Tuesday, August 13, 2013

How Alexander the Great proves Muhammad wrote the Qur'an


For a long time I thought that Muslims everywhere accepted that the figure of Zul-Qarnain, who appears in Surah 18 of the Qur'an, was Alexander the Great. Certainly the tafsirs and experts agreed; Ibn Hisham was probably the first (c800) but the tafsirs from the 10th century onward all come to the same conclusion. Yusuf Ali, the famous Islamic scholar and translator of the Qur'an studied the episode in depth and wrote this in the appendix to his translation:
"I have not the least doubt that Zul-qarnain is meant to be Alexander the Greatthe historic Alexander, and not the legendary Alexanderof whom more presently. My first appointment after graduation was that of lecturer in Greek history. I have studied the details of Alexander's extraordinary personality in Greek historians as well as in modern writers, and have since visited most of the localities connected with his brief but brilliant career."

However, there is body of opinion in the Islamic community which is keen to deny the link. Why should this be?
Firstly, let us examine the salient verses Surah 18.
VerseAbdullah Yusuf AliPickthall
18:83They ask thee concerning Zul-qarnain Say, "I will rehearse to you something of his story."They will ask thee of Dhu'l-Qarneyn. Say: "I shall recite unto you a remembrance of him."
18:84Verily We established his power on earth, and We gave him the ways and the means to all ends.Lo! We made him strong in the land and gave him unto every thing a road.
18:85One (such) way he followed,And he followed a road
18:86Until, when he reached the setting of the sun, he found it set in a spring of murky water: near it he found a people: We said: "O Zul-qarnain! (thou hast authority), either to punish them, or to treat them with kindness."Till, when he reached the setting-place of the sun, he found it setting in a muddy spring, and found a people thereabout. We said: "O Dhu'l-Qarneyn! Either punish or show them kindness."
18:87He said: "Whoever doth wrong, him shall we punish; then shall he be sent back to his Lord; and He will punish him with a punishment unheard-of (before).He said: "As for him who doeth wrong, we shall punish him, and then he will be brought back unto his Lord, Who will punish him with awful punishment!"
18:88"But whoever believes, and works righteousness, he shall have a goodly reward, and easy will be his task as we order it by our command.""But as for him who believeth and doeth right, good will be his reward, and We shall speak unto him a mild command."
18:89Then followed he (another) way.Then he followed a road
18:90Until, when he came to the rising of the sun, he found it rising on a people for whom We had provided no covering protection against the sun.Till, when he reached the rising-place of the sun, he found it rising on a people for whom We had appointed no shelter therefrom.
18:91(He left them) as they were: We completely understood what was before him.So (it was). And We knew all concerning him.
18:92Then followed he (another) way.Then he followed a road
18:93Until, when he reached (a tract) between two mountains, he found, beneath them, a people who scarcely understood a word.Till, when he came between the two mountains, he found upon their hither side a folk that scarce could understand a saying.
18:94They said: "O Zul-qarnain! the Gog and Magog (people) do great mischief on earth: shall we then render thee tribute in order that thou mightest erect a barrier [wall] between us and them?"They said: "O Dhu'l-Qarneyn! Lo! Gog and Magog are spoiling the land. So may we pay thee tribute on condition that thou set a barrier [wall] between us and them?"
18:95He said: "(The power) in which my Lord has established me is better (than tribute): help me therefore with strength (and labour): I will erect a strong barrier [wall] between you and them:He said: "That wherein my Lord hath established me is better (than your tribute). Do but help me with strength (of men), I will set between you and them a bank [wall]."
18:96"Bring me blocks of iron." At length, when he had filled up the space between the two steep mountain sides, he said, "Blow (with your bellows)" then, when he had made it (red) as fire, he said: "Bring me, that I may pour over it, molten lead.""Give me pieces of iron" - till, when he had leveled up (the gap) between the cliffs, he said: "Blow!" - till, when he had made it a fire, he said: "Bring me molten copper to pour thereon."
18:97Thus were they made powerless to scale it or to dig through it.And (Gog and Magog) were not able to surmount, nor could they pierce (it).
18:98He said: "This is a mercy from my Lord: but when the promise of my Lord comes to pass, He will make it into dust; and the promise of my Lord is true."He said: "This is a mercy from my Lord; but when the promise of my Lord cometh to pass, He will lay it low, for the promise of my Lord is true."
18:99On that day We shall leave them [Gog and Magog] to surge like waves on one another: the trumpet will be blown, and We shall collect them all together.And on that day we shall let some of them [Gog and Magog] surge against others, and the Trumpet will be blown. Then We shall gather them together in one gathering.
The Qur'anic version of the story then can be summarised as follows:
i.Muhammad is asked about someone called Zul-Qarnain
ii.God tells us he spoke to Z-Q, favouring him and enabling him to achieve his ends.
iii. God tells us Z-Q went west and reached the setting sun where he found a people.
iv. He then goes east and and discovers another people at the place where the sun rises. 
v. He sets off again until he discovers another people living in fear of two triibes called Gog and Magog beyond two mountains. 
vi. He erects a great wall made of iron and molten lead to protect them but says one day God will break it down.

