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The Bible:
Word of God or Word of Man
By ASK Joomaal
PREFACE
The manuscript of this book was ready in 1965, but due to delays and other circumstances, it did not see the light
of publication.

A part of this book, however, \u2013 THE RIDDLE OF THE TRINITY AND THE \u201cSONSHIP\u201d OF CHRIST \u2013 was published in 1965. It met with immediate success. Thousands of copies were printed and distributed all over South Africa, East and West Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and Ghana. The demand was unceasing and with the clamour for more of these booklets growing, Pakistan (Karachi) published another 50,000 copies for local and African distribution.

The booklet was translated into the Swahili language in May 1967, and published by Malik Sirajuddin and Sons,
Lahore, Pakistan.

The commotion created by it in the South African Church circles may be gauged by a bold headline in the \u201cTransvaler\u201d, a morning Afrikaans daily based in Johannesburg, which said: \u201cHIERDIE MOHAMMEDAAN SLAAN `N SEER HOU\u201d \u2013 (This Mohammedan Strikes a Painful Blow).

It is to be hoped that the whole book will now enjoy the same success and wide readership as its predecessor \u2013 an
integral part of it \u2013 did.
A.S.K. JOOMMAL
Johannesburg.
November, 1975.[FrontPage HTML Markup Component]
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PREFACE TO THE THIRD IMPRESSION (2000)
After the first two impressions (1976 and 1991) were completely sold out, the thirst for knowledge among the
seekers of truth remained unquenched. The demand for more and more of this book grew beyond expectation.

Sponsorship for publication is always a difficult thing to come by. This fact kept its
reprinting on ice. However, one stalwart Muslim, KHALID MAHMOOD ZAMAN, with
a verve and enthusiasm unmatched by any young man of comparable age, came forward,
travelling from LEEDS (England) to LAHORE (Pakistan) in order to finance and oversee
the reprinting of THE BIBLE: WORD OF GOD OR WORD OF MAN?

The Tolu-e-Islam Trust undertook the publication and distribution, for which I am profoundly indebted
to them.
To KHALID MAHMOOD ZAMAN I say: May Allah (SWT) reward you abundantly for
your indefatigable efforts in His Path.
A.S.K. JOOMMAL
LENASIA, South Africa.
March 2000
FOREWORD

One of the most widespread and yet least challenged fallacies is the notion that
the history of the development of civilisation shows that that there has been a continuous
general advance from the prehistoric times up to the present day; a concept that is no
doubt reinforced by the explosive growth of our technology during the last fifty or sixty
years.

However, this is a completely mistaken assumption; not only has civilisation
occasionally remained virtually static for centuries at a time, but it has often reversed
itself, losing knowledge and skills it had so laboriously acquired. For instance, that the
Earth is spherical in shape and spins on its axis in space was known to educated people
more than 400 years B.C., yet hardly a thousand years later the accepted opinion among
learned men was that it is flat! Also, it is quite common for archaeologists to find that
advanced cultures have been superseded by relatively inferior social organisations and
levels of technology.

The truly outstanding, most notable characteristics of the history of civilisation is
that its progress has been so wildly erratic. There is nothing steady about it. An added
complication is that while it might be advancing in one respect, it might at the same time
be standing still or even retrogressing in another.

In the field of religious teaching where over-piousness, excessive zeal, personal
ambition and the credulity of the public at large are some of the many active factors
involved, the well-known process of accretion is always at work. An original teaching
tends to become so encrusted with accretionary matter such as pious embroidery of the
truth \u201cfor the greater glory of God\u201d, deliberate additions and omissions, falsifications,
paraphrasing at the expense of meaning, mistranslations and so forth that little or nothing
of it remains visible.

To dislodge the accretions so that the original gems of truth are revealed is no
easy task. Not only does it call for intensive, painstaking research and study, but also for
great patience, perseverance, determination, motivation and sheer mental stamina.

Above all, it demands nothing less than the highest grade of moral fibre and
personal courage; many men have paid with their lives for much less than Mr. Joommal
dares to do in this book.

Mr. A.S.K. Joommal, the prolific journalist so well-known to the newspaper
reading public in this country as a defender of Islam against malicious slander and as an
exponent of Islamic teachings, is one of South Africa\u2019s handful of original, creative
thinkers. He is the author of \u201cThe Path of Islam\u201d and many articles about Islam.

He is a firm believer in the great religious truths revealed to mankind through the
agency of the long line of Prophets whom God had sent to this world through the ages; a
of 00

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