You read that right! There may be hundreds of thousands of people around the world who have memorized the entire Qur’an, cover to cover. That’s over 77,000 words or over 6,200 Ayahs/verses!

And yes, hundreds of thousands is not a stretch. In fact, it is suggested that there are over 1 million who have memorized the Qur’an! By one statistic, in 2014 the largest Pakistan Islamic studies board alone produced over 60,000 huffadh (memorizers) in one year!¹ If you go to any masjid in the U.S. for one of the 5 daily prayers, even if there’s just 20 people, chances are one of them is a hafidh. 

Now what do these statistics signify? Well, a lot! First, we can’t say that even 1% percent of that number goes to any other book, including the bible. Even in higher levels of priesthood, memorizers are extremely rare. Imagine sadly that all the Qur’ans in the world suddenly disappeared. Within a day, countless Qur’ans, without a struggle, can accurately be reproduced thanks to its memorizers! We can’t say that about any other religious book of such caliber!

Second, the majority of the memorizers are NOT natives in Arabic! They learned to read the language at a very young age. Whether to become memorizers or just learn the religion, it is very common for a Muslim household to teach their children starting at the age of 4 to 5 how to read the Qur’an.

Third, it further proves the authenticity of the Qur’an in that what is recited today is truly word-for-word what was revealed to Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) over 1,400 years ago. That’s no small feat because we know just how hard it is to have a record of writings from a few hundred years ago. We may have Qur’ans that date back around the time of the companions of Prophet Muhammad, but also what non-historians may not realize is that throughout history, memorization and passing down information verbally was one of the most common ways traditions have been preserved. After all, majority of the world throughout time did not know how to read or write.

God says in the Qur’an,

“And We have certainly made the Quran easy for remembrance, so is there any who will remember?”

[Qur’an 54:40]

The fact that hundreds of thousands of people all recite the Qur’an in the SAME EXACT ORDER, Muslims say, cannot be anything short of a miracle. Imagine this – the 40-year old imam of a masjid, who is fluent in Arabic, is reciting a long Surah from the Qur’an and forgot an Ayah. A 10-year old then corrected him! Muslims have all encountered similar incidences at least once in their lives.

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1. http://www.taghribnews.com/en/news/163644/pakistan-tops-world-with-qur-an-huffaz

Antony Flew (1923-2010) is a British philosopher of religion who taught in prestigious universities such as Oxford, Aberdeen, and NYU in Toronto. Any philosopher, or academic atheist or agnostic, knows of him, mainly for being the person who went from being a strong advocate of atheism to believing in God.

The change shook the core of a lot of people! Many atheists and agnostics felt betrayed and perhaps thought he was a madman or someone not thinking right anymore. However, as told by BBC’s William Crawley, Flew “explained that he, like Socrates, had simply followed the evidence, and the new evidence from science and natural theology made it possible to rationally advance belief in an intelligent being who ordered the universe.” His lifelong commitment was to go where the evidence leads, and as a result, the evidence eventually led him to theism.

In a 2007 interview with Benjamin Wiker, Flew explained:

“There were two factors in particular that were decisive. One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe.

The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself – which is far more complex than the physical Universe – can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source. I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so.”

Now, I’m not saying he became Muslim… at least not publicly. He moved to a general stance on theism, but his life and the 180° change does teach us a lot. Why would a prominent academic, after decades of being an atheist, change his position towards the end of his life? Are we going to just dismiss it emotionally and irrationally, or will we actually ponder upon his reasons?