cal usages, and con­tex­tu­al inter­pre­ta­tions of the Ara­bic term ahad’, the mis­sion­ary’s claim, as posit­ed in their argu­ment, appears to be more a result of mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion, mis­un­der­stand­ing, or per­haps even inten­tion­al mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion, rather than an informed cri­tique root­ed in a clear com­pre­hen­sion of the Ara­bic language.

In essence, the alle­ga­tion put forth by the mis­sion­ary is hinged upon a dubi­ous trans­la­tion of the Ara­bic term ahad’ in the Quran’s Sura 112:1. The mis­sion­ary sug­gests that the phrase Allah is one of’ is a more accu­rate ren­der­ing of the orig­i­nal text. This inter­pre­ta­tion, how­ev­er, hinges on a mis­un­der­stand­ing of the term ahad’, con­fus­ing it with the pro­noun ihda’, which implies one of’. How­ev­er, as our exam­i­na­tion has illus­trat­ed, ahad’ in its lex­i­cal and con­tex­tu­al usage with­in the Quran serves as an adjec­tive mean­ing one’ or alone’, con­trast­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly with the mis­sion­ary’s claim.

More­over, the claim that the word ihda’ — which sig­ni­fies one of’ — is some­how embed­ded in Sura’ al-Ikhlas (Quran, 112) is with­out mer­it, as this term does not fea­ture with­in this Sura’ at all. Thus, the mis­sion­ary’s lit­er­al read­ing rais­es ques­tions about the method­ol­o­gy employed in reach­ing such con­clu­sions, as it seems to lack a com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of the Ara­bic lan­guage’s nuances.

We also find that the mis­sion­ary, per­haps inad­ver­tent­ly, over­looks the estab­lished mean­ings of the Ara­bic and Hebrew coun­ter­parts, ahad’ and echad’, respec­tive­ly, both of which lin­guis­ti­cal­ly serve as adjec­tives imply­ing one’. There­fore, it seems unfound­ed to asso­ciate these terms with the pro­noun one of’. The mis­sion­ary’s claim that ahad’ is a prod­uct of Islam­ic inter­ac­tion with Jews also over­looks the fact that Ara­bic and Hebrew are sis­ter lan­guages, mean­ing many terms share com­mon roots and mean­ings across both languages.

In terms of the­ol­o­gy, the mis­sion­ary’s inter­pre­ta­tion seems des­per­ate to impose a Trini­tar­i­an read­ing on the Quran­ic text. How­ev­er, the Quran, Islam’s cen­tral text, makes it clear through Sura’ al-Ikhlas and oth­ers that God (Allah) is One, unique, and with­out part­ners, a direct con­trast to the Trini­tar­i­an doctrine.

Fur­ther­more, the pro­posed sub­sti­tu­tion of wahid’ for ahad’ in the Sura’ al-Ikhlas not only mis­un­der­stands the words’ dis­tinct con­no­ta­tions but also dis­re­gards the rhyth­mic har­mo­ny and struc­tur­al con­sis­ten­cy of the Sura’. This once again rein­forces the need for an in-depth under­stand­ing of the lan­guage to make an accu­rate interpretation.

Ulti­mate­ly, the mis­sion­ary’s argu­ment pre­sent­ed seems to be ground­ed more in mis­un­der­stand­ing and mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion than in fac­tu­al, lin­guis­tic analy­sis. Thus, we can con­fi­dent­ly dis­miss it as a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Ara­bic term ahad’, rather than an accu­rate cri­tique of Quran­ic the­ol­o­gy. As the com­mon Ara­bic phrase goes, Allahu Ahad’ — God is One’, and this under­stand­ing forms the bedrock of Islam­ic monothe­is­tic theology.Endmark

Cite this arti­cle as : Mohd Elfie Nieshaem Juferi, Lin­guis­tic Rebut­tal to Polem­i­cal Dis­tor­tions : The Mean­ing of Ahad”,” in Bis­mi­ka Allahu­ma, Feb­ru­ary 9, 2006, last accessed March 29, 2024, https://​bis​mikaal​lahu​ma​.org/​q​u​r​a​n​/​a​h​a​d​un/
  1. J.M. Cow­an (ed.), The Hans Wehr Dic­tio­nary of Mod­ern Writ­ten Ara­bic, Spo­ken Lan­guage Ser­vices, NY, (1976)[]
  2. Elias A. Elias & Edward E. Elias, Elias’ Pock­et Dic­tio­nary Arabic/​English, Elias Mod­ern Pub­lish­ing House, Cairo (right col­umn)[]
  3. Ahmad Ibrahim, Al-Qur’an Malay-Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary : Denot­ing Books and Vers­es, Pus­ta­ka Bina Insani, Kuala Lumpur (1989), p. 18[]
  4. J.M. Cow­an (ed.), ibid.[]
  5. F. Brown, S. Dri­ver and C. Brig­gs, The Brown-Dri­ver-Brig­gs Hebrew and Eng­lish Lex­i­con : With An Appen­dix Con­tain­ing The Bib­li­cal Ara­ma­ic, Hen­drick­son Pub­lish­ers, Mass­a­chu­setts (2001)[]
  6. James Strong, The New Strong’s Exhaus­tive Con­cor­dance of the Bible, Thomas Nel­son Pub­lish­ers, Tenessee (1996)[]
  7. Sameh Strauch (transl.), Select­ed Qur’an­ic Vers­es Explained From The Tafseer of At-Tabari, Ibn Katheer & Ibn Al-Qayy­im, IIPH, Riyadh (1999), p. 130[]

