Ibn al Rawandi and Al-Warraq both
believed, “The Quran is the speech of an unwise being, and it contains
contradictions, errors and absurdities.” They clearly demonstrated this in the
conversation written in the Zumurrud. They believed God already taught humans
the difference between right and wrong. If the prophets tell us what we already
know then they are unnecessary, if they tell us something that we feel is not
right, we should not listen to them anyways. Al-Rawandi said this is an example
of our natural and innate knowledge, already given to us by God. He thought
that it is absurd to assume that without prophetic revelation people would not
have learned how to perform mandatory mental and physical skills. All these
skills are acquired by the assiduous application of the inborn human intellect,
discernment and power of observation. They both agreed that the Quran is full
of contradictory, absurd sayings, and it cannot possibly be the speech of the
Wise One.
These beliefs are proof enough to
determine that Al-Rawandi and Al-Warraq were not Muslims at all. In fact the
very idea that they would speak the things they did tells me there is no way
either one of them believed anything pertaining to the Islamic belief. Also, they
both showed no shame in questioning the existence of prophets and saying that
God was an idiot. The Islamic faith revolves around the teachings of Muhammad; therefore
they couldn’t have been Muslims. Muslims are not supposed to question God the
way they did. Human beings do not even possess the ability to understand why
God does anything he does. We are not, but mere human beings. We do not have
the ability to explain miracles; they are not supposed to be logical. A miracle
is the definition of the impossible coming true because of an action from God. My
final opinion is that they both believed they were smarter than God, and thusly
heretics.
http://ismaili.net/mirrors/7ismaili/ismaili.html
Clearly they're both heretics by contemporary Islamic standards. The point JMH & I tried to make is that there was a time in the Islamic world when it was not considered heretical to express doubts in public, and when doing so was not automatically construed as infidelity or disloyalty to the tribe.
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