10-12-2004, 02:22 PM
I guess I need to add that I agree that for the most part, you won't find a Muslim saying that the Quran has been altered. But then, that is probably just below blasphemy in Islam.
Even when I've read the articles and documents that speak of the various manuscripts (and there are more than just 7 different variants and not just about pronunciation either), even then these same people will somehow deny that any substantial changes have taken place. Yet when I read their work, they clearly say that some wordings are different.
Maybe, since this keeps coming up I should just start a thread on the topic.
But, I just don't get this "7 readings" theory. If I pronounce a word a certain way because I live in the South and someone in the Northern U.S. pronounces the same word differently, that doesn't change the SPELLING of the word anyway.
And besides this, in the book I referred to "Ulum Al-Quran", that was written by a Muslim, he did not merely confine his discussion to different dialects, but actual different wordings, order of surahs, etc. He just tried to explain them away as not being a big deal. But even if one says that the differences are not a big deal, that still means that there are differences.
If there weren't, why would there have been a need to burn variant copies? Especially if they were revealed this way to Muhammad and he taught them in all these ways.... why burn the words that were believed to be from Allah?