Why should we then believe that Zul-Qarain is Alexander the Great, apart from the Islamic sources themselves which were unequivocal in their support of the belief?
Well, let me lay out just some of the plentiful evidence.
a. Zul-Qarain translates as Possesses Two Horns or The Two Horned One. Alexander was depicted with the horns of Ammon as a result of his conquest of ancient Egypt in 332 BC and was consequently known throughout the conquered world as The Two Horned OneArchaeologists have found a large number of different types of ancients coins depicting Alexander the Great with two horns. Indeed,  in the late 2nd century BC, silver coins depicting Alexander with ram horns were even used as a principal coinage in Arabia.
b. Ancient stories recount how Alexander built a great wall to keep out a people known as Gog and Magog:  "The building of gates in the Caucasus Mountains by Alexander to repel the barbarian peoples identified with Gog and Magog has ancient provenance and the wall is known as the Gates of Alexander or the Caspian Gates. The name Caspian Gates originally applied to the narrow region at the southeast corner of the Caspian Sea, through which Alexander actually marched in the pursuit of Bessus in 329 BC, although he did not stop to fortify it. It was transferred to the passes through the Caucasus, on the other side of the Caspian, by the more fanciful historians of Alexander." link . Gog and Magog have been associated with the Alexander legend since ancient times. In the Syriac Christian legends for example, Alexander the Great encloses the Gog and Magog horde behind a mighty gate between two mountains, preventing Gog and Magog from invading the Earth. In addition, it is written in the Christian legend that in the end times God will cause the Gate of Gog and Magog to be destroyed, allowing the Gog and Magog horde to ravage the Earth.
c. The story of Alexander travelling to the setting of the sun was well known and is even referred to by Ibn Kathir:  As for the idea of his reaching the place in the sky where the sun sets, this is something impossible, and the tales told by storytellers that he traveled so far to the west that the sun set behind him are not true at all. Most of these stories come from the myths of the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] and the fabrications and lies of their heretics. This suggests that  Ibn Kathir was aware of the Christian legends and thought they were referring to the same figure as the Zul-Qarnain mentioned in the Qur'an.

Given the remarkable similarities between the stories of Alexander and the episodes recounted in the Qur'an of Zul-Qarnain, the fact that Islamic theologians of ancient times identified them as one and the same man, and that Christian and Jewish stories also recount Alexander's exploits and refer to him as a holy man or even a saint, it seems utterly bizarre that Muslims should now try to deny the link.

So why should certain Muslims be so keen to do so?

Let's look at a typical site, Islamawareness.net. In an article entitled Why Zul Qarnain is not Alexander the author, a certain Khalid Jan, presents his "evidence". It can be summarised as follows: the Qur'an tells us that Zul-Qarain was a man beloved of God to whom God had extended special privileges and powers. Historical evidence, however, points indisputably to Alexander being a warlike, violent, pagan who worshiped pagan gods and who wanted to rule the world to gain riches.  (For completeness' sake we should note that Khalid fails to mention another reason why Muslims might be embarrassed to find God supposedly giving Alexander great powers: that of his well documented bi-sexuality and  long lasting love affair with Hephaestion )
Khalid concludes that it must therefore be impossible that the figure described in the Qur'an is Alexander.
Because the Qur'an can't be wrong.
That's it.

