Who is Rashad Khalifa?
Since hundreds of years, Muslim scholars have looked for the numeric miracles of the Koran. They counted its verses, its chapters, its letters and its words. Yet, their calculations often faced some inaccuracies because of the difficulty of the matter.
If we follow the writings, which deal with this subject, produced since Ibn Araby and the counting of the ‘ letters for numbers’ ( djummal), up to the era of Rashad Khalifa and his hypothesis concerning the number 19, we ultimately find a lot of errors and misinterpretations that are far from being logically scientific.
This man has taken some numeric realties found in the Koran as a favour, that of the number 19, and he has considered that Koran is built all in all on this number. However, what he has claimed has been wronged and his results have been denied. Thus, the numbers he has chosen for his book The Miracle of the Koran are not exact at all.
Some of the most important examples he has mentioned in his research is about the first verse: ‘ in the name of Allah the Most Gracious the Most Merciful’ ( the Bassmalah) being repeated in the Koran 19 times. This saying is not accurate.
He says the first word ‘ bism’ ( in the name of), instead of ‘ism’ ( name), was mentioned 19 times, yet it was mentioned 22 times ( it is not a multiple of 19).
He says that the word ‘Allah’ was repeated 2698 (19*142), but this number is not exact too!
‘Allah’ was repeated 2699 (not a multiple of 19). However, what he has mentioned about the word ‘ arrahmane’ (the Gracious), being repeated 57 times, is true.
‘Arrahim’ (the Merciful), he said, is repeated 114. It is not true! It was mentioned
115. Therefore, Khalifa has given only one number out of four. This is how he deals with the other numbers he exposes. What he does is only mingling one true number with many wrong ones to give the idea of the truthfulness of his saying. Thus his hypothesis can be considered as a wrong theory.
http://kaheel7.com/eng/index.php/numeric-miracle/68-introduction-to-the-numeric-miracles