What are checksums?

Whenever a web-page, email or picture is sent over the Internet, the computer sending it splits it up into small packets and then adds something called a checksum to the end of each packet before sending it. This checksum is simply a number formed by adding up all the numerical codes for each letter in the packet. The purpose of this checksum is for the receiving computer to be sure that the information has been transmitted correctly. To do this, the receiving computer simply does the same addition of all the received letters, and then compares it with the checksum sent with the packet. If they do not match, the computer concludes that an error has occurred along the way in this packet and asks the sender to transmit it again. This is why you very rarely, if ever, get emails that you can't read or pictures that are messed up.

You can see another similar idea if you have a credit card. Your credit card number is made up of 16 digits. The last 4 digits are also a checksum made up by peforming a complex calculation using the first 12 digits. Whenever you use your credit card, the computer processing the transaction computes the checksum using the first 12 digits and then compares it to the last 4 digits to make sure your credit card is not fake.

This concept of checksums is very familiar to students of computer science, information theory and electrical engineering. It is a very common way of preserving the accuracy of transmitted messages, and if you ask these students, they will tell you the following:

• It is very rare that a message with an error will get through this system undetected. In fact, the only way that can happen is if both the checksum and the message are changed in a very precise way so that the bad checksum is still obtained from adding up the letters of the bad message.
• Even if that happens, you will find that the message becomes meaningless (you will see something like "jK# X.y%d3" instead of "I love you") and you know for sure that it is corrupted.
• If you give a really clever information theory student a checksum, and you ask him to make up a meaningful message that adds up to that checksum, he probably can't do it, and it gets impossible as the size of the message and the size of the checksum get bigger.
• If you give him a message made up of a few lines with a correct checksum, and then ask him to intentionally modify the message any way he chooses so that it is still meaningful and still gives the same checksum, he will probably laugh at your ignorance and walk away, since what you're asking is quite impossible.

A message from God

God sent us a message. In fact, it is the most important message we will ever receive. With a message this important to deliver to us, don't you think God would want to make sure this message was received correctly, unchanged and undamaged? It's only logical that a wise, caring, merciful, fair and omnipotent God would have to, not only preserve this message for us, but also let us know that it reached us uncorrupted and that it is from nobody else but Him . So God used checksums.

The checksums in the Holy Qur'an differ a little from the ones we use, but they are very similar in principle and that does not diminish their significance as an error detection mechanism. However, the way they differ adds another feature. Finding the checksums demonstrates the accuracy of the message, but the following points also demonstrate originality, that only God could have sent it.

• The checksums in the Qur'an are not made up after the message is written and then just sent with it. The checksum values themselves are significant and cannot be just calculated at the end, so they are apparently written along with the message contributing to its meaning.
• The checksums are not appended to the end of the message, they are embedded in the text. They are part of the message.
• The message is not broken down into packets, the checksums are global. Changing a word in one verse can disrupt one or more checksums stated elsewhere that apply to the whole Qur'an.
• Every single statement in the message that can be perceived as a checksum is a valid one. You can randomly look for one yourself with no prior knowledge, and upon examining it, you will find it works.
• As with all the Qur'an's properties, the concept of checksums was not left to us to discover out of nowhere. We are given hints in the Qur'an itself about everything we should look for and its significance. God Himself told us about the checksums and challenged us to look for them and confirm that there is no error, and if we do, He tells us that it is from someone else.
  
  
  "Will they not contemplate the Qur'an? And if it had been from other than Allah they would have found in it much contradiction." [Qur'an 4:82]
  
  
  Simple and confident. Interestingly, this verse in A-Nisaa' (Women) is itself a checksum statement. Refer to the examples below to see how.

• The checksum may be a value stated explicitly in the Qur'an, and which we then find to relate to the count of something in the Qur'an; a number of verses or the number of occurrences of a word for example.
• The checksum may also be a value that we know from our background knowledge (eg. number of days in a year), and this value is related to the item being counted.
• The checksum may not be a value at all, but instead an equation, that one thing is equivalent to another. We then find that the two words in the statement occur exactly the same number of times in the Qur'an. The equation is meaningful and true in both contexts, as a number of occurrences and as a statement about the world we are in.
• The checksum may also be an unequality, that one thing is not like the other. Again, this works in both contexts, the statement is true in the world we are in, but also, the number of occurrences are not the same. In fact, in this case, the first word always occurs one time less than than the second word.
• Finally, the checksum may be an unstated relation between two values, the numbers of occurrences of two words. We will then find that, in our world, there is a natural phenomena that has exactly that relation (eg. the ratio of sea to land).

Some examples (Under contsruction)

1. Days of the year:

   This one is a simple example of a number that relates to life. If you count the number of occurrences of the word "day" ("yawm" in Arabic) in the Holy Qur'an you will find that it occurs exactly 365 times, the number of days in the year. Could you write a meaningful book including such a large number of references to a day, and control it to that degree of accuracy? And you're not allowed to use "days", that's a different word.

2. Days of a month:

   "days" ("ayam"/"yawmayn") = 30

3. Months of the year:

   "shahr" = 12
   [Qur'an 36:9]

4. Jesus and Adam:

   "eesa" = "aadam" = 25

5. Devil and angels:

   "shaytan" = "mala'ika" = 88

6. The world and the afterlife:

   "dunya" = "aakhirah" = 115

7. Good and bad:

   "khabeeth" = "tayeb" = 7

8. Life and death:

   "hayah" = "mawt" = 145

9. Man and woman:

   "rajul" = "mar'a" = 24

10. Living and dead:

    "ahya'" = 5 < "amwat" = 6

11. The blind and the seeing:

    "al-a'ma" = 8 < "al-baseer" = 9

12. Trade and interest:

    "bay'e" = 6 < "riba" = 7

13. Prayers:

    "salatihim" (of Muslims) = 5
    "salawatihim" = 1

14. Not much contradiction:

    "ikhtilafan" = 1

15. Numbers:

    numbers in the Qur'an = 285
    Corresponds to number of verses in Al-Jin chapter which ends with the word "number".

16. Sea and land:

    "bahr" = 32, "bar" = 13
    Corresponds accurately to ratio/percentage of sea and land on earth.

17. Darkness and light:

    "dhulumat" = 23, "noor" = 37
    Corresponds to average daylight and darkness hours ratio?

18. The checksum of Saqar (Verify):

    [Qur'an 74:27-31]

    1. Number of chapters in the Qur'an is 114 = 19 x 6. (OK)
    2. Sum of chapter numbers in the Qur'an is 6555 = 19 x 345. (OK)
    3. Total number of numbered and unnumbered verses in the Qur'an is 6346 = 19 x 334. (WT)
    4. When we add the number of verses in each chapter (n), plus the number of each chapter (c), plus the sum of verse numbers (1+2+3+...), giving a sum (n+c+1+2+3+...) for each chapter, the cumulative total for the whole Qur'an is 346199 = 19 x 19 x 959. (WT)
    5. Number of occurrences of "Allah" in the Qur'an is 2698 = 19 x 142. (?)
    6. Sum of verse numbers containing "Allah" is 118123 = 19 x 6217. (?)