Weekly Quranic Arabic Study Group

“Ancient Chinese texts, specifically Journey to the West, record the Splitting of the Moon, witnessed by the Chinese King ‘Sun Wukong’ in 617 CE.”

If you know anything about Chinese literature, your brain probably just blue-screened. But the origin of this claim is a fun little comedy of errors, so let’s go through it.

1. Where the “moon” and the “split” came from

It seems to trace back to Anthony Yu’s standard academic translation (University of Chicago Press). Chapter 1 describes the magical rock on Flower-Fruit Mountain, nourished for ages by “the seeds of Heaven and Earth and by the essences of the sun and the moon,” until one day it split open and gave birth to a stone egg.

Look at the grammar. What split open? The stone.

Some creators apparently skimmed a one-line summary of Chapter 1, saw “moon” and “split open” in the same sentence, and attached the verb to the wrong noun.

Then AI made it worse. If you ask an LLM something vague like “does Journey to the West mention the moon splitting?”, the keywords get matched,

"Sun Wukong was born when a divine stone on Flower-Fruit Mountain—nourished for ages by the essences of the Sun and the Moon—split open."

the summary mashes them together, and the result gets pasted into a post as “evidence.” It’s a nice self-reinforcing loop of nonsense.

2. The timeline is off by about a millennium

The claim puts this “event” around 617 CE, shortly before the Hijra. But using the novel’s own internal chronology:

• In Chapter 13, the hunter Liu Boqin tells Xuanzang that the monkey was pinned under the mountain during Wang Mang’s usurpation of the Han (8-23 CE). That makes Wukong roughly a contemporary of Jesus.
• Before that, he spent 300-400 years as Monkey King, decades seeking immortality and went through two stints in Heaven before the Great Rebellion.
• Count backward and the stone cracked open somewhere around the Qin or early Han, roughly 200-300 BCE, 800+ years before Islam existed.

So in 617 CE Wukong wasn’t a “king watching the sky.” He’d been stuck under a mountain for 600 years.

And here’s the funny part. He’s finally rescued by the monk Xuanzang in 639 CE (Zhenguan 13 in the novel). That’s suspiciously close to the Hijri timeframe, so I can see how someone might get excited. But the Prophet ﷺ had already passed away in 632, so even the closest date in the book doesn’t work.

3. The novel has zero moon-splitting

I’ve read all 100 chapters. Wukong fights heavenly armies, trashes the Dragon King’s palace, and wipes his name from the Book of Life and Death, but he never splits the moon. To “prove” a moon-splitting miracle with this book, you’d have to invent a plot point that isn’t there.

TL;DR

• Sun Wukong is a fictional monkey, not a “King of China.”
• The stone split, not the moon.
• The timeline is off by ~900 years, and even the 639 CE rescue date comes after the Prophet’s passing.
• The whole thing is bad reading comprehension, amplified by AI summaries.

Reading comprehension really is a miracle of its own. (The Lion-Camel Kingdom in Chapter 74 might actually preserve some memory of the Kara-Khanid invasion of Xinjiang. Arslan = lion, Bughra = camel. )

The Philosophy of the Kalam, by Harry Austryn Wolfson

وَلَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا ٱلْإِنسَـٰنَ مِن سُلَـٰلَةٍ مِّن طِينٍ ١٢

And indeed, We created humankind from an extract of clay,

ثُمَّ جَعَلْنَـٰهُ نُطْفَةً فِى قَرَارٍ مَّكِينٍ ١٣

then placed each ˹human˺ as a sperm-drop in a secure place,

@ Marijn van Putten

according to verses 3:59 and a bunch of other verses, adam was made from clay and had no parents meaning at no point was he ever a sperm-drop. So does al-insan here mean adam, or the humankind? the humankind as in "god created the humankind from clay (god began the creation of the human species/kind from adam), then made it (humankind) as a sperm-drop."

what does al-insan mean here exactly, and the pronoun referring back to it in verse 13?

Would this Hadith be interpreted literally? Could it perhaps be metaphoric?

This is an edited version of previous post that was removed, this is hopefully phrased in a more charitable tone.

In „Encyclopedia of the Quran“

The Core Issue: The Chronological Error in the Quran Regarding Mary (Maryam)

The debate centers on a major historical and genealogical contradiction in the Quran. In Surah 19:28, Mary (the mother of Jesus) is addressed as the "Sister of Aaron" (Yā uchtal Hārūn), and in Surah 66:12, she is explicitly called the "Daughter of Imran" (Maryam ibnat `Imran).

Biologically and historically, this is impossible. The biblical Amram (Imran) and his son Aaron lived over 1,200 years before Jesus and Mary. The exact three-name family structure (Father: Imran, Brother: Aaron, Sister: Maryam/Mirjam) belongs exclusively to the Old Testament prophetess Miriam (the sister of Moses). Secular historians and critics view this as a clear textual mistake caused by the oral transmission of stories in ancient Arabia, where the two different women named "Maryam" were mixed up.

When debating this topic, Muslim apologists rely on three main arguments to defend the text. Here is how to systematically dismantle each one using ancient Jewish law, history, and pure logic:

1. Countering the "Two Men Named Imran" Claim

• The Muslim Claim: They argue that Mary’s biological father was simply a different man who also happened to be named Imran (Imran, son of Mathan). They claim "Joachim" is just a Greek/Christian name, but his real Hebrew name was Imran.
• Your Counterargument: "Saying there was a second Imran is just a convenient excuse to rescue the text. You are asking me to believe that a man named Imran from the tribe of Judah just happened to have a daughter named Mary and a son named Aaron. That perfectly duplicates the exact three-name family structure of the original Miriam (daughter of Amram/Imran, sister of Aaron) from 1,200 years earlier. Statistically and historically, this is not a coincidence; it is a clear literary mix-up of two completely different historical figures."