Comments

4 responses to “Lin­guis­tic Rebut­tal to Polem­i­cal Dis­tor­tions : The Mean­ing of Ahad””

  1. ROCKY Avatar
    ROCKY

    any­one who study ara­bic will know that the KHABAR AGREE WITH THE MUBTADAH IN GENDER AND IN NUMBER

    ..

  2. ROCKY Avatar
    ROCKY

    any­one who study ara­bic will know that the KHABAR AGREE WITH THE MUBTADAH IN GENDER AND IN NUMBER.

  3. Ali Avatar
    Ali

    Aza­lalaykam bro,

    The Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies did get me on one point : If Allah is Ahad, then why is his attribute/​name Al-Wahid, intead of Al-Ahad ? I just don’t under­stand if Ahad is more monothe­is­tic” and sin­gu­lar, should­n’t his name be Al-Ahad as well ? 

    Yet in Surah Ikhlas it says Qul-Hu-Allahu-Ahadun(Say-He-Allah-One). Notice the Al’ is not before Ahad, so it’s not a title for him, but is a descrip­tive sen­tence. If it did mean one of’, it would be Ara­bic ihda,which occurs 11 times else­where in Qur’an. 

    I do agree with you that the Hebrew Echad = Ara­bic Ahad. They both mean ONE nev­er­the­less, and are not com­par­a­tive. Al-Wahid seems to be more like The Uni­fied’ instead of Al-Ahad, The One’.

  4. AbdAllah Avatar
    AbdAllah

    Assala­mu alaykum Wa Rah­math­ul­lah Wa Barakathuhu broth­ers and sisters,

    This claim by the mis­sion­ary is pathet­ic and at an all time low. They sug­gest­ed that wahid’ be used instead of ahad’. How­ev­er, the use of the word ahad’ actu­al­ly demon­strates the mir­a­cle of Qur’an­ic elo­quence. Very sim­ply, one of the mir­a­cles in the lan­guage of the Qur’an is the com­pres­sion of great depths of mean­ings with very few words, all the while main­tain­ing elo­quence, beau­ty, struc­ture, rhythm and cadence. Anoth­er aspect of its mirac­u­lous elo­quence is the per­fect choice of words over its syn­onyms. Mufti Shafi demon­strat­ed this supreme elo­quence of the Qur’an in his tafsir, Ma’ar­i­ful Qur’an by going through this very verse (Surah Iklaas, ayat 1):

    Say, ‘‘The Truth is : Allah is One.’’ (Surah Iklaas 112:1)

    The imper­a­tive qul (Say) is direct­ly addressed to the Holy Prophet Muham­mad ??? ???? ???? ? ???, thus indi­cat­ing that he is Allah’s Prophet and Mes­sen­ger. This verse directs and com­mands him to con­vey Allah’s ?????? ? ????? mes­sage to mankind. The epi­thets ahad and wahid are both applied to Allah ?????? ? ????? which are nor­mal­ly trans­lat­ed as One’ but the word ahad’ includes an addi­tion­al sense which sig­ni­fies that Allah ?????? ? ????? is beyond com­po­si­tion, plu­ral­i­ty and resem­blance, which means that He is nei­ther com­posed of any ele­ments, nor does He have any part­ner, not has He any resem­blance to any­thing. This is a response to those who asked about Allah ?????? ? ????? — whether He is made of gold or sil­ver or pearls. This con­cise state­ment cov­ers all aspects of dis­cus­sion on the Divine Being and His attrib­ut­es. The imper­a­tive qul [say] points to the Mes­sen­ger­ship of the Holy Prophet ??? ???? ???? ? ???. If analysed prop­er­ly, this brief sen­tence cov­ers all the detailed dis­cus­sions expound­ed in volu­mi­nous books on theology.”

    Sub­hanAl­lah ! Not only is the word ahad’ more rhyth­mi­cal­ly and aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing, it adds fur­ther depths and lay­ers of mean­ing not giv­en by its syn­onyms. This demon­strates the mirac­u­lous accu­ra­cy, elo­quence and mas­ter­piece of the Qur’an.

    The mis­sion­ar­ies lies and false­hood are revealed again.

    Wasalam.

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