October 1999: Page 1, 2, 3, 4

Rajab 1420

Volume 15 No 10


In the name of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful

Submitters Perspective

Monthly Bulletin of the International Community of Submitters Published by Masjid Tucson

Over It Is Nineteen

(Quran 74:30)

We appointed angels to be guardians of Hell, and we assigned their number (19)

  • to disturb the disbelievers, to convince the Christians and Jews (that this is a divine scripture),
  • to strengthen the faith of the faithful,
  • to remove all traces of doubt from the hearts of Christians, Jews, as well as the believers, and
  • to expose those who harbor doubt in their hearts, and the disbelievers; they will say, “What did GOD mean by this allegory?”

GOD thus sends astray whomever He wills, and guides whomever He wills. None knows the soldiers of your Lord except He. This is a reminder for the people. (74:31)
Until Rashad Khalifa revealed the awesome mathematical miracle of the Quran, most Islamic scholars believed this passage to relate to angels; specifically 19 angels. Yusuf Ali, in his footnote 5793, states, “The figure nineteen refers to angles appointed to guard Hell.” Verse 31 does in fact relate to angels as guardians and that God has, “fixed their number.”
Muhammad Asad draws a different conclusion and translated the passage as, “Over it are nineteen [powers]” and he states in his correspondingly
 long footnote that, “…Razi advances the view that we may have here a reference to the physical, intellectual and emotional powers within man himself.” He goes on to describe the nineteen powers as seven organic functions, five external or physical senses, and five internal or intellectual senses. He then sums up the argument by stating, “…that in the aggregate, it is these powers and faculties that confers upon man the ability to think conceptually, and place him, in this respect, even above angels.”

How he or Razi deduced all of this from Q74:30 is beyond me and I must confess that this is just one example where “man” has extended himself in trying to analyze and draw conclusions from the Quran. Man has continually, and sometimes erroneously, over analyzed and read much into the Quran’s eternal message.
If the Quran had stated 18 or 20 instead of 19 they would have written that there were 18 or 20 angels standing guard and only 18 powers, omitting one from their list, or

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