@unscrptedapologetics: A Response to Thirteen Claimed Prophecies of Muhammad Setting the Standard First Before examining each claim, we need an agreed test for genuine prophecy. Scripture provides one: “When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously” (Deuteronomy 18:22, KJV). A genuine prophecy must be (1) documented before the event, (2) specific rather than vague, (3) improbable at the time it was uttered, (4) not self-fulfilling, and (5) correct in its details, not merely in its general theme. One further problem applies to every claim on this list. The hadith collections were compiled roughly 200 to 250 years after Muhammad’s death. Sahih al-Bukhari was completed around 846 AD, Sahih Muslim around 875 AD. The material passed through generations of oral transmission during a period of intense sectarian, political, and imperial conflict. Muslim scholars themselves acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of fabricated hadith circulated; al-Bukhari reportedly sifted his collection from some 600,000 reports. This means we cannot verify that any “prediction” was actually uttered in the 7th century rather than composed or shaped after the events it appears to foresee (the technical term is vaticinium ex eventu, prophecy after the event). This alone distinguishes the hadith from, say, the Old Testament prophecies of Christ, which are preserved in the Septuagint, translated more than two centuries before Jesus was born, and in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Now to the claims. 1. The body has 360 joints The hadith (Sahih Muslim 1007, narrated by Aisha) states that man was created with 360 joints and owes charity for each one. First, the number is wrong, or at best unverifiable. Modern anatomy does not recognize a fixed count of 360 joints. Standard references such as Gray’s Anatomy do not commit to a single number because the count depends entirely on the counting convention: whether one includes sutures of the skull, whether compound joints count as one or several, whether ossified joints in adults still count. Published estimates range from roughly 250 to 350. The frequently repeated claim that “science confirms exactly 360” appears in apologetic literature, not in anatomy textbooks. Second, 360 was a conventional cosmological number long before Muhammad. The pre-Islamic Arabs kept 360 idols around the Kaaba, one for each day of the schematic year (Ibn Hisham’s Sirah records their removal at the conquest of Mecca). The Babylonians used a 360-day schematic year and base-60 mathematics. The ancient Chinese medical classic Huangdi Neijing (compiled centuries before Christ) states the body has 365 joints corresponding to the days of the year. The Talmud (Makkot 23b, Mishnah Ohalot 1:8) counts 248 limbs and pairs them with 365 days. Assigning a calendrical number to the body’s parts was a widespread ancient convention, and the hadith fits that convention exactly. A borrowed round number is not a medical miracle. 2. Bedouins competing in building tall buildings This comes from the hadith of Gabriel (Sahih Muslim 8; Sahih al-Bukhari 50): among the signs of the Hour, “you will see the barefoot, naked, destitute shepherds competing in constructing lofty buildings.” Three problems. First, this is not a prediction of anything improbable. That poor peoples sometimes become wealthy and that wealthy peoples build monuments is the ordinary rhythm of human history. Ziggurats, pyramids, and the Tower of Babel narrative all testify that competitive tall building is as old as civilization. Predicting that it would happen again, somewhere, at some unspecified time, cannot fail. Second, the prophecy has no timeframe, which makes it unfalsifiable. Had the Gulf oil boom never occurred, the claim would simply remain “not yet fulfilled” indefinitely. A prophecy that can never be shown false conveys no information. #dawah #islam #revert

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Monday 20 July 2026 13:28:30 GMT