Generously, Khalid doesn't blame those who erroneously conflated the two figures because "academic and scientific knowledge was either limited or non-existent". (Unlike nowadays, eh Khalid?) He concludes:
The only common factor on which these scholars based their opinions is the expeditions carried by Alexander and Zul_Qarnain. Other than this, there are hardly any other characteristics that are common in both. The article thus dismisses the overwhelming evidence pointing to the figures being one and the same in a single line.

Hence we are left with a conundrum. Despite Islamawareness.net and others' attempts to convince us otherwise, it is as clear to modern readers as it was to the Islamic scholars that Zul-Qarain is Alexander the Great. It is also clear that Alexander was a pagan war-lord. Muslims cannot deny this since many of them, ironically, use the fact to "prove" that Zul-Qarain cannot be Alexander. 

How then can the Qur'an describe him as a God-fearing, Allah-worshipping, saintly individual to whom God actually spoke (usually a fool proof sign of a prophet, by the way)? 

Unless, that is, when Muhammad was asked by the Quraysh at the behest of some local rabbis what he knew about Zul-Qarnain, the "saintly" figure who conquered the ancient world, to test his prophet-hood, he simply recounted the relevant myths and legends that were common at the time (after taking fifteen days to do some research, of course.) How was he to know that many centuries later Alexander would be revealed as  a pagan who thought he was a god born of a god who was devoted to his male lover just to embarrass Muslim apologists and prove the Qur'an was written by a fallible human?
They (the rabbis) said, 'Ask him about three things which we will tell you to ask and if he answers them then he is a Prophet who has been sent (by Allah); if he does not, then he is saying things that are not true, in which case how you will deal with him will be up to you. Ask him about some young men in ancient times, what was their story? For theirs is a strange and wondrous tale. Ask him about a man who travelled a great deal and reached the east and the west of the earth. What was his story? And ask him about the Ruh (soul or spirit) —what is it? If he tells you about these things, then he is a Prophet, so follow him, but if he does not tell you, then he is a man who is making things up, so deal with him as you see fit.'(Tafsir Ibn Kathir)
The famous story in the Sira relates that when Muhammad was informed of the three questions from the Rabbis, he declared that he would have the answers in the morning. However, Muhammad did not give the answer in the morning. For fifteen days, Muhammad did not answer the question. Doubt in Muhammad began to grow amongst the people of Mecca. Then, after fifteen days, Muhammad received the revelation that is Sura Al-Kahf ("The Cave") link

43 comments:

  1. Did Muhammad really take two weeks to answer the question??

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    1. Yes bro it is written in Qissas ul Anbiyah book

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  2. Yes - does that not make you wonder...

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    1. I thought it was the story of the people in the cave that took Muhammad a number of days to find the answer to. Are you mistaken about this, or do you have evidence?

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    2. Hi Rationalizer,
      Found this in a discussion on my post at ex-muslim page at redit:
      At the beginning of his tafsir on Surah 18, Ibn Kathir(as authentic as authentic can be) gives the following account about what occasioned this “revelation”:
      Muhammad bin Ishaq mentioned the reason why this Surah was revealed. He said that an old man from among the people of Egypt who came to them some forty-odd years ago told him, from Ikrimah that Ibn Abbas said: "The Quraysh sent An-Nadr bin Al-Harith and Uqbah bin Abi Muit to the Jewish rabbis in Al-Madinah, and told them: Ask them (the rabbis) about Muhammad, and describe him to them, and tell them what he is saying. They are the people of the first Book, and they have more knowledge of the Prophets than we do.'
      So they set out and when they reached Al-Madinah, they asked the Jewish rabbis about the Messenger of Allah. They described him to them and told them some of what he had said. They said, You are the people of the Tawrah and we have come to you so that you can tell us about this companion of ours
      They (the rabbis) said, `Ask him about three things which we will tell you to ask, and if he answers them then he is a Prophet who has been sent (by Allah); if he does not, then he is saying things that are not true, in which case how you will deal with him will be up to you.
      Ask him about some young men in ancient times, what was their story. For theirs is a strange and wondrous tale. Ask him about a man who travelled a great deal and reached the east and the west of the earth. What was his story. And ask him about the Ruh (soul or spirit) -- what is it. If he tells you about these things, then he is a Prophet, so follow him, but if he does not tell you, then he is a man who is making things up, so deal with him as you see fit.'
      So An-Nadr and Uqbah left and came back to the Quraysh, and said: O people of Quraysh, we have come to you with a decisive solution which will put an end to the problem between you and Muhammad. The Jewish rabbis told us to ask him about some matters,' and they told the Quraysh what they were.
      Then they came to the Messenger of Allah and said, `O Muhammad, tell us,' and they asked him about the things they had been told to ask. The Messenger of Allah said, (I will tell you tomorrow about what you have asked me.) but he did not say "If Allah wills."
      So they went away, and the Messenger of Allah stayed for fifteen days without any revelation from Allah concerning that, and Jibril, peace be upon him, did not come to him either. The people of Makkah started to doubt him, and said, `Muhammad promised to tell us the next day, and now fifteen days have gone by and he has not told us anything in response to the questions we asked.'
      The Messenger of Allah felt sad because of the delay in revelation, and was grieved by what the people of Makkah were saying about him. Then Jibril came to him from Allah with the Surah about the companions of Al-Kahf, which also contained a rebuke for feeling sad about the idolators. The Surah also told him about the things they had asked him about, the young men and the traveler

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    3. wow - two weeks really does suggest he was running round trying to get the info..

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    4. Just thought - the cave and Alexander ...it's the same surah, of course!

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  3. It is pointless to speculate as to who Dhul-qarnayn really was, if he was indeed a real individual.
    It's a story. This proves nothing.
    What you describe are merely coincidences.

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  4. This was very interesting. I have heard about the Gog Magog End of times stories many times from my muslim friends, I didn't realise that they referred to the Alexander the Great. It really doesn't surprise me that these muslim sites try to cover it up, it's not the first time nor will it be the last. Oh and thanks for the additional information about his bisexuality, not a very appealing trait for a prophet. It's quite funny that it took Muhammad 15 days to answer, however I'm sure muslim apologists are busy contriving a reason for it!

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  5. It refers to King Cyrus the Great, not Alexander.
    Cyrus was a monotheist. There is no contradiction in the Qur'an.

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    1. Hi Anon, please provide evidence that the reference is to King Cyrus and not Alexander the Great.

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    2. Actually, I think this guy is right. I remember reading that Cyrus of Persia(the one who freed the Jews of Babylon), was also called Twin-Horned [Ba'al Ha-Qarnayim]. He was a polytheist, however. The confusion of the 2 figures could have caused Moe to paste Alexanders' stories onto this supposed Godly man.

      Also, there is no concrete evidence that Alexander was gay. The contemporary historians don't even hint at it. That is modern speculation and ignorance of the Greek concept of a male 'friend.' It was more intimate than the modern Western idea of 2 male friends (Alexander wept for 2 days at Hephaisteons bedside.) Even Abraham Lincoln shared a bed with a man, but at the time it was not gay because it seemed immoral for a man to constantly lay with his wife. The modern world is straight-oriented and we forget that the founders of the great civilizations had homosexual tendencies.

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  6. I can confirm that the 2 weeks thing quoted by ibn Kathir is in ibn Ishaq's biography (I saw it in a copy of Guillaume's translation).

    Also, 1st Century AD historian Josephus mentions that Alexander build ramparts against the Scythians (central Eurasians) who he identifies elsewhere with Magog.

    And in the Syriac Christian Legend Alexander goes to the places where the sun sets and rises before enclosing Gog and Magog. Everything in the Quran story is in the Christian Legend, and pre-Islamic Arabic poems too tell the same story.

    Now I doubt anything like these events ever happened to the real Alexander, but it is blatantly obvious that the Quran and the other Legends are recounting the same mythology, which was popularly applied to Alexander.

