Preservation and authenticity of Qur'an (3)

Question:
Dr. Sahib thanks a lot for your time. I am sorry to inform you that I am bit confused now after you explain things and please forgive me for my lack of knowledge.

Sir you said:

“The Qur’an mentions in surah al-Qiyamah, “It is upon us to gather it (the Qur’an) and read it out; so when we will read it out, you follow (us) in reading it; then it will also be upon us to explain it.” (75: 17-19) This passage explains the Almighty’s scheme of preserving Qur’an through the prophet, alaihissalaam, after its revelation was completed. The angel recited the Qur’an and the prophet followed him in repeating what was recited. This process happened in Madinah in all the years of the prophet’s stay there, especially in the last year, when it happened twice. The process was necessary because of the fact that the sequence of revelation was different from the sequence in which the Qur’an was to be preserved as a book. When this arrangement was done every year in Ramadan, the problem of sequencing was completely dealt with”

It’s a very logical explanation by you, no doubt about it. However, please consider few points in this regard. This verse(s) was revealed in the early stages of Qur’anic transmission and Sura al-Qiyamah, is said to be one of the earlier Sura of Quran. If indeed this was the case then we can also assume that Message of Quran was well thought and preserved before it was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, clearly Allah is taking responsibility in these verses and there are others as well where Allah promised Muslim to protecting the Quran. What happened much later that Allah has to cancel some of its verses and in some case it was mentioned that “better one” was send to Prophet Muhammad.

This does not make any sense now, if these verses were revealed before any of the so called abrogations, then the claim of Allah is not valid anymore that He will protect the message and explain it to Prophet Muhammad, who will eventually forward it to masses further. If Qur’an is recorded on a guarded tablet then we can not assume of any sort of correction or up-grades in its message required. It’s against the nature of Allah any way. If Allah send down a verse and explained it to Prophet Muhammad and if he forwarded it further to his companions, we can not assume that Allah will re-correct it and send it a new message for Prophet Muhammad. These verses 75: 17-19 supposedly clear all sorts of difficulties regarding any of future verses that may come down from heavens.

I am sure that what Umar had said was clear, I am quite sure; he was not talking about abrogated verses or verses which were forgotten by Prophet Muhammad! The saying of Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad are at least clear in the sense that He forgot part of Qur’an; we have evidence both from Qur’an and from Hadiths. We have evidence from hadiths as well, where during the time of Uthman, there were some sort of “editing” work was done in order to correct the Qur’anic message.

First of all you’re saying that Qur’an was put in order during the time Prophet Muhammad itself, is contradictory with Hadiths, (in my very out fashioned view) with no offense, Sir, here is one good example for your consideration.
Volume 6, Book 61, Number 509:
Narrated Zaid bin Thabit:
Abu Bakr As-Siddiq sent for me when the people! of Yamama had been killed (i.e., a number of the Prophet’s Companions who fought against Musailama). (I went to him) and found ‘Umar bin Al-Khattab sitting with him. Abu Bakr then said (to me), “Umar has come to me and said: “Casualties were heavy among the Qurra’ of the! Qur’an (i.e. those who knew the Qur’an by heart) on the day of the Battle of Yalmama, and I am afraid that more heavy casualties may take place among the Qurra’ on other battlefields, whereby a large part of the Qur’an may be lost. Therefore I suggest, you (Abu Bakr) order that the Qur’an be collected.” I said to ‘Umar, “How can you do something which Allah’s Apostle did not do?” ‘Umar said, “By Allah, that is a good project....”

As you can see that there were no work done by Prophet Muhammad and Abu Bakr had problem accepting something which he thought was not conducted by the Prophet Himself. At least we can see there were two very important Sahabis differ on this issue as well.

You said later that Uthman putting things in order is a fiction. I am sorry, for my rudeness, I may had misunderstood something; I would like you to see the following hadith and please correct me.
“Book 3, Number 0785:
Narrated Uthman ibn Affan::
Yazid al-Farisi said: I heard Ibn Abbas say: I asked Uthman ibn Affan: What moved you to put the (Surah) al-Bara’ah which belongs to the mi’in (surahs) (containing one hundred verses) and the (Surah) al-Anfal which belongs to the mathani (Surahs) in the category of as-sab’u at-tiwal (the first long surah or chapters of the Qur’an), and you did not write “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful” between them?
Uthman replied: When the verses of the Qur’an were revealed to the Prophet (peace_be_upon_him), he called someone to write them down for him and said to him: Put this verse in the surah in which such and such has been mentioned; and when one or two verses were revealed, he used to say similarly (regarding them). (Surah) al-Anfal is the first surah that was revealed at Medina, and (Surah) al-Bara’ah was revealed last in the Qur’an, and its contents were similar to those of al-Anfal. I, therefore, thought that it was a part of al-Anfal. Hence I put them in the category of as-sab’u at-tiwal (the seven lengthy surahs), and I did not write “In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful” between them.”...

As you can see yourself Dr. Sahib, that Uthman did made some changes and the time when compiling of Qur’an started there were no copies of previously ordered Qur’anic codices were available to him. As a matter of fact, the following Hadith will clear this matter further.
Volume 4, Book 52, Number 62:
Narrated Kharija bin Zaid:
Zaid bin Thabit said, “When the Qur’an was compiled from various written manuscripts, one of the Verses of Surat Al-Ahzab was missing which I used to hear Allah’s Apostle reciting. I could not find it except with Khuzaima bin Thabjt Al-Ansari, whose witness Allah’s Apostle regarded as equal to the witness of two men. And the Verse was: “Among the believers are men who have been true to what they covenanted with Allah.” (33.23)”

You said that its not logical to think that Uthman was doing something, which was not done by the Holy Prophet himself and if he had done something, then somebody would had raised his voice, I am sure you know the hadiths in which companions of Prophet Muhammad like Ibn Masud were not happy with Uthman’s work and actually refused to hand over his copy of his codices. Uthmans burning rest of codices and practically destroying other copies made this matter suspicious forever.

It is logical to think that because Muslims memorized the Qur’anic text, its some how the sign of its authenticity? Preservation is a different thing and truth or substance of a Book is a different thing, I am sure you will agree with me that IF Qur’an is a false book, preservation or memorizing it will not make a book of divine origin. But even if we accept that Qur’an was preserved perfectly, during the time of Prophet Muhammad, the proofs which we have today are basically Muslims sources, which are biased for its authenticity, they believed that Qur’an is word of God and then it’s preserved perfectly. If Qur’an was preserved perfectly then we should not see today, variants of Qur’an, like Hafs, Warsh and other variants readings, and some time people count them up to 14 (mostly its said to have 7 different readings of Qur’an are available).

We know that these variants are different from each other; we also know that all variants are considered by Muslims to be authentic in nature, now if some one asks you to tell him, why after so called perfect preservation of Qur’an, we still have these variants readings today? There is practically no way to judge, which one of these readings was revealed to Prophet Muhammad! I hope you see my problem with it.

Response:
Thank you very much for taking so much interest in exchange of views on the possibility of the preservation of Qur’an. I am sure, whether proved correct or not, either way it’s an important issue.

I would first like you to have a careful look at the way Muslims deal with Qur’an the world over. It is recited by them in prayers, in some cases the entire Qur’an, and if someone makes a mistake, another person corrects it. I am sure you would agree with me that this must have been happening at least for the last thirteen-and-a-half hundred years. What you are claiming is that before this unanimous practice started, Muslims had no idea of what was the true nature of Qur’an. The book was left incomplete, unclear, and open to improvements. It was at least two decades after the prophet’s death that a caliph of Muslims corrected the wrong and gave the new faith a proper understanding of what their book of God was like.

Your thesis is based on some ahadith of Bukhari, which to you, it seems, is more authentic, each word of it, than the Qur’an and the common sense that the very Muslims who could fight over much pettier matters would have tamely given in to one man’s manipulation of the book they thought was from God. In that case Muslims of the earlier generation would be proved as not just timid but idiots as well. You have every right to believe what you want to, Sir, but the fact of the matter is that the story built around a few ahadith of Bukhari doesn’t hold water. Bukhari’s book is the result of a human effort. Despite its several merits, it has its limitations. To believe in every word of one man’s narration of history of an important matter Islamic faith is, to say the least, a casual way of dealing with it. I have a feeling that as a result of the revolution brought about by the prophet of Islam in the Arabian Peninsula, many parties were aggrieved, and at least one of them, the Jews, had the guile to take revenge by tarnishing the image of Islamic faith and its origins in a very clever, subtle way. Getting into the books of history of Muslims with fabricated material was one of the ways they accomplished their goal. Bukhari was a mortal and he could do only what was possible for a human.

The verses 106 and 107 of surah al-Baqarah are not talking about the abrogation of Qur’anic. Instead the context is absolutely clear that the mention is of the abrogation of the verses of Torah. The Jews started propagating against the prophet that on the one hand he was claiming that the Torah was the book of God, while on the other he was altering its injunctions. Was it not a contradiction of what he was claiming? In response to that claim, the Qur’an mentioned: “We do neither abrogate a verse nor cause it to be forgotten but bring something better than it or similar to it; do you not know that Allah has the ability to do everything?”

The mention in 87:6-7 of Qur’an is not for the permanent verses of Qur’an but of certain directives which were given and withdrawn, about which we have no clear idea. The mention of Umar of a verse is again not a very reliable piece of information, because it was reported by someone to the author of the book of hadith that Umar said so. What is the reality of it is something we don’t know.

The fact that there were variant readings of Qur’an is another fiction that has crept through the books of ahadith. It is only because of the naive approach of some Muslims that they have accepted that understanding otherwise there is only one version of Qur’an that could be claimed to have come down through unanimity. Others find their existence only through books of ahadith or else they have emerged quite a while after the original Qur’an had spread across to the Muslims wherever they went. Our scholar friend, Shehzad Saleem, is about to get his PhD from the University of Wales on his path-breaking work on this subject. He has dealt with all the issues you have raised quite convincingly.

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