God Arises
Review
~ 42 ~
an astronomer, has claimed, beyond all question of
doubt, to have discovered a technical error in the
Quran. He points out that, among the West Asian
nations, age-old custom and the dominance of Islam
in particular, gave currency to the lunar calendar,
and that Muhammad (peace be on him) carried the
difference between the solar and lunar years to the
furthest extreme of absurdity. Breasted claims that
he was so ignorant of the nature of the problems of
a calendar that, in the Quran, he categorically
prohibited the addition of inter-calary months. The
so-called lunar year of three hundred and fifty four
days lags behind the solar year by eleven days. This
being so, during the course of each of its cycles, it
exceeds the solar year by one year in every 33 years,
and by three years in every century. If a religious
practice such as fasting, (in the month of
Ramadhan) falls at this time in June, then after six
years it will fall in April. Now (in 1935 A.D.) 1313
years have elapsed since the migration which
initiated the Hijri era. Each century of ours consists
of 103 years according to the Lunar year of the
Muslims. After 1313 years of the Solar Calendar, the
Muslim Calendar records approximately 41 years
more. In this way, the Hijri era of Muslims, at the
