coincidence?...

Dealing with computers a lot, these are just some of the things i’ve noticed… of course, your faith shouldnt have to rely on finding ‘miracles’ in the Quran.. but they are some interesting coincidences.. :)

• Chapter 2 in the Quran [Surah Al Baqara] is the longest chapter in the Quran.
  
  
• Chapter 2, Al Baqara, means ‘The Cow’. Gateway (a computer manufacturer) uses ‘cow-prints’ as part of their branding (boxes everything). Their secondary branding colours are Green and White.
  
  
• Chapter 2, Verse 255 is one of the most powerful (and most learned) verses of the Quran.. it is called the Verse of of the Throne . Said Allama AbdullahYusuf Ali, interpreter of the Qur’an.. (n296) "This is the Ayat-ul’Kursi, the "Verse of the Throne". Who can translate its glorious meaning, or reproduce the rhythm of its well-chosen and comprehensive words? Even in the original Arabic, the meaning seems to be greater than can be expressed in words."
  
  
• Chapter 2 has 286 verses. The IBM model 286 (known at the time as the ‘Second Gen" in IBM’s line of x86 machines) had major defining advancements in computing and microarchitecture technology (such as the segment-discriptor cache) that increased its commercial availability, and basically paved the way for it’s successors, the 386, 486, and the Pentium (P, PII, PIII, P4) anc Celeron chips that we have today.
  
  
• Microsoft Word (XP,2000), which most of the world uses for word-processing, by default, has its page zoom as ‘Page-Width’ (View Menu > Zoom). Page-Width Zoom (which most users use, as it is the default) means that the document will be zoomed depending on the size of the window. When the window is maximized to a desktop with resolution 1024x768 (which is now the standard desktop setting.. most of the world uses it), the Zoom is 114%. Most Word users therefore are usu. staring at this number at the top right of their window; 114 is the number of chapters in the Quran.
  
  
• Not really relating to base-2 as such, but still interesting.. you hear gospellers touting "John 3:16" alot, as they say it is their salvation ("For God so loved the world..".. astagfirullah)..  Our christian brothers, they put it on their t-shirts, and as bumpersitckers, etc..    It’s interesting, because true salvation is really in Quran 3:16... (which is actually a prayer)..
  
  "The righteous people are those who pray: "Our Rabb! We sincerely believe in You: please forgive our sins
  and save us from the agony of the Hellfire;" Quran Chapter 3, Verse 16. Malik Translation.
  
  
  
  Allah knows best :)
  

I noticed most of these when i was doing A Level computing, back in 1996, and i never really told folks. in my opinion, there are a lot of more valid, interesting articles regarding numerical analysis of the Quran.. here are some links.. However, please BE CAREFUL of taking information/translations from some of these sites… always check back with a source that you are comfortable with.

http://www.islamicity.com/science/quranmiracle/Numeric.shtm

http://2muslims.com/directory/Religion_Of_Islam/Miracles/Quranic_Miracles/index.shtml

http://www.submission.org/miracle/endless.html

http://www.quran.org/ap01.txt




postscript::

The entire computing world, and now the very fabric of our society is based on the number 2.. or rather, the binary number system (base 2, as opposed to base 10 which we use in normal life).. and all information is represented as a collection of "bits" [Binary Digits", ie, 0’s and 1’s]. Because of this, multiples of 2, and the numbers that are plus/minus 1 to them, are extremely well know and critical numbers to application programmers.

to provide some insight:

• most times, bits are grouped into groups of 8, 16, 32, 64 (etc) depending on the ‘word-size’ of the processor or representation requirements. which simply means that the letter "A" can be represented using either with 8 bits [0100 0001], 16 bits [0000 0000 0100 0001], etc.
  
  therefore, without getting too detailed, numbers such as 256 (which is the range of numbers using 8 bits, ie 2^8), 255 (the max val using un-signed 8 bits, ie (2^8)-1), 1024 (which is 2^10) are extremely important and are oft-recurring, esp to low-level (machine) programming.
  
  
  "^" means "to the power of"
  
  

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posted by Abdullah Mohammed Mar 3, 09:48 AM.