The Background and Chronology
of the Discovery
(From: NINETEEN: God’s Signature in Nature and Scripture, Edip Yuksel, Brainbowpress, 2011, 620 pages)
Below is the outline of the major revelations and discoveries regarding the mathematical design of the Quran in chronological order. It includes some of my own contribution and experience:
610: Born in 570 ACE, Prophet Muhammad starts receiving the first revelations of the Quran in month of Ramadan, including the verse “on it is nineteen” of Chapter 74.
630: Revelation and recording of the Quran is completed.
1200: Judah ben Samuel of Germany (b. 1140–d. 1217), the spiritual leader of the Ashkenazi Hasidic movement, discovers a numerical system in the original text of the Old Testament based on the number 19, thereby fulfilling the prophecy of the Quran in verse 46:10.
1938: Fuad Abdulbaqi of Egypt, publishes his landmark concordance/index of the Quran: al-Mujam ul-Mufahras li-Alfaz il-Quran il-Karim (The Indexed Concordance for the Words of the Holy Quran.)
1924: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk abolishes the Khilafa, the Ottoman dynasty that established monarchy and imperial power in the name of God. Ottoman sultans, like their predecessors Abbasid and Umayyad kings, continued exploiting religious teachings and dogmas. Like many heroes, Mustafa Kemal too would be idolized after his death in 1938. A fascinating 19-based pattern in Mustafa’s life was first published in 1951 in an article by Kadircan Kaflı in Yeni Sabah newspaper.
1959-1968: Abdurazzaq Nawfal, an Egyptian scholar, using Fuad’s concordance notices some examples of numerical symmetry between the frequencies of semantically related words and phrases.
1969: While first human landed on the Moon, another Egyptian, Dr. Rashad Khalifa, a biochemist working at St. Louis, decides to study the Quran via computer to solve the mystery of combinations of alphabet letters initializing 29 chapters of the Quran. He publishes his work under several titles, such as Muhammad’s Perpetual Miracle. The connection between the two historic events (Landing on the Moon and Feeding the Quran into the Computer) is supported by interesting coincidences.
1973: Rashad publishes Miracle of the Quran: Significance of the Mysterious Alphabets in St. Louis. While the book lists the frequencies of each initial alphabet letters in each verse of their respective chapters, it never mentions their relationship with the number 19. This study is published by an Egyptian magazine called Ahir Sa’a (Last Hour).
1974: Rashad discovers the role of the number 19, prophetically promised in Chapter 74, The Hidden, exactly 1406 (19 x 74) lunar years after the revelation of the Quran. This “one of the greatest” that would distinguish those who wish to regress or progress, starts the modern Islamic Reform movement that rejuvenates the liberating and powerful message of La ilahe illa Allah.
1975: Abdurazzaq publishes his book al-I’jaz al-Adadi fi al-Qur’an al-Karim (Numerical Miracles in the Holy Quran) containing examples of numerical relationship between related words, synonyms and antonyms in the Quran.
1975: University of Medina publishes the book of top Saudi cleric Sheikh Ibnul Baz: El-edilletün Naqliyyetu vel Hissiyatu Ala Cereyaniş şamsi ve Sukunil Ardi ve İmkanis Suudi ilal Kavakibi (The Traditional and Empirical Evidences for the Motion of the Sun and Stillness of Earth, and Possibility of Ascending to Planets). The book claims that the earth is fixed and deems any Muslim claiming otherwise of becoming an apostate, thereby making him subject to death penalty.
1976: Rashad’s discovery of Code 19 becomes popular in Muslim Countries and his work is translated into many languages. He becomes a celebrity and is invited to give lectures in major academic conferences and is welcomed by various universities, including al-Azhar. Ahmad Deedat, the founder of Islamic Propagation Centre in South Africa, using Rashad Khalifa’s work, writes an eloquent book, Al-Quran: the Ultimate Miracle, and freely distributes it in tens of thousands from 1979 until 1986.
