The Quran Was Not Preserved
Allah said, “We have sent down the Quran and surely We will protect” (Quran 15:9). Could he?
Most Muslims are familiar with the above
verse from the Quran, which they consider as the concrete proof that
the Quran is perfectly preserved. The verse is clear; Allah pledges to
protect his book from corruption, which provides Muslims with a much
needed assurance that their holy book is reliable. Such assurance was
necessary to Muslims whose confidence in the divine scriptures was
shaken after the Quran’s repeated accusations to other nations of
tampering with their own scriptures.
Muslims are taught that preservation of
the Quran is an accepted fact that distinguishes Islam from the rest.
The claim aims to make the Quran stand out as the only true divine book
in the procession of mankind today. The Muslims' claim is a big lie that
has proved to be a very successful selling point to converts who often
refer to the Quran in that sense.
It is not advisable to question the
authenticity of the Quran with Muslims unless you are sure of their
relative tolerance. The Muslims clouded minds quickly moves into
circular logic such as: ”Of course, every word in the the Quran is
preserved as Allah revealed it to his prophet, this is an absolute fact
because Allah vowed to protect his book from any corruption” It would be
a struggle to try to point out that a statement in the Quran can not be
accepted as a proof of its authenticity.
From a scientific point of view, the
Quran and Islam wouldn't stand a chance if subjected to proper
historical scrutiny (1). Muhammad’s birth and life, the Quran and the
beginning of Islam are all shrouded with a thick coat of vagueness and
obscurity. But this article discredits the islamic claim on the basis of
the accepted Islamic history.
How the Quran was preserved
As all Muslims know, the Quran was not
Allah’s first book; a few others were revealed centuries before the
Quran. None of those scriptures survived to our day because they were
tampered with by the very people to whom they were revealed. Fourteen
hundreds years ago, Allah decided conclusively to reveal a scripture,
once and for all, which He called the Quran, and vowed to protect it
from corruption.
We do not know the reasons why people
tampered with the earlier scriptures. Did they gain anything by
deliberately making changes to Allah’s words? Why they did not fear
Allah, especially with all the stories in those scriptures, about
Allah’s punishments to those who dared to disobey Him. We also do not
know why Allah allowed his books to be tampered with. Even human writers
do not allow any changes to their works.
As Allah pledges to protect the Quran,
one would think that He would create the ideal conditions for His
revelation along with man-proof measures to safeguard the Quran. Well,
it doesn't look to us that way. On the contrary, it looks as if Allah
made every effort to make the Quran disappear, even before its
revelation was completed.
Let us examine the circumstances of the Quranic revelation:
The Nation
The Quran was revealed in the seventh
century to the Arabs, one of the most illiterate nations of the time. It
was the Arabs first ever book. Before the Quran the Arabs never
authored a book and had no idea how books look like or how to handle
them. Revealing the Quran to the Arabs sets the scene for mistakes of
all kinds.
The Timing
The Quran was revealed before the Arabic
script was fully developed. The Arabic script was not yet suitable for
writing anything with significance because many letters shared the same
appearance. The script problem was only solved, decades after Muhammad’s
death, by adding dots to the script. It is only fair to wonder why
Allah rushed the Quran before the Arabic script was well developed.
It looks strange that the Arabs used the
same script for multiple letters. But before the Quran, the Arabs only
managed to write a few pieces of poetry. Reading the script served as a
reminder for the reader of what they already knew by heart. As a matter
of fact, the Arabic script still suffers of a similar problem in our
time.
There are many Arabic words (not
letters) that share exactly the same appearance, even after adding the
dots. It is usually left for the reader to work out, from the context,
the proper pronunciation of a particular word. To distinguish those
words from each other, printing has to include the diacritical marks
(like fat-ha, kasra, and damma), which the Arabs started to use more
than a century after Muhammad’s death. Although used in the Quran, the
diacritical marks are rarely used in every day printing of ordinary
books or newspapers because they make the words cluttered and printing
more demanding.
The Illiterate Receiver
At the time of the Quranic revelations,
there were some Arabs who were educated enough to be able to read and
write. Out of all the Arabs, Allah appointed Muhammad, an illiterate
person, to be in charge of the Quran. This is like appointing an
illiterate person to be in charge of editing an important newspaper..
The Scribes
Muhammad had some scribes working for
him in Medina. After a revelation, Muhammad would ask whoever available
of those scribes to write the revealed verse/verses. The scribe service
was not available to Muhammad when he was still a weak person with only a
handful of followers in Mecca. Therefore, it is fair to assume that the
Meccan verses, over one third of the Quran, were not written
immediately by scribes.
Being an illiterate person, Muhammad had
no means to check the work of the scribes for errors that could have
been made accidentally or on purpose. Being trustworthy himself is
meaningless if Muhammad had to leave the work to be completed by
ordinary people without supervision.
The story of Ibn Abu Al Sarh:
This is a very important and very little
known story about the Quran. Muslim scholars make every effort to tuck
it away and keep it out of sight of ordinary Muslims. I only learned
about this story after I left Islam.
In short: Abdulla Ibn Abu Al Sarh was
one of the scribes in Medina. Once Muhammad dictated to him a verse that
had one of the common endings like aleem khabeer or hakeem aleem. When
Ibn Abu Al Sarh reached the end of the verse he double checked with
Muhammad: “Oh prophet of Allah, is it hakeem aleem?” to which Muhammad said ‘yes, it is’.
Ibn Abu Al Sarh became suspicious because he thought it was aleem
khabeer. Ibn Abu Al Sarh decided to test Muhammad in future verses and
noticed that Muhammad accepts his suggestions of aleem khabeer or hakeem
aleem or other endings that do not distort the meaning.
Ibn Abu Al Sarh concluded that Muhammad
was not a prophet but an impostor. He denounced Islam and defected to
Mecca and told the Quraysh of what happened. Muhammad became very angry
and vowed to kill him once he conquers Mecca, which he was preparing
for. When Muhammad conquered Mecca, Ibn Abu Al Sarh was arrested but was
saved from the death sentence by Uthman, his brother in breast feeding.
Ibn Abu Al Sarh survived and had a successful career under the Umayad
dynasty, which speaks volumes of the faith of the Umayads!
We do not know which verses were scribed by Ibn Abu Al Sarh, but we know that at least those verses were not accurate!
The materials
The technology necessary for writing was
not well developed in Arabia. The scribes used primitive ink and
perishable material to accomplish their work. Consequently, by the time
Muhammad died, some verses were unreadable or completely missing from
the Quran. According to Aysha, Muhammad’s wife, she used to keep the
stoning verse under her bed, but was eaten by a ‘dajen’ (chicken or
domestic animal!)
Inspection
Until Muhammad’s death, nobody inspected
the work of the scribes, which was left to gather dust until after
Muhammad’s death. The moment of truth came about two decades later when
Caliph Uthman appointed a committee to start the project of collecting
the Quran. Only then the discrepancies in the various writings came to
light. Uthman’s solution was to order to burn all existing copies and
keep only the formal five copies which were produced by his committee.
Many leading Muslims refused to recognize Uthman’s copies and refused to
surrender their own to be destroyed because they believed theirs were
the accurate ones. Ibn Massoud, a sahabi whose knowledge of the Quran
was renowned and commended by Muhammad, was one of those Muslims who
refused to recognize Uthman’s copies and refused to surrender his
personal, presumably accurate, collection.
Preserving the Quran in the Muslims’ chests
Some Muslim scholars claim that all of
the above is irrelevant because the Quran was preserved in the Muslims’
chests as well. (Yes, the Quran associates the heart with intelligence,
not a word about the brain, and the Muslims believed it). This claim is
coupled to a belief that the early Muslims were humans with extra
ordinary intelligence. Of course this is completely unfounded and still
doesn't explain the discrepancies between the various collections of the
Quran.
Muhammad could and should have done more
to safeguard the Quran, if he really believed it was Allah’ words and
the most important document on earth. He had the resources and the
authority, as a leader in Medina, to order a supervised writing and
proper collection of the Quran. He should have stamped that
authenticated copy (Muhammad had a stamp) and devised a system to take
care of it after him. But he didn't because he was busy fighting wars;
over seventy of them in a space of ten years. Besides he didn't really
feel the Quran was that important. He probably found the chaotic
situation useful, as it gave him the freedom to contradict the earlier
verses without being noticed.
Many Muslims believe that two of
Uthman’s copies still exist today and they seem to be sure about it.
They do so because they believe their scholars who propagate this lie
with apparent confidence, which is not unusual for Muslim scholars.
Caliph Uthman sent four of his copies to
the governers of the newly conquered states and kept one with him in
Medina. Those copies were supposed to have been well looked after but
there is no trace of them. How can Muslims afford to lose such important
divine documents? This is difficult to fathom considering the way
today’s Muslims treat the Quran. Muslims are usually reluctant to
dispose of their old copies of the Quran because it is not a straight
forward matter; it should be burnt and not mixed with the general waste.
Until the discovery of the Quran of
Sanaa, the oldest two copies of the Quran were thought to be the ones in
Tashkent and Istanbul. Both copies are partial, not the full Quran and
both were dated to some two hundred years after Muhammad’s death.
Therefore they are not Uthman’s copies.
In the 1970s, manuscripts of the Quran
were found in Sanaa, Yemen, and were dated to about hundred years after
Muhammad’s death. They are believed to be the oldest copy of the Quran.
The Yemini authorities stopped the German researchers from completing
their work once they noticed the differences between the manuscripts and
the existing Quran. It is also interesting to note that independent
researchers have no access to do proper studies on the copies in
Tashkent and Istanbul.
Are they hiding something?
---
References:
(1) In the Shadow of the Sword: The Battle for Global Empire and the End of the Ancient World by Tom Holland, Publisher Little, Brown ISBN 9781408700075
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