The mathematical miracle of the Quran unveiled through Dr. Rashad Khalifa, the messenger of the covenant, has been the most important event in Islamic history since the revelation of the Quran, over 1400 years ago.

Although the message of Islam (Submission) was given to Abraham, then to the other prophets all the way to Muhammad, God insisted on separating the message and the miracle by thousands of years to make the believers distinguish the difference between the message and the miracle. If the message and the miracle were one and the same, this would mean all the prophets before Rashad did not give the message or gave it incomplete, which defies God’s system. Abraham’s message was complete as much as that of Jesus but none of them was destined to unveil the Mathematical miracle. Rashad’s message was delivered complete with no error. The mathematical miracle of the Quran was planned to be unveiled by Rashad in 1974, as a miracle based on number 19 (74:30). Rashad was to introduce the miracle and establish its presence in the Quran, then by doing so, he opened the door for many people to study it, discover it, count with him or for themselves to see more of it. The count he and others did was recorded in books, brochures, web sites….etc. As expected, some of the early manual counts were not correct and had to be recounted and revised. This of course shows that the messenger of the covenant and those who counted with him were but humans who are not infallible. We also realized that any errors in counting did not diminish the magnitude of such a “great miracle” mentioned in 74:35.

Rashad clearly indicated in all his work on the miracle that he was counting as a human being. He never claimed the count he had was a revelation. He used the help of other people around him to count with him as you can read in appendix one of his translation.

During the years, as he counted the initials he published at least four counts of the initials in books and brochures. The four counts are different from one another and show the obvious errors done by Rashad, the human in his counts. He had no hesitation in publishing these numbers like any scientist or researcher who continues his work and publishes all newly found data. We will publish these four counts together here on this page to make it easy for the reader and the researcher to compare. This was God’s plan to prove to the sincere believers that Rashad’s manual count, each one of them were the result of his human counting, not a revelation. He had to work hard to show that what he unveiled, the miracle, based on number 19.

We suggest the reader study these articles that will help clarify many issues related to this topic:

1. The updated count of the Quranic initials, ALM and ALR
2. The updated count of the Quranic initials, ALMR and ALMS
3. How to count the Quranic initials
4. Are all the Arabic versions of Quran the same?
5. Preserving and protecting Quran
6. The writing of Quran and the timing of the mathematical miracle
7. The 19 shapes of the Arabic Alphabets

In the next section, we will see the four published counts. We will start with the latest count as it appears in the latest Authorized English translation of the Quran by D. Khalifa. Please compare these counts with the previous counts that come after that on this page.

Why these four different counts?

Studying the pattern of counting and knowing the difficulty that comes with such a huge task, we are suggesting these reasons for these four different counts;

1. The human error in counting.
2. The decision to count certain Hamzas and not to count others.
3. Changes in the system of counting the hamzas few times before selecting the correct system.
4. Using different texts as it turned to be that the Qurans are not printed the same in different countries around the world. The Quran printed in Turkey and Iran for example have thousands of Alefs added to their texts to make it easier for their readers. The changes in the number of the Alefs did not affect the meaning of the message but it disturbed the code of the miracle. Praise be to God, the standard Egyptian edition of the Quran can easily expose all these extra Alefs.
5. After studying and counting from different Qurans, Rashad found out that the Hafs edition of the Egyptian edition of the Quran to have the most accurate count that represent the miracle, although he made few errors in counting as we published on our web site.

Latest published count:

A.L.M.R. (Alef Laam Mim Ra)

These initials prefix one sura, No. 13, and the total frequency of occurrence of the four letters is 1482, or 19x78. The letter "A" occurs 605 times, "L" occurs 480 times, "M" occurs 260 times, and "R" occurs 137 times.

A.L.M.S. (Alef Laam Mim Saad)

Only one sura is prefixed with these initials, Sura 7, and the letter "A" occurs in this sura 2529 times, "L" occurs 1530 times, "M" occurs 1164 times, and "S" (Saad) occurs 97 times. Thus, the total occurrence of the four letters in this sura is 2529+1530+1164+97 = 5320 = 19x280.

The count as it appears in the book: "Miracle of the Quran, Significance of the Mysterious Alphabets", 1973 book by Islamic Productions

A.L.M.S. (Alef Laam Mim Saad)

Only one sura is prefixed with these initials, Sura 7,. Thus, the total occurrence of the four letters in this sura is 5349. (not a multiple of 19)

A.L.M.R. (Alef Laam Mim Ra)

These initials prefix one sura, No. 13, and the total frequency of occurrence of the four letters is 1501 = 19 X 97

The count as it appears in the
Arabic Brochure

Rashad produced a brochure written in Arabic from Masjid Tucson later, with no date on it. It lists his job with the United nations which means it is dated later than the 1973 book. In this brochure he lists different count for the initials as we will see.

1. Sura 13: has a total of ALMR = 1501 = 19 X 97
2. Sura 7: has a total of ALMS = 5358 = 19 X 282
3. The total of the letter Alef in the 13 suras that start with this initial = 17499 = 19 X 921. Compare this with his last count in the published translations.
4. The total of the letter LAM in the 13 suras that start with this initial = 11780 = 19 X 620. Compare this with his last count in the published translations.

The Initials Count given to Ahmed Deedat for his book, published in 1979

The famous scholar Ahmad Deedat was so impressed with the miracle that he asked Rashed if he can publish it and Rashad had no objection. Deedat’s book is still available from Amazon.com.

The count of the initials that Rashad had at that time was different than what we have in the last published translation. Rashad actually did not give Mr Deedat any count for the ALR group as he could not reconcile their count at that time to be a multiple of 19.

Here is the table with the count of the ALM as published in 1979 in Mr. Deedat’s book;

Since the latest published count by Dr Khalifa,, another count of these initials were performed both manually and by the computer and published at our web site at:

• The updated count of the Quranic initials, ALM and ALR
• The updated count of the Quranic initials, ALMR and ALMS

Conclusion: Rashad’s counting the initials and words in the Quran were human effort, supported by God. He made few errors counting. These errors do not affect the size or the magnitude of the mathematical miracle that includes thousands of parameters. The errors have no reflection on the message but prove what the Quran confirms that human messengers are but human and can and do make mistakes.