01-05-2007, 06:11 AM
Peace be with you, Shaunee!
Quote:All the information needed is here:
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/
There are exactly <b>71</b> links to cover the whole topic of the Quran's authenticity.... and covering <b>your question specifically</b> in several pages.
There is even a nice section at the bottom of the page about the Bible.
Thanks for the link. In all honesty, I was expecting that site to blow me away but it failed miserably! All I got was about 70 pages of objections to the Quran & about 1 page of criticism towards the Christian authors who posed the objections.
I hardly learnt anything! Some answers were good but not convincing enough.
The rebuttles were flimsy! It's obvious the intention was to discredit the authors rather than prove the Quran's authenticity. I've pasted the main highlights below.
Maybe it's just me! In any case, I'd appreciate it if you'd suggest another website or alternatively answer the original question yourself (just briefly). Thanks Matey!
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Text/hajjaj.html
The bottomline here is that `Abbad Ibn Suhayb has been abandoned and his reports are rejected. The terms used to describe `Abbad Ibn Suhayb are the most severe possible [matruk al-hadith]. It is not correct to describe his narrations as 'weak', which is an understatement. Rather, his narrations are fabricated, pure and simple. He has reached the lowest levels of Jarh in the sciences dealing with al-Jarh wa 'l-Ta`dil ("The disparaging and declaring trustworthy") of the narrators.
Even if we assume that this incident is authentic, the question that arises is: so what? Al-Hajjaj supposedly made changes in 11 places, and even these places are documented to the last detail. Orientalists and missionaries, as usual, take some trivial piece of information (forgetting the fact that it is fabricated!) and make, not just a mountain, but an entire planet, out of an anthole.
From a historical point of view, al-Kindi's claim is based upon conjecture rather than "Muslim authorities" and smacks of delirium. For al-Hajjaj was merely one of the generals in the Ummayad regime, with little influence and almost no ability to do the Qur'an any harm. In fact, he was utterly incapable of effecting any change in the most elementary laws of Islam, not to speak of the Qur'an, which is the foundation of Islamic faith, and pillar of Islamic laws.
To conclude the issue of al-Hajjaj and the changes he made in the Qur'an, it has been shown that the report in Kitab al-Masahif of Ibn Abi Dawud is false. This is because the reporter `Abbad Ibn Suhayb is the isnad has been declared abandoned in hadith and all his hadith are rejected. Analysis of matn of the hadith shows that the alleged changes that were made related to the Qira'at that are mutawatir. Muslims have accepted various Qira'at as authentic provided they satisfy certain conditions. Furthermore, the hadith in Kitab al-Masahif is only known to us through one chain. There exists no parallel chains to authenticate the matn or text of the report.
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/T.../hafs.html
Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Christian missionaries like Jochen Katz find themselves "refleshing" a dead skeleton in order to comply with their missionary program of outright deception. Of course, regular participants in the newsgroups have time and again witnessed Jochen's tiring displays of dialectical acrobatics - the misquoting of references and the juggling of facts. Surprisingly enough, missionary Katz cannot even support his point of view using the reference, which undermines his missionary agenda of twisting the facts. The reference has firmly established that:
* There is only one Qur'an,
* The differences in recitation are divinely revealed, not invented by humans
* The indisputable conclusion that the Qur'an was not tampered with.
It will be good to study the variant readings (they are truly variant!) in the New Testamant, their origins and impact in the next section. It will be clear who exactly should be worried about the variant readings and why should the Bible be considered as the last candidate to be the 'inerrant' word of God.
It is to be made clear that the Arabic script before and during the time of cUthmân was written without vowel and diacritical marks. To say that the vowels and diacritical marks were not included in the cUthmânic Qur'an actually shows the ignorance of the Christian missionary Samuel Green concerning the evolution of Arabic script. The need for vowel and diacritical marks arose only after the time of cUthmân to prevent the wrong recitation of the Qur'an by ignorant Arabs and non-Arabs.
Understandably there was some opposition at first to adding anything to the way the Qur'an was written. Ibn cUmar (73/692) disliked the dotting; others welcomed it, clearly because it was, in fact, doing no more than ensuring proper reading of the Qur'an as received from the Prophet(P), and this view was accepted by the majority of Muslims throughout the different parts of the Muslims world, from the time of the tâbicûn. The people of Madinah were reported to have used red dots for vowels - tanwîn, tashdîd, takhfîf, sukûn, wasl and madd and yellow dots for the hamzas in particular. Naqt (placing dots on words in the mushaf), became a separate subject of study with many books written on it.
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Tex...al/scribal.html
In principle, the cUthmânic script bears more significance than what we may imagine. In fact, not only is it the script in which the first copies of the Holy Qur'ân were written but it bears many references to the Science of Qirâ'ât (Science of Readings) as well. Shifting to the modern script would make the Qirâ'ât aspect a specialist's affair and would deprive "normal" Muslims from even noticing it. The next step would be that the Muslims who are not familiar with Qirâ'ât will become easy prey for anti-Islamic propaganda, the kind of groundless criticism we are rebutting right now. For a short introduction about Qirâ'ât, the readers may insha'allah, refer here.
The script of any language (not only Arabic) is subject to many changes and amendments agreed upon by the users of that language throughout history. Writing being a communication tool, the script must be devoid of ambiguity so that the information carried gets from the sender to the recepient without ambiguity. Once in a while, linguists decide to change certain scribal rules in order to simplify the script.
In short, the claim of so-called scribal errors in the Qur'ân is not only ridiculous but also a fanciful imagination of an extremely ignorant person.
