In one of his writings Mr. Katz has included the Qur’anic declaration that ‘Allah guides whom He pleases and leads astray whom He pleases’ in the internal contradictions of the Qur’an. He writes:
He punishes whom He pleases,
and He grants mercy to whom He pleases, …
— Sura 29:21Allah leads astray whom he pleases,
and he guides whom He pleases, …
— Sura 14:4
Does Allah “take pleasure” in punishing people and leading them astray?
I would request Mr. Katz to point out the ‘contradiction’ in these and any other statements of the Qur’an. I would like to remind Mr. Katz, as well as my readers, that a contradiction is not merely something that we do not fully understand. A ‘Contradiction’, on the other hand, is a proposition, a statement, or a phrase that asserts or implies both the truth and falsity of something’; ‘a logical incongruity’; ‘a fact or condition incompatible with another’; ‘a pair of opposites’; ‘a proposition so related to another that though both may be false they cannot both be true’.
Thus, I really do not see the need to give a response to this objection raised by Mr. Katz, till the time that he clarifies what exactly is the ‘contradiction’ in the referred statement of the Qur’an.
As far as Mr. Katz’s question: “Does Allah ‘take pleasure’ in punishing people and leading them astray?” is concerned, it has already been dealt with in one of my previous responses to Mr. Katz’s criticisms titled: “How Merciful is Allah?“.
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