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  7. Very silly you are! you made this blog without checking that [regardless what Muslim scholars say]; Zulqarnain was A MUSLIM!!!! NOT unbeliever! And he was just not a tyrant! So based on this; you lose all respect from me matey!

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    1. Dude,...he's saying the Quran was wrong in attributing Islam to Alexander! and the scholars didn't know that! relax.

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  8. yea yea, yajuj and majuj are 99% and rest of the human are 1%. world population is 7 billion. 699 billion yajuj majuj tribe still behind the wall. when qiamat day aproaches, allah will break the wall and release those yajuj and majuj tribe. first badge of them will drink the water from caspian sea and cause it dry. 2nd badge of them will talk to each other "there were water here". then they will attack normal human and only muslims will be saved. muslims have to prove there is a wall and there are 699 billion yajuj & majuj people behind. i challenge muslims to declare world population is 700 billion, not 7 billion. read your hadeeth and quran. it is clear. muslim scholars will try to hide or undertone this. but the verses are crystal clear (bukhari & muslim). again i remind to those muslims, these yajuj & majuj still behind the wall, they are more 99% than other human. they will be released only before qiamat. and they will attack every human.

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    1. And why you think that they are 99% of now day population. 100 to 150 millions is the estimate population of the earth at the time of Alex. Just saying.

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  9. Please read the book: ALEXANDER WAS ZULQARNAIN (author: Muhammad Alexander @ Wisnu Sasongko)

    http://pts.com.my/buku/alexander-adalah-zulqarnain/

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  10. My brothers, even you and I do not know who kill JFK till today...how can you be sure about Dzulqarnain??? If you want to know better than you have now....investigate Qur'an in its original language. We, Muslim never pray in translation language. Let's think in Allah perspective (sorry, I don't like use GOD translation), there is no detail personal description of person in Qur'an even our beloving prophet Muhammad PBUH only mentioned 5 times. It is not a biography. The most important for Allah is how we mankind worship our creator.

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    1. @AbdulHadi

      "My brothers, even you and I do not know who kill JFK till today"

      JFK was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald
      unless if you believe some bullshit conspiracy theory

      "investigate Qur'an in its original language"

      Why? tell me in what way we understood the Dzulqarnain story in English is different from Arabic (other than aesthetic poetic part)?
      its a lame excuses made by Muslims to escape from an confronting the argument since that most of us are not Arab speakers.

      "Let's think in Allah perspective (sorry, I don't like use GOD translation)"

      suit yourself

      "there is no detail personal description of person in Qur'an"

      Did you read the blog?

      Alexander was called "The two horned" (i.e. Dzulqarnain)
      He had a vast empire like in the quran
      Alexander was monotheistic according to early christian sources (Alexander romance) and Jewish sources (Antiquities of the Jews)

      and please read the blog for rest
      clearly you haven't read it all

      "The most important for Allah is how we mankind worship our creator"

      The most important thing is the truth!

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  11. Truth is hard to accept. But nobody will argue taht wikepedia is fair.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great_in_the_Quran
    it really shows the evidence without any intentions whatsoever/

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  12. Hi dudes. I m not taking any side. Just want you to give some advise. If I am nok wrong you would have created this blog to earn money, if yes then this is good way to earn money by simply arguing religious believes even though we dont have any degrees in philoSophy. We can see many people can join, because people are crazy to argue/quarrel/kill people on religious stands. This is the deCease in humanity spreading from billions of years and provoking people against each other and forcing people to form groups and leading towards inferiority/superiority.

    There r uncountable facts are there in the world still not yet came in to the light ( ex: recently scientist found a hole which is bigger than some X times to rarth.) So we are still babies in our reasearch.

    So dont make any conclusion because of you read about some 10 to 20 blogs, always there would be a lot you dont know. If you think you reached conclusion then you can't look or accept unknown things.

    So my suggestion to mankind is stop criticizing otheres and their believes. If you can respect their believes as a human and if not don't hurt other feelings as a beast. Thanks for reading this.

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  13. Could be Cyrus, could be Solomon. There is more proof for Cyrus based on the excursions. Alexander obviously went South, there are stories of him going to India, and then turning back. To my knowledge the Quranic version doesn't have an excursion South, but mentions N, W and E.

    A lot of people can be called two horned, that seems pretty common from that era.

    Basically you are reaching, and look pretty desperate. If it was such a famous person as Alexander why wouldn't he be named specifically? It's probably some unknown person to us today, a lot of history is lost. Heck people can't even really figure out what happens week to week it seems, ask a liberal and a conservative the same question and you get two different answers even now.

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  14. Allot of Muslim apologists - just like the scientific miracles of the Qur'an - are now backing down from "Alexander is the dhul qarnayn" and are now resorting to "Cyrus the great is dhul qarnayn" due to him being associated with Zoroastrianism - an Iranian monotheistic religion that is said by many scholars to have heavily influenced the Semitic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (the latter Semitic religions being a cheap, unoriginal, ripoff of Zoroastrianism -which by the way is also famous for its acceptance and practice of incest - which is apparently more compatible with Islam (including the incestuous relationships like cousin marriage and marrying your daughter in law, all of which Muhammad practiced) than Alexanders Hellenic paganism, who referred himself as the "Son of Zeus".

    But this last resort is also very problematic as some research will show, Cyrus's religion isn't exactly clear (although raised Zoroastrian) he was hardly a devout believer, for he was prone to now then to praise and practice of Persian and Mesopotamian polytheism, which isn't really a sign of some one devoted to Allah (a jealous and irrational god as we all know for the hatred he has for shirk and of any kind of polytheism) exemplified by his prophet, Muhammad, who took part in the destruction of pagan Arabian temples as well as the resulting destruction of Persian and Mesopotamian pagan temples by Muhammad and the early Muslims) so much for there's no compulsion in religion, (what an abrogated joke).

    This is because Cyrus the great allowed unprecedented freedom of religion in his state including the very pagan religions which Muhammad and the early Muslims would despise and eradicate centuries later. Paganism is not tolerated in Islam and Muhammad the Bedouin Arab had no respect for it or its adherents in comparison with Cyrus the civilized Persian who allowed paganism to thrive and respected its adherents so much so he even built temples and statues of the gods of the babylonians, "He brought peace to the Babylonians and is said to have kept his army away from the temples and restored the cults and the statues of the Babylonian gods to their sanctuaries" the pagan Babylonians eventually regarded him as "The Liberator" from the old rule.

    Now ask yourself would Muhammad the unhealthily staunch monotheist Muslim along with the early Muslims, would they have been that tolerant?, would they have done such a kind gesture to Babylonian paganism or any kind of paganism for that matter, like Cyrus, would Muhammad have comprised Islam and build statutes of gods?, would he have restored the cults and the pagan temples?, would the citizens of Babylon regard Muhammad as the liberator? The answer is an obvious and an emphatic NO. Muhammad despised paganism and destroyed Arabian paganism under the policy of jihad and did not restore pagan temples and famously violently smashed the statutes housed in the kiblah and threatened polytheists with death and damnation to hell, simply for not conforming to Islam. What ever happened to "there's no compulsion in religion", aren't polytheists HUMAN BEINGS, they have the right to ascribe partners to Allah and believe in however many gods they wish for that's the universal right of freedom of religion that Muhammad failed to practiced but Cyrus did for he recognized polytheists were just another bunch of human beings looking for meaning in life in their own ridiculous religions.

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    1. What difference does it make who dhul qarnayn is? The story of any man going to the East and finding that the sun sets in a muddy pool under the earth is absurd no matter who the guy is. dhul qarnayn could be Obama, and it still disproves the Koran.

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  15. Plus Cyrus and the Persians repaired and maintained and did not ransack or destroy the city of Babylon and hence the positive title the "liberator" in comparison with what the early Muslims did in the name of Islam where they looted, polluted and destroyed the city of Babylon under the policy of jihad, thus giving Muhammad more of the title as the "oppressor" or "destroyer" of Babylon than "liberator".

    So Cyrus the great hardly seems like the staunch muslim monotheist that Allah would favor to be granted the honorable Muslim title of dhul qar nayn.

