Journal of Sakarya University Faculty of Theology

Abstract

Muskilü'l-Qur'an means the problematic and so-called contradictory verses in theQur'an, which at first glance seem to contradict each other, as well as the name ofQur'anic science that aims at researching those problematic verses in the Qur'an andgetting reasonable answers to them.Since the very first decades of Islam these verses have been exploited as to arouse suspicionsand questions in the minds of ordinary people about the divinity character ofQur'an. In the first centuries of Islam the atheist groups, which had been identified inthe history of Islam by the terms “zenadika” and “melahida”, had made an attempt tomisuse these verses. By the colonization history of Islamic countries during the 18. and19. centuries, we see that the Western Orientalists and recently especially after the extendedusing of Internet the missionary cites had been paying more attention to and interestedin these verses with the same purpose as before.In this work we will handle and study the term of Mushkilu'l-Qur'an, problematic andso-called contradictory verses, the reasons that cause them to be misunderstood andthe methods of interpretation being used to deal with those verses, as well as we'll examinethe scientific literatures that have been written by the Muslim scholars in thisfield century by century.