06-07-2003, 10:07 PM
Why don't you get on with it?
You said "my job will be: make you put your foot in your mouth."
Come On, you took me up on my offer and now you're ducking and diving and still have yet to answer the above and "my job will be: make you put your foot in your mouth.",
I will continue,
"No other book in the world can match the Qur'an ... The astonishing fact about this book of ALLAH is that it has remained unchanged, even to a dot, over the last fourteen hundred years. ... No variation of text can be found in it. You can check this for yourself by listening to the recitation of Muslims from different parts of the world. (Basic Principles of Islam, Abu Dhabi, UAE: The Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahayan Charitable & Humanitarian Foundation, 1996, p. 4, bold added)"
The fact is that the Qur'an is thought to be perfect by Muslims.
The above claim is that all Qur'ans around the world are identical and that "no variation of text can be found". In fact the author issues a challenge saying, "You can check this for yourself by listening to the recitation of Muslims from different parts of the world". I take up this challenge to see if all Qur'ans are in fact identical.
I am going to start by comparing two Qur'ans first and then the rest.
The first Qur'an is the most commonly used Qur'an and is according to the Hafs' transmission. The second Qur'an is according to the Warsh' transmission and is mainly used in North Africa.
Remember, this is just the start.
When you compare these Qur'ans, it becomes obvious that they are not identical. There are three main types of differences between them.
Graphical/Basic letter differences
Diacritical differences
Vowel differences
There are differences between the basic printed letters of these two Qur'ans. It was these letters that Uthman standardized in his recension of the Qur'an.
THE QUR'AN ACCORDING TO THE TRANSMISSION OF IMAM HAFS AND SECOND, IMAM WARSH
IMAM HAFS surah 2:132 (wawassaa)
IMAM WARSH surah 2:131 (wa'awsaa)
IMAM HAFS surah 91:15 (wa laa yakhaafu)
IMAM WARSH surah 91:15 (fa laa yakhaafu)
THIS IS A STARTER, I WILL POST PICTURE LATER ON,
Unchanged - all Qurans identical?
The below pictures in reference to
IMAM HAFS surah 2:132 (wawassaa)
IMAM WARSH surah 2:131 (wa'awsaa)
[img:bb85b604f8]http://answering-islam.org/Green/seven/hafs_1.gif[/img:bb85b604f8]
[img:bb85b604f8]http://answering-islam.org/Green/seven/warsh_1.gif[/img:bb85b604f8]
The below pictures in reference to
IMAM HAFS surah 91:15 (wa laa yakhaafu)
IMAM WARSH surah 91:15 (fa laa yakhaafu)
[img:bb85b604f8]http://answering-islam.org/Green/seven/hafs_11.gif[/img:bb85b604f8]
[img:bb85b604f8]http://answering-islam.org/Green/seven/warsh_11.gif[/img:bb85b604f8]
The above examples show that there are differences between the basic letters of these two Qur'ans.
DIACRITICAL DIFFERENCES - Arabic uses dots to distinguish between certain letters that are written the same way. For instance the basic symbol represents five different letters in the Arabic language depending upon where the diacritical dots are placed. For the above example, the five letters with their diacritical dots are as follows: baa', taa', thaa', nuun, yaa'. However these dots were a later development of the Arabic script and were not in use when Uthman standardized the text of the Qur'an. Thus the Uthman' Qur'an did not have any dots to record the exact letter and pronunciation. The text could be read in several ways and was in this way ambiguous in places. It served as a guide for the different Readers of the Qur'an, but not as a complete guide because the diacritical dots were not yet in use. The two Qur'ans that we are examining come from two different Readers and so have two different oral traditions. These traditions have their own unique system of where the dots (and vowels) should go. Here we see another difference between these two Qur'ans for they do not have the dots in the same place. We see that for the same word these two Qur'ans have the dots in different positions thus making different letters. (Remember that verse/aya numbering differs between these two Qur'ans.)