    Plus if that's not enough Cyrus as already mentioned was also frequent of his praise and practice of paganism, for example in the Cyrus cylinder which he wrote , cyrus is seen as being blessed by the pagan deity "marduke" and doing the pagan deity's will than a monotheist gods will (like say Allah), plus Cyrus although a very un devout Zoroastrian asked with respect to the Babylonians a prayer for him to the polytheist gods in the Cyrus's cylinder...

    "pray daily before Bêl and Nabû (pagan gods) for long life for me, and may they speak a gracious word for me and say to Marduk (pagan god), my lord, "MAY CYRUS, THE KING WHO WORSHIPS YOU, and Cambyses, his son"

    Cyrus could hardly be some one that Allah would have adored, a man who builds pagan temples, statutes and prays to polytheist gods - that's like a Muhammad or any Muslim praying towards Hindu deities or Arab pagan deities.

    In addition Cyrus honors the Jews with restoration of their temples, so much so the Jewish community gives Cyrus a special place in Jewish civilization, in comparison with Muhammads negative depiction in the Jewish community one in which he exiles some Jewish tribes and other Jewish tribes such as the banu qurayza massacre's and enslaves Jewish women like rayhana and making her is concubine. Cyrus the great can hardly be Dhul qar nayn, Allah does not endorse those who supplicate to pagan deities.

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  16. Thank you for your long and detailed comments, Muhammad R.
    I hope other Muslims will take the time to read your thoughtful reflections.

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  17. Why do all Jewish people waste time making these websites to attempt and refute the Qur'an the Reminder from Allah AlRahman?
    Everytime i put an ayat from the Reminder in google search it shows me at least ten Yahoodi made websites against the Reminder?
    Hmmmm...why don't you make websites trying to prove your own Yahoodi traditions right instead of wasting time trying to prove the Reminder from Allah wrong?
    To each his own. May Allah Bless and Guide humanity InshaAllah.

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  18. Oh great another Yahoodi website that won't let me comment 😔 or post without approval. Beware of these websites anyone searching for Truth, they are totally bias using tales, hadiths, to prove the Reminder the Qur'an, wrong. Go straight to the most original source, don't go to blogs or stories that have been "passed down". As most are worthless tales, traditions that change from generation to generation. There a reason we study and memorize the Reminder word for word Alhamdulillah InshaAllah . Remember hadith are misguided written hundreds of years after our Prophets death. The same way the Christian traditions and Judaic traditions of Talmud were written hundred of years after their Prophets death and corrupted those books, hadith is trying to corrupt the Qur'an the Reminder. Use your minds never believe what you hear until u investigate first, logic and reason overcome Alhumdullilah. Level by Level we travel in this life and the next inshaAllah, so be patient.

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  19. How many times do I have to say this?: I am neither Jewish, nor Christian, nor bloody Zoroastrian.
    I think all religions are the creation of humans desperate to make sense of a nonsensical world.

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  20. Assalamualaikum. My name is Haqq.For the beginning, If I can prove the existence of three places passed by Dhulqarnain, will you accept the truth of Quran? This is because the three places will attest that Dhulqarnain was Alexander based on geo-historical facts.

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    1. Yes please do so....

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    2. Alexander the "Macedonian pagan", Ah yes...that sounds such an individual Allah would favor.

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    3. Alexander? the "Macedonian Pagan", who called himself the "Son of Zeus", and was very much active in pagan prayers/worship and the building of pagan temples...Ah, yes...that sounds like such a person whom Allah, would favor. LOL

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    4. Cyrus was a polytheist and therefore is nothing to do with this.

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  21. Who is this man muhammad r...who knows so much about cyrus the great I'm a doubting muslim too...is there any books u would recommend about cyrus the great and his pagan beliefs ...I also doubt the night journey of muhammad as well. ...

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  22. Muhamma r I too am a doubting muslim. ...is there any other books on cyrus the great being a pagan worshipper? I totally doubt the night journey of muhammad...totally absurd

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  23. No one exactly knows about it but God Himself. May Alexandar and Z-Q are two persons or one. But we shoulf have faith in creativity of God that gives us some kind of thinking. Quran is book of God as Holy Bible ee should respect all if them

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