07-13-2006, 03:02 PM
Bismillah
it is very hard for us today to understand oral societies and the veracity of their memories, even still they are people today who are from written societies who memorize the Qur'an completely.
The entire Qur'an was memroized by many of the Prophet's companions. If any one person should slip in the slightest, all the other memorizers would correct this discrepancy. Yes the Qur'an was written at the time of the Prophet saws but was not compiled until after his death. So the complete Qur'an was written but not in one complete book. At the time there was no need. It was memorized by many people.
Only when some of these people were killed in battle was there a realization that it would be beneficial to have the entire Qur'an compiled in one place.
I appreciate your admition that this is not really an "Islamic site" to say the least. There are other threads that discuss this issue in great depth. Our board has a search engine that you might find useful for this and other issues. Most of the topics that are questioned have usually been questioned before so if you want a speedier answer you could try to search for the topic while you wait for us muslims to reply. : )