River

These prophecies are not vague as found in Judeo-Christian traditions. Secondly all of these prophecies and its respective narration has been fully "dated". The "Science of Hadiths'( a scholarly field that carefully outlines specific chains of narration, tracing back to its source, its reliability) is not even questioned by Western Orientalists and Polemicists. People even have phDs in this field. Believe it or not.

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) even predicted the upcoming wars with Syria and Iran. Everything is recorded in the Hadiths.

Doctor X

River:

With all due respect that is not a very convincing set of proof. People with "Ph.D.s" believed in the biblical flood. They also claimed such post hoc derived chains of transmission. Finally, western scholars do question these matters. However, two major obstacles exist: first, Islam does not have the cultural traditional basis in the west to drive the curiousity; second, Islamic countries are frankly not very friendly to critical analysis.

--J.D.

River

True. I am not doubting what you say. But the amount of information on Islam is staggering. For example, I have a book with Sermons by Caliph Ali , { Nahjal Balagha} it is about 800 pages in length. Heck , I can't even get much more than 20 pages extracted from the sayings of Jesus Christ from Biblical Traditions. So, the amount of Information on Islam detail wise, is on a whole different level compared to older religious Traditions. This is Expected as Islam came into this World under the microscope and when knowledge was disseminated at a faster rate. However, I do expect Islamic materials to be placed under more scrutiny when Islam becomes more mainstream in the West ( probably a decade or 2).

I do want people to realize that all arguments applying to Bible does not necessarily parallel arguments for Qur'an. I have read Biblical Prophecies and Islamic Prophecies. Biblical Prophecies tend to be more nebulous.........but then again this is expected .

Doctor X

Another analogy applies. People did not think textual criticism applied to biblical texts as it did to classical texts once as well.

Incidentally, volume of commentary does not authenticity render.

Remember the evidence of early variants for the Koran? One just has to start looking to see the threads.

--J.D.

River

Well, I am not sure how variants of Iqra can be upsetting to Muslims. I guess it would cause some doubt in some conservative Orthodox Muslims.....but then again I don't look at Islam that way and I believe in Diversity of Interpretation .

Tufted

Well, I think this is pretty close to a prophecy coming true.

Revelations 8:10,11

"And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;

And the name of the star is called Wormwood: And the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter"

To me, and many others, this is the incident at Chernobyl. Yes, Chernobyl was fission, and a star is a fusion reaction, but this was written almost two thousand years ago.

Oh, did I mention that the Chernobyl is the Russian word for wormwood!! Check out this link. Yes, I agree that if you predict enough stuff, sooner or later you're bound to hit a winner.

http://ryanj1678.tripod.com/christianity4today/id37.htm

Toto

Sure it fits, except that the Chernobyl reactor did not fall from the sky, did not fall into the waters, and many men did not die in the waters because they were bitter (a characteristic of the bitter herb wormwood but not of radioactivity.)

Oh, and no third angel sounded. And the end of the world and the second coming did not follow.

Chernobyl in Wikipedia

So all you have is the word for Wormwood associated with something bad.