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Tex.../GilHajjaj.html
It is very obvious that there was no new recension after cUthmân united Muslims on the basis of single text. Muslims have agreed on this. al-Hajjâj's role is rather well documented in the literature concerning cUlum al-Qur'ân (Sciences of the Qur'ân). It has been shown above that the readings which he changed are mutawatir. There is only the difference in the Qirâ'ât. Muslims have accepted various Qirâ'ât as authentic provided they satisfy some conditions.
As pointed out earlier, how could al-Hajjâj, who was governor of Iraq, a small part of Muslim land, able to change the Qur'ânic text completely. The only changes he made was in cUthmân's mushâf not in any other text as far as the report mentioned above suggests. The complete change of Qur'ân is not documented in the Islamic history at all. And above all how could he change what was commited in the memory of Muslims in the Islamic empire.
John Gilchrist, a Christian Missionary, who quotes both the references Arabic Literature To The End Of The Ummayad Period and The Qur'ân As Scripture as "Contemporary Books on the Qur'ân" does not even tell the whole story. In his book Jamc al-Qur'ân: The Codification Of The Qur'ân Text, Jeffery's skepticism "he seems" or "al-Hajjâj seems" is quoted as reality.
And obviously, there is no mention of the Christian polemic concerning al-Hajjâj. It is a frequent method employed by Christian Missionaries to supress the information which goes against their viewpoint.
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/Tex...GilJeffery.html
Jeffery does not know that he is contradicting his own stance. On one hand, he is willing to believe whatever Ibn Mascud has to say concerning the variant readings. On the other hand he is rejecting Ibn Mascud's own testimony that the Qur'ân was revealed in seven ahruf! It is also interesting to see the traditional sources which Jeffery uses to gather the variant readings and they themselves say that the Qur'ân was revealed in seven ahruf (for the full bibliography of the sources which Jeffery uses, please see the next section).
In other words, the use of evidence by him is extremely selective, i.e., negate the evidence which does not suit the hypothesis.
It is to be noted that Jeffery's list of variant readings are surprisingly devoid of proper isnâd or chain of transmission. So, it is very difficult task to determine from where the variant readings were taken.
Orientalism and juggling of words are synonymous. Jeffery is no exception to this. The evidence that we have concerning the first collection of the Qur'ân by Abû Bakr is authentic and strongly supported by the Islamic history. In spite of this evidence, the image of the Christian ecclesiastical history, with which the Christian missionaries are much more familiar, seems to have obsessed Jeffery to such a degree that he has, in his book, transposed it almost entirely to the Islamic terrain. In fact, he has tried to show that in the Qur'ânic text there is a certain evolution resembling in many ways the evolution in the text of the Gospels.
A simple reminder here would be that Abû Bakr was a Caliph at the time he ordered the first collection after the loss of reciters on the day of Yamamah. As was the case with his predecessor Richard Bell, Jeffery failed to camouflage his prejudiced against Qur'ân when dealing with its compilation. Like Bell, he declares that the recension of Abû Bakr was his own purely private affair.
It is interesting to note that he accepts all the variants indicated in Kitâb al-Masâhif as valid but ignores (without explaining why!) these same sources assertion about Abû Bakr's official collection of the Qur'ân!
It is not clear from anything that Jeffery has said in his specialist work on the Qur'ân why anyone should feel this degree of confidence. According to Jeffery, Islamic scholars have considered that isnâd of reports in Kitâb al-Masâhif weak, yet he wants to push it because it is 'extremely unorthodox'. Neither he has bothered to check the isnâd of the hadîths nor has he commented on any of the hadîth probably assuming that the hadîths were forgeries.
It is interesting to note that Jeffery concedes the lack of textual differences in the rival Codices attributed to Ibn Mascud and Ubayy Ibn Ka'b when compared to cUthmânic 'text'. This basically means that the assumption of rival Codices itself was wrong to start with. Further he went on to 'explain' the variants found in the uncanonical Codices as being 'improvements' on the cUthmânic text. Jeffery further 'suggests' that these Companions may have suggested such variants out of piety.
Summary
Summarizing the views on the book Materials For The History Of The Text Of The Qur'ân we can say that lack of verification of isnâd can result in the following problems which Arthur Jeffery has already mention:
Some of the isnâd of the hadîths in Kitâb al-Masâhif of Ibn Abi Dâwûd are considered to be weak. Jeffery himself admits that. It is therefore not advisable to take any material for quotation unless the isnâd is verified. The authenticity of the readings in the Old Codices are, therefore, questionable.
It is unclear what Jeffery means by variants. Does he mean the seven Qirâ'ât in which the Qur'ân can be read or ahruf in which the Qur'ân was revealed or variants which are not approved by the Prophet(P) or his Companions?
The problem of falsification of readings of the Qur'ân can not be addressed unless the hadîths are meticuluously verified.
The question of defective transmission of the readings in Old Codices is very crucial. This has lead to linguistically impossible variants. This again takes us back to the problem of isnâd.
While creating doubts and making insinuations about the cUthmânic recension and despite his acceptance that the transmission of variants is through weak chains of transmission, Jeffery is nevertheless hesistant to admit the reality of the Muslim world consensus ('Ijma) on it.
Jeffery has utterly failed to produce any statement from Ibn Mascud (or Ubayy Ibn Ka'b) implying that what was in the cUthmânic recension was not from the Prophet(P). After Ibn Mascud, Ubayy Ibn Ka'b is the second companion to whom a bulk of variant readings have been ascribed.
From the manuscript evidence shown by his collegue Bergstrasser, Jeffery concedes the lack of textual differences in the 'texts' