Rashad Khalifa’s Lam Counts in the Quran

The Quran contains 29 initialed suras of which 13 of them contain the letter ل “lam”.

No.	Sura No.	Sura Title	Quranic Initials
1	2	The Heifer	A.L.M.
2	3	The Amramites	A.L.M.
3	7	The Purgatory	A.L.M.S.
4	10	Jonah	A.L.R.
5	11	Hûd	A.L.R.
6	12	Joseph	A.L.R.
7	13	Thunder	A.L.M.R.
8	14	Abraham	A.L.R.
9	15	Al-Hijr Valley	A.L.R.
10	29	The Spider	A.L.M.
11	30	The Romans	A.L.M.
12	31	Luqmaan	A.L.M.
13	32	Prostration	A.L.M.

According to the counts provided by Rashad Khalifa the total occurrence of these Arabic letters in their respective suras is a multiple of 19 in each of these 13 suras.

A.L.M. (Alef Laam Mim)

Sura	“Alif”	“Lam”	“Mim”	Total
2	4502	3202	2195	9899 (19×521)
3	2521	1892	1249	5662 (19×298)
29	774	554	344	1672 (19×88)
30	544	393	317	1254 (19×66)
31	347	297	173	817 (19×43)
32	257	155	158	570 (19×30)

A.L.R. (Alef Laam Ra)

Sura	“Alif”	“Lam”	“Ra”	Total
10	1319	913	257	2489 (19×131)
11	1370	794	325	2489 (19×131)
12	1306	812	257	2375 (19×125)
14	585	452	160	1197 (19×63)
15	493	323	96	912 (19×48)

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

The initials that prefix Sura 13, are the Arabic letters letters “Alif” occurs 605 times, “Lam” occurs 480 times, “Mim” occurs 260 times, and “Ra” occurs 137 times. The total frequency of occurrence of these four letters in this sura are: 605+480+260+137 = 1482 = 19×78.

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

The initials that prefix Sura 7 are the Arabic letters “Alif” occurs in this sura 2529 times, “Lam” occurs 1530 times, “Mim” occurs 1164 times, and “Saad” occurs 97 times. The total occurrence of these four letters in this sura are: 2529+1530+1164+97 = 5320 = 19×280.

Lam Count for Suras 11 & 30

The counts for the letter Lam has been verified for all 13 suras with the exception of suras 11 and 30. In both these suras, we see that Rashad Khalifa’s counts have one less Lam than what is commonly found in Quran manuscripts. We see from Rashad Khalifa’s work in his book entitled “The Computer Speaks” that the number of occurrences for the letter Lam in verse 30:21 as 7 instead of 8, and the count for verse 11:70 as 8 instead of 9.

Does this mean that Rashad Khalifa’s counts are wrong?

I believe that the total counts that Rashad provided were divinely revealed by God, and not the individual numbers he inputed in his work to obtain those total counts. This is demonstrated with his reported count in “The Computer Speaks” for the number of occurrences of the word God “Allah” in the Quran. The book contains the correct total count, which is 2698 = 19×142, except we notice that on page 49, Rashad print out contains an error where he has accidentally accounted for one extra count for the word Allah by including 9:129, but despite this the total count of God in the book was still printed as the correct number: 2698. Rashad detailed this miracle in the following article:

“That was not the only incident where God has manipulated the computer in order to show us His Miracle. When I wrote the Qur’an into the computer, the number of the word “Allah” that I fed to the computer was in fact 2699. This is the wrong number. But the computer gave us the number that is supposed to be, namely 2698, or 19 x 142.

What I fed into the computer included one extra word “Allah” from the last two verses of Sura 9. We know now that those two verses do not belong in Qur’an (see the March Issue of MP). Thus, the computer did not pay any attention to the data that I fed into it. It gave us the correct count of the word “Allah” despite the erroreneous feeding.“

Additionally, Rashad goes into more details of this divine phenomenon in the following Quran Study lecture at the ~30 minute mark. This shows that while Rashad the man was capable of making errors when inputting the information into the computer, God made sure that the totals were divinely guarded to output the correct final result that are multiples of 19.

So back to the count of the occurrence of Lam in suras 11 and 30. Do we have any precedent in manuscripts of the Quran of words written in two different forms where one form has an extra Lam?

Al-Layl = The Night

Today if you pick up any Arabic Quran you will see that in half the copies the word al-layl (the night) will be written one of two ways. Either, الَّيْلِ , written with two lams or, اللَّيْلِ , with three lams. So which version is correct?

The root for layl is ل ي ل, therefore writing this word with three lams would be incorrect since the lam already has a ” ّ ” (shaddah) on top of it, but obviously some people may still argue that the proper way of writing layl is with three lams as opposed to two, since this what we find written in about half the modern prints of the Quran. This is where the mathematical structure of the Quran enters the picture to settle these kinds of disputes and give us the final answer.

By entering either spelling in the Quran and seeing the impact it has on the 13 lam initialed suras we can determine once and for all which spelling is correct. What we find out when we do this is that the correct spelling of layl in the Quran is unequivocally written with only two lams and not three. This is because if we were to utilize the spelling with three lams we see that the following suras are no longer multiples of 19, and no longer match the total counts of lam provided through Rashad Khalifa by God.

For instance, the count of lams in sura 2 would be off by three extra, sura 3 would be off by four extra, sura 7 would have one extra, sura 10 would be off by 3 extra. These issues compound for each of the respective Lam initialed suras that contain the word al-layl in it. But if we go with the spelling of layl with only two lams we see that all these errors are fixed, and now the total number of count of Lam in their respective suras match what was revealed through Rashad Khalifa.

Those whom = Allātī

We see the similar difference in spelling with the word allātī (those whom). In half the manuscripts of the Quran we will see this word written with two lams like so: اللَّاتِي and in the other half of manuscripts we will see it written with a single lam like so: الّٰتِیۡۤ. So which one is correct?

Linguistically again because the text contains a ” ّ ” (shaddah) on top of the lam it should be written with a single lam, but like the example above many may still argue that it should be written with two lams as this is how it is written in half the modern manuscripts of the Quran. So once again this is where the mathematical structure of the Quran can clarify this matter for us.

This word occurs one time in Sura 12 which is an A.L.R. initialed sura. If we use the form written with two lams we see that the counts of lam in this sura and the total A.L.R. in this sura are no longer a multiple of 19, but if we use the form written with a single lam then the counts conform to the mathematical structure of the Quran.

Conclusion

Through these two examples, it proves that it is very likely that there are two other words that exist in Suras 11 and 30 that should be written with one less Lam than what is found commonly in circulation today to match the counts revealed by God through Rashad Khalifa. More research is being conducted on this topic, and if God wills we will be able to confirm this last piece of the mathematical structure of the Arabic initialed suras of the Quran.