Surah 2 · Verse 106

[2:106] By declaring the word of God to be vague and ambiguous, early scholars opened the gate for unlimited abuse and distortion. Furthermore, by distorting the meaning of 2:106, they claimed that many verses of the Quran had been abrogated (amended) by other verses or hadiths. By this "abrogation theory," they amended verses which they did not understand, or which did not suit their interests, or which contradicted their hadiths. Repeating the same error committed by the Children of Israel (2:85), Muslims fulfilled the prophetic description of their action in 15:91- 93. Some of them abrogated 5 Quranic verses, some 20 verses and some 50. They support this claim by distorting the meaning of this verse. The Quran has a peculiar language. The word Aya in its singular form occurs 84 times in the Quran and in all cases, means miracle, evidence, or lesson. However, its plural form, Ayat, is used both for miracle, evidence, lesson, AND/OR for the language of the revelation that entails or leads to those miracles, evidences, and lessons. The fact that a verse of the Quran does not demonstrate the miraculous characteristics of the Quran supports this peculiar usage or vise versa. There are short verses that are comprised of only one or two words and they were most likely frequently used in daily conversation, letters and poetries. For instance, the verse "Where are you going?" cannot be called AYAT (signs) since it is one verse. This is very appropriate, since that expression was and is used by Arabic speaking people daily, even before the revelation of the Quran. However, in its semantic and numerical context, that short question is one of the Ayat of the Quran. See 55:3; 69:1; 74; 4; 75:8; 80:28; 81:26. Furthermore, we are informed that the minimum unit that demonstrates the Quran's miraculous nature is a chapter (10:38) and the shortest chapter consists of three verses (chapters 103, 108, and 110). The first verse of the Quran, commonly known as Basmalah, though containing independent features, may not be considered a divine evidence/miracle on its own. However, it gains a miraculous nature with its numerical network with other letters, words, verses and chapters of the Quran. By not using the singular form Aya for the verses of the Quran, God also made it possible to distinguish the miracles shown in the language and prophecies of the scripture from the miracles shown in nature. See 4:82 and 16:101 for further evidence that the Quranic verses do not abrogate each other. Since grammatically we can refer only to three verses with the plural word, ayat, and since we are not provided with a word to refer to a single or pair of verses, this unique use might have another implication: are we required to quote the Quranic verses in segments of at least three verses? Will this method eliminate the abuse of Quranic statements by taking them out of their context? I think this question needs to be studied and tested. If quoting verses of the Quran in minimums of three units reasonably eliminates the abuse, then we should adhere to such a rule. For another example of different meanings assigned to singular and plural forms of the same word, see 4:3. For a detailed discussion of this verse, see the Sample Comparisons section in the Introduction.