1977: Jerry Lucas and Del Washburn publish Theomatics: God’s Best Kept Secret Revealed. As an extension of Ivan Panin’s work (1890), the book contains numerous anecdotal, arbitrary, inconsistent, and some interesting observations on gematrical values of certain words in the Bible.
1978: Joseph Dan of the Association for Jewish Studies, unaware of Rashad’s discoveries, publishes an article on the work of Judah ben Samuel, an eleventh century German scholar. Judah’s discovery of the code 19 in the original text of the Old Testament is the fulfillment of a prophetic Quranic statement in verse 46:10. For the article, See: Studies in Jewish Mysticism, Proceedings of Regional Conferences Held at the University of California, Los Angeles and McGill University in April, University of California press, 1978.
1980: As the Turkish representative of the Muslim youth, I meet Ahmad Deedat in an International Youth Conference at Çanakkale, Turkey. The conference, which lasted for two weeks in a seaside camping site with the participation of more than 200 youth leaders from 42 countries, was organized by WAMY (World Assembly of Muslim Youth) and Turkey’s Ministry of Youth. Besides Ahmad Deedat, there I meet many scholars, mostly members or affiliates of Muslim Brotherhood, including the famous scholar, Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Ahmed Deedat’s lecture on the number 19 pulls my attention for two reasons: it sounds like a philosophical and theological breakthrough and it is a number very familiar to me, the name of the youth group that I established in 1978: FT/19. (FT abbreviation of Fatih–a region in Istanbul, or Fetih—Victory. The Turkish police had made extensive research trying to find out the meaning of 19 in this illegal group, which drew a little attention from the Turkish media.) I get permission from Deedat to translate and publish the book. The same year, the famous mathematician Martin Gardner publishes an article on the code 19 in Scientific American. Rashad claims to have discovered the end of the world from the Quran, which would later prompt me to find exactly the same date independently. According to the coded prophecy, starting from the year in which Rashad discovered the prophecy, the end of the world: 300 solar or 309 lunar years later.
1981-1982 Rashad publishes The Computer Speaks: God’s Message to the World and one year later, Quran: Visual Presentation of the Miracle See: http://www.submission.org/miracle/visual.html.
1982: While I am in prison, after verifying the evidences presented, I translate Ahmed Deedat’s book to Turkish. The following year, my research on the verses of the Quran with scientific implications and my additional discoveries on the mathematical structure of the Quran are published together with my translation of Deedat’s book. Kuran En Büyük Mucize (Quran, The Greatest Miracle), which becomes a best-selling book in Turkey until 1987.
1982: Rashad, in his milestone work, Quran, Hadith, and Islam sheds the light of the Quran that had been clouded by the distortion and false doctrines of sectarian teachings that rely on hearsay sources called Hadith and Sunna. The book, which can be read in a few hours, exposes the falsehood of Hadith and Sunna through the light of the Quranic verses. With is laser sharp focus and reasoning, the book brilliantly exposes the numerous distortion made by so-called Islamic scholars. The book debunks the two main tricks used by Sunni and Shiite clergymen: it refutes mistranslations of the Quranic verses by comparative analysis of the scripture, and puts the abused verses into their context. Thus, a paradigm-changing powerful purge of men-made religious teachings in the process of Islamic reform with the motto of “Quran alone” starts.
1982: Dr. Cesar Adib Majul, a retired professor of philosophy and logic, a Filipino-American, publishes his book, The Names of Allah in Relation to the Mathematical Structure of Quran. Adib finds an interlocking numerical system between the frequencies of four words of Bismillah and the numerical values of God’s attributes. I had numerous phone and mail conversation with Adib, my namesake, before his ascension to God in 2004. I have some of his unpublished research on the numerical structure of the Quran.
1983: Rashad translates his book, The Visual Presentation of the Miracle, into Arabic under the title Mugizat ul-Quran and it is published by Dar el-Ilm Lil-malayin, Beirut, Lebanon, and it is still listed at their website for order: www.malayin.com/publ.asp?item=00468
1985: Rashad declares that the verses 9:128-129 in current manuscripts do not belong to the Quran, since they violate the 19-based mathematical structure of the Quran. It is remarkable that from 1974 until 1985 the table listing the frequency of the word ALLAH ended with the sum of 2698 (19×142). Many books published in various languages disseminate this information around the world. Though with the exception of the frequency of the letter Alif, I check every factual detail mentioned in Ahmad Deedat’s book, like many researchers, I do not notice the error regarding one the extra word, because of Fuad Abdulbaqi’s concordance. Later, I would consider this eleven-year delay as a divinely planned event to disseminate the information in the world before subjecting them to a test.
1986: After months of debate with Rashad via snail-mail, my faith in Hadith and Sunna weakens, and it reaches to a breaking point after receiving his book Quran, Hadith and Sunna. The night of July 1, 1986, when I was a drafted soldier in Samsun, I read the book from cover to cover turning that night into my personal Laylat ul-Qadr (the Night of Power). With tears in my eyes, I give up associating partners to God, and decide to devote my service to God alone by following the Quran alone. By this decision, I would risk my career, fame, my political future, my family, and life. In October 23, 1986, exactly 114 days after my conversion to monotheism in July 1, 1986, I experience a divine sign followed by a series of prophecies as God promises in 43:53. The same year, the Haley Comet that visits our planet in every 76 (19×6) years passed nearby. This was the 19th visit since Muhammad’s time and it was year 1406 (19×74) according to Hijra Calendar. Rashad considered it as one of the fulfillments of 41:53.
1986-1987: I discover an asymmetry in Adib’s remarkable studies, and I hypothesize a solution. Soon, I discover the missing divine attribute ShaHeeD, in Adib Majul’s table on the numerical relationship of God’s names, fulfilling my prediction based on the 19-based pattern. My discovery completes an interlocking table of attributes of God, and is published in my Turkish book, İlginç Sorular-2 (Interesting Questions-2). Furthermore, I hypothesize that there are exactly 114 attributes of God mentioned in the Quran.
1989: My rejection of Hadith and Sunna through my books and articles receives a nationwide attention and my affiliation with Rashad makes me a target of threats and attacks. Receiving an invitation from Rashad, I immigrate to the United States. For a while I live in a room adjacent to Masjid Tucson.
1989: In February, Ibn Baz leads top Sunni scholars to discuss the matter of Salman Rushdi, and the fatwa of the 38 Sunni scholars becomes headline news in the Muslim world: “Rashad and Rushdi, both are Apostates.” Rushdie was represented and defended by a British law firm called Article 19. The following year, Rushdie publishes his second book, titled Haroun and the Sea of Stories, in which the protagonist, oddly named Rashid, tells political stories.
1989: Abdullah Arık, a Turkish-American engineer, by using a simple computer program tests the compatibility of long numbers with the code 19 by putting together the numbers of chapters, verses, sequence of letters and their gematrical values. He discovers an interlocking and cumulative system in the sequence of the 19 letters of Bismillah.
1990: In 30th of January, Rashad is assassinated in Masjid Tucson by a terrorist group, al-Fuqara or al-Fuqra, affiliated to the early stage of al-Qaida organization founded by Saudi militant Osama Bin Laden. The same year, Saddam Hussein declared Kuwait to be Iraq’s 19th province. To discuss the matter, the Organization of the Islamic Conference immediately convened its 19th conference.
1992: Milan Sulc of Switzerland, founder of Faith-through-Science Foundation, discovers an impressive numerical structure in the table of frequencies of ĤM letters, thereby showing the intricacy of the numerical structure of the Quran that integrates unique numerical computations with code 19. Milan Sulc and Ali Fazely, professor of physics at the University of Louisiana, have announced their discoveries of a different numerical phenomenon in the Quran based on prime numbers and composite numbers. Though some of their findings are interesting, in my opinion, they lack a system and thus appear to be anecdotal and speculative at this point.
1997: Michael Drosnin, in a bestselling book, the Bible Code, claimed that he discovered many prophecies in the Bible by searching its text for equidistant letter sequences (ELS). Soon, skeptics debunked the claim conclusively. www.nmsr.org/biblecod.htm
1998: To promote Islamic reform according to the message of the Quran alone, to share the paradigm-shifting mathematical miracle, I establish 19.org.
1999-2000: The practice of abbreviating the four-digit year to two digits in computer programs in order save memory space, created a problem came to known Y2K Problem or the Millennium Bug. “While no globally significant computer failures occurred when the clocks rolled over into 2000, preparation for the Y2K problem had a significant effect on the computer industry. There were plenty of Y2K problems, and that none of the glitches caused major incidents is seen as vindication of the Y2K preparation. However, some questioned whether the absence of computer failures was the result of the preparation undertaken or whether the significance of the problem had been overstated.” (Wikipedia). Whether real or perceived, this major problem cost over 300 billion US dollars (BBC News, 6 January 2000), and it was caused by computer programmers ignoring the number 19.
2001: On September 11, 2001, the 19 hijackers of al-Qaeda attack Pentagon, World Trade Center and kill thousands of Americans. One of the main organizers of the attack, Wadih al-Hage, was also implicated for his role in Rashad’s assassination. Prosecutors have also suggested that El-Hage and Jamaat ul-Fuqra were involved in the murder of Dr. Rashad Khalifa on January 31, 1990 in Tucson. They believe that El-Hage knows who killed Khalifa. And even if El-Hage was not himself involved, the prosecution asked why he had not told them what he knew. El-Hage’s family says he was not in the country at the time of the murder.
2002: More than a decade after my public acknowledgment of numerous errors in the count of Alifs, one of the reasons for being excommunicated by submitters, Dr. Atef Khalifa, finally acknowledges the fact that his brother Rashad indeed made errors in the count of Alifs and thus undertakes the overdue study on the subject matter. See: www.submission.org/miracle/alif.html.
2002: Dr. Caner Taslaman, a Turkish philosopher/theologian and founder of Kuran Araştırmalar Grubu (Quranic Research Group), publishes a comprehensive book on the scientific and numeric aspect of the Quran Kuran Hiç Tükenmeyen Mucize (Quran: a Perpetual Miracle) is available online in English at www.quranmiracles.org. The same year, a group of muslims establish Islamic Reform organization, www.islamicreform.org
2003: A group of programmers, working together with Atef Khalifa, designs the “Quran Reader”, a computer program to count the letters of the Quran text on the internet. http://www.submission.org/quran/reader/
2005: After being challenged by Dr. Ayman through his article Idiot’s Guide to Code 19, I start my second book-length debate with him in May 2005, and call it, Intelligent People’s Guide to Code 19. It will be published in the next edition of Running Like Zebras, God willing.
2005: In August, Manifesto for Islamic Reform is issued.
2006: Quran: a Reformist Translation is published by Brainbow Press.
2008: Using a program developed by a Turkish colleague on a reformed Arabic text of the Quran, in which all later innovations such as hamzas, maddas, shaddas and all other diatrical marks are deleted, we prove that there are only 114 verses in the Quran containing ALL the 14 letters used in the Quranic initials (huruf-u muqatta). Several other significant discoveries are made.
2009: With the progress in DNA forensic technology, the evidence gathered in 1990 was re-examined and one of the murderers of Rashad Khalifa was arrested in Canada, 19 years after Rashad’s assassination.
2011: Two decades after Rashad’s landmark work was published in Visual Presentation of the Quran, this book, NINETEEN: God’s Signature in Nature and Scripture, is published by Brainbow Press.
2014: Reformist muslims or rational monotheists are planning to hold their annual Critical Thinkers for Islamic Reform conference in Mecca, by God’s will. Confrontation with one of the world’s most corrupt and oppressive regimes is expected.