The Inimitable Qur'an - So What?

"You claim that the evidentiary miracle is present and available, namely, the Koran. You say: "Whoever denies it, let him produce a similar one." Indeed, we shall produce a thousand similar, from the works of rhetoricians, eloquent speakers and valiant poets, which are more appropriately phrased and state the issues more succinctly. They convey the meaning better and their rhymed prose is in better meter. ... By God what you say astonishes us! You are talking about a work which recounts ancient myths, and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanation. Then you say: "Produce something like it"?!

How can anyone think philosophically while listening to old wives' tales founded on contradictions, which obdurate ignorance, and dogmatism? " ~ Muhammad ibn Zakariyā Rāzī 

Razi took the words right out of my mouth.

Here is what Ali Dashti wrote similarly:

"To sum up, more than one hundred Qor'anic aberrations from the normal rules and structure of Arabic have been noted. Needless to say, the commentators strove to find explanations and justifications for these irregularities.

Among them was the great commentator and philologist Mahmud oz-Zamakhshari (467/1075-538/1144), of whom a Moorish author wrote: "This grammar-obsessed pedant has committed a shocking error. Our task is not to make the readings conform to Arabic grammar, but to take the whole of the Qor'an as it is and make the Arabic grammar conform to the Qor'an."

Up to a point this argument is justifiable. A nation's great speakers and writers respect the rules of its language in so far as they avoid modes of expression which are not generally understood and popularly accepted, though they may occasionally find themselves obliged to take liberties. Among the pre-Islamic Arabs, rhetoric and poetry were well developed and grammatical conventions were already established. The Qor'an, being in the belief of Moslems superior to all previous products of the rhetorical genius, must contain the fewest irregularities.

Yet the Moorish author's censure of Zamakhshari is open to criticism on the ground that it reverses the usual argument. This is that the Qor'an is God's word because it has a sublime eloquence which no human being can match, and that the man who uttered it was therefore a prophet. The Moorish author maintained that the Qor'an is faultless because it is God's word and that the problem of the grammatical errors in it must be solved by changing the rules of Arabic grammar. In other words, while most Moslems answer deniers by citing the Qor'an's eloquence as proof of Mohammad's prophethood, the Moorish author, having taken the Qor'an's divine origin and Mohammad's prophethood for granted, held all discussion of the Qor'an's wording and contents to be inadmissible."

Here the same guy from the first video in a more casual format mentions a few more errors and problems:

Finally lets finish with some more "accurate" but skeptical quotes about the Quran:

"The style is semi-poetical. Rhyme is maintained throughout, but rhythm is rarely used. There are many reasons to criticise the style – arbitrary leaps between subjects, annoying word repetitions, and poor grammar. The challenge to 'produce a sura like it' is completely subjective. Muhammad repeatedly emphasised that the Koran is in Arabic, but he borrowed many foreign terms to express ideas that had no Arabic expression. Sometimes he misused these terms (e.g. the Aramaic 'furquan' meaning 'redemption' is used to mean 'revelation')." -Theodor Nöldeke

And: 

"Indeed, the Koran today is substantially identical with this second recension, though not necessarily with the words of Muhammad. The claim that the Koran is perfect Arabic is absurd – there are many examples of repetition, weak rhyme, changing letters to force a rhyme, foreign words, bizarre usage or change of names (e.g. Terah to Azar, Saul to Talut (S. 2:248250), Enoch to Idris (S. 19:57)" -Alphonse Mingana

But now the most honest of them all. Richard Bell and W. M. Watt give a fantastic summary:

"There are indeed many roughnesses of this kind, and these, it is here claimed, are fundamental evidence for revision. Besides the points already noticed – hidden rhymes, and rhyme-phrases not woven into the texture of the passage – there are the following: abrupt changes of rhyme; repetition of the same rhyme word or rhyme phrase in adjoining verses; the intrusion of an extraneous subject into a passage otherwise homogeneous; a differing treatment of the same subject in neighboring verses, often with repetition of words and phrases; breaks in grammatical construction which raise difficulties in exegesis; abrupt changes in the length of verses; sudden changes of the dramatic situation, with changes of pronoun from singular to plural, from second to third person, and so on; the juxtaposition of apparently contradictory statements; the juxtaposition of passages of different date, with the intrusion of late phrases into early verses. In many cases a passage has alternative continuations which follow one another in the present text. The second of the alternatives is marked by a break in sense and by a break in grammatical construction, since the connection is not with what immediately precedes, but with what stands some distance back." (Bell & Watt, Introduction to the Quran [Edinburgh, 1977], p. 93 - as cited in Ibn Warraq's Why I am not a Muslim[Prometheus Books; Amherst NY, 1995], pp. 112-113)