1. Countering the "New Testament / Elizabeth" Claim

• The Muslim Claim: They point to the Gospel of Luke (Luke 1:5, 1:36), which states that Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth, was a "daughter of Aaron" (from the priestly tribe of Levi). They argue that since Mary and Elizabeth were cousins, Mary carried Aaron's blood through her mother's side.
• Your Counterargument: "That argument completely misunderstands ancient Jewish law. Elizabeth was called a 'daughter of Aaron' because HER biological father was a levitical priest. Mary's biological father, however, was from the tribe of Judah (the line of David). Even if their facebook-style mothers were related—for example, as sisters from the tribe of Judah—Elizabeth only gained her priestly tribe through her father, a man who had zero blood relation to Mary. In Israel, tribal lineage is strictly patrilineal (passed only through the biological father). A connection through the mothers gives Mary zero legal or tribal connection to the tribe of Levi. You cannot be legally from the tribe of Judah and simultaneously be a biological daughter of Imran or sister of Aaron."

1. Countering the "Metaphor / Title of Honor" Claim

• The Muslim Claim: They argue that "Sister of Aaron" and "Daughter of Imran" are not biological terms but purely metaphorical titles of honor given to Mary by the temple priests to praise her righteousness or remind her of her priestly ancestry.
• Your Counterargument: "If it were just a loose metaphor for being righteous, the text would call her a 'daughter of Aaron' or 'daughter of David,' which were common semitic idioms for lineage. But the Quran explicitly combines BOTH titles: she is the 'Daughter of Imran' AND the 'Sister of Aaron.' It copy-pastes the exact biological family tree of Moses’ sister. You cannot run away into 'metaphors' when the text duplicates a specific historical bloodline that Mary mathematically, chronologically, and biologically never belonged to."

Conclusion:
The defense fails because it breaks the laws of biology and ancient genealogy. By Jewish law, lineage is determined by the father (Mary = Tribe of Judah; Aaron & Imran = Tribe of Levi). By history, they are separated by 12 centuries. The Quranic narrative only exists because it projected the family tree of the Old Testament Miriam onto Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Sorry for the bad quality (and for seeing my hands)

I started a B.A. degree in islamic studies recently and have to do a group presentation (we are three people) until next week.

The presentation is supposed to be around 20-30 minutes.

We were able to choose out of a pool of different topics including: (1) Muhammad and the Sira (Prophetic biography); (2) The Qur'an as a Late Antique text; (3) The Sunnah and Hadith-Science; (4) Islamic Law and Shariah; (5) Sufism and some other topics.

My group chose (2) the Qur'an as a Late Antique Text.

Under the headline "The Qur'an as a Late Antique Text" on the handout we were given it also specifies the topic. It is expected to cover the "Structure and most important themes", the Qurans "History", as well as questions surrounding the redaction and codification of the Qur'an.

I wanted to ask if anyone had any ideas/tips or any literature they could give us / point us to.

Thank you

I'm curious if there is any academic research regarding this nasheed from the seerah. Especially curious if the lyrics contain obvious anachronisms. I was surprised to learn recently that its isnad is daif given its popularity.

I think the suggestion of Harut and Marut being sent down to punish Babylon by confusing their languages to cause separation form people(Zawj) makes a lot of sense in lot of 2:104 which refuted a mistranslation of Hebrew into Arabic which refutes religious exclusion and divine favoritism and 2:105 emphasizing that Allah sends down to whomever he wills his revelation and further in the Surah refutes Christian and Jewish exclusivism.

What do you guys think?

Bonjour à tous,

Je sollicite votre aide et vos retours sur une traduction française intégrale du Kitāb Ādāb al-Kasb wa'l-Maʿāsh (Le Livre des convenances de l'acquisition et de la subsistance), un extrait de l'Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn de l'imam al-Ghazālī.

• Lien vers le document (PDF libre d'accès) : archive.org https://archive.org/details/ghazali_kasb_fr_v14
• Le contexte : Le texte a été traduit à l'aide d'un outil d'intelligence artificielle sur la base de l'édition arabe de référence du Caire (1937). Le document de 44 pages intègre un appareil critique complet (notes de bas de page, indexation et vérification du sourçage de 49 hadiths et des renvois coraniques).
• Le problème : Cette version n'a pas encore fait l'objet d'une relecture approfondie par un arabisant ou un spécialiste du droit musulman (fiqh) et de l'éthique économique islamique.

Si des arabisants, étudiants en sciences islamiques ou passionnés de philosophie médiévale ont le temps d'y jeter un œil, toute remarque sur la pertinence, la fluidité et l'exactitude de la terminologie utilisée me serait extrêmement précieuse !

Le document est publié sous licence libre (Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0).

Un grand merci d'avance pour votre temps et vos retours !

hi. this is a repost since I didn't realize I had profile sharing the first time, whoopsie.

the video claims that the Quran, when describing the eart and sky not mourning the Pharoah, is evoking ancient Egyptian beliefs that Mohammed realistically couldn't have known.

My question is if these words are really as specific/non universal as the person claims, or if mohammed could have known of this belief/language, or if the Quran really did have info it couldn't have had here

Hey guys, i have a serious question, hope you guys can help!

If the Kaaba was God's original sanctuary, established by Abraham, why isn't there evidence that the earlier prophets knew about it or used it?

I’m currently reading the Quran and I came across with chapter 6 verse 137, and it stated that the polytheist used to kill their children, including burial if their own daughter. It talks on his in the previous days, this was common thing.

What should I know about this information?

How far back in time can historians go, with the isnad-cum-matn analysis and other historical-critical methods?