Many people are infatuated by the different types of miracles in the Qur’aan, including the “numerical miracles”. In newspapers and magazines and on the internet they publish lists of words that are repeated a number of times that corresponds to their structure, and words that are repeated the same number of times as their opposites. They also claim that the word yawm (day) is repeated 365 times and the word shahr (month) is repeated 12 times, and they do this with other words too, such as al-malaa’ikah (angels) and al-shayaateen (devils), and al-dunya (this world) and al-aakhirah (the Hereafter), etc.
Many people think that these numbers are true and that this is one of the miracles of the Qur’aan, but they do not distinguish between subtleties and miracles. Writing a book which contains a specific number of certain words is something that anyone can do; what is so miraculous about that? The miracle that appears in the Book of Allaah is not like these subtleties, rather it is far deeper and greater than that. It is the fact that the most eloquent and well-spoken of the Arabs could not produce anything like the Qur’aan, or ten soorahs of it, or even one soorah. It is not like these subtleties that any writer could produce in any book that he writes, or more.
It should be noted that some people have taken this beyond mere statistics. Some of them have used these numbers to foretell when the state of Israel will fall, and others have used them to say when the Day of Judgement will be. One of the latest fabrications against the Book of Allaah is that which they have published saying that the Qur’aan foretold the explosions in the towers in New York! Based on the number of the verse in al-Tawbah, and the number of the soorah and juz’. All of that is toying with the Book of Allaah which is caused by ignorance of the true nature of the miracle of the Book of Allaah.
Secondly:
By examining the statistics presented by those who have published these numbers, we find that they did not get the numbers of some phrases right, and some of them have been selective in the way they counted the words, and that is so that they might reach the conclusion they want and that they think is in the Book of Allaah.
Shaykh Dr. Khaalid al-Sabt said:
Dr. Ashraf ‘Abd al-Razzaaq Qatanah presented a “study of the numerical miracles in the Holy Qur’aan” which he published in a book entitled: “The Qur’aan and the Numerical Miracles, a critical study of the numerical miracles of the Holy Qur’aan.” In the conclusion to this book he reviews three other books: (1) I’jaaz al-Raqm 19 (The miracle of the number 19) by Baasim Jaraar; (2) al-I’jaaz al-‘Adadi fi’l-Qur’aan (the numerical miracle in the Qur’aan) by ‘Abd al-Razzaaq Nawfal; and (3) al-Mu’jizah (the miracle) by ‘Adnaan al-Rifaa’i. The author reached a conclusion which he describes as follows:
As the result of my study I reached the idea that the “numerical miracle” as presented in these books is not real at all, and these books are based on conditions that are sometimes selective , in order to prove the validity of this view in a way that will make the reader accept these preconceived results referred to above. These selective conditions sometimes lead the author to go against that which is proven according to the consensus of the ummah, such as going against the spelling of the ‘Uthmaani Mus-haf, which is not permissible at all; or adopting the spelling of some words which appears in some Mus-hafs and without paying attention to the spellings in other Mus-hafs. It also goes against basic principles of the Arabic language with regard to synonyms and antonyms.
p. 197, Damascus, Manaar li’l-Nashr wa’l-Tawzee’, first edition, 1420 AH/1999 CE.
Dr. Fahd al-Roomi said something similar about the selective way in which Dr ‘Abd al-Razzaaq Nawfal chose words in order to reach this numerical balance, such as when he said: The word yawm (day) is mentioned 365 times in the Qur’aan, the number of days in a year. In order to prove this he counted the words “al-yawm” and “yawman” but he ignored words such as “yawmukum” (your day) and “yawmuhum” (their day) and yawma’idhin (on that day), because if he had done that, he would have got a different number. The same applies to the word al-isti’aadhah which refers to seeking refuge from the shaytaan. He says that it is repeated 11 times, but he includes in that the words “a’oodhu” (I seek refuge) and “fasta’idh” (seek refuge) but not “ ‘udhtu” (I sought refuge) or “ya’oodhoona” (they seek refuge) or “u’eedhuha” (I seek refuge for her) or “ma’aadh Allaah” (Allaah forbid).
See: Ittijaahaat al-Tafseer fi’l-Qarn al-Raabi’ ‘Ashara (2/699, 700), Beirut, Mu’sasat al-Risaalah, second edition, 1414 AH.
From this well-founded discussion, the answer to the issue of the word “yawm” and the number of times it appears in the Qur’aan, which is mentioned in the question, is clear.