And it just doesn't add up: Sura 4:11-12 and 4:176 state the Qur'anic inheritance law. If a man dies and leaves three daughters, his two parents and his wife then they will receive the respective shares of 2/3 for the 3 daughters together, 1/3 for the parents together [both according to verse 4:11] and 1/8 for the wife [4:12] which adds up to more than the estate available.

A second example is, that when a man leaves only his other, his wife and two sisters, then they receive 1/3 [mother, 4:11], 1/4 [wife, 4:12] and 2/3 [the two sisters, 4:176], which again adds up to 15/12 of the available property.

To the above Misha'al Al-Kadhi wrote an elaborate answer which essentially confirms (instead of rebuts) my claims:

Thank you Mr. Al-Kadhi for confirming exactly what I claimed in my article. There are cases in which the shares assigned by the Qur'an overshoot the available estate, i.e. the shares sum to more than one (which you call "awl"), and cases where the shares assigned by the Qur'an do not exhaust the estate, i.e they sum to less than one (for which you provided the technical term "usbah"). I stated in my original article that I am of no doubt that the Muslims have found ways to deal with these contradictions in the Qur'an and as you state above, there are rules for recalculation of the shares.

I never questioned this. You very skillfully affirmed that those problem cases exist and that the Qur'an gives rules which are impossible to follow in real life. That is all I claimed and you gave a learned confirmation for this in your response. I never questioned that Muslims are able to deal with the practical issues of life. But this is one instance where the author of the Qur'an shows incompetence at a very basic level. And this is one of many observations which throw doubt on the claim that God is the author of the Qur'an.

This and only this was my claim.

That you may see I am not distorting Mr. Al-Kadhi's response and have not left out anything relevant to my original claim here is his full response to my claim.


Contradictions in the Qur'an
Answering Islam Home Page

Last edited: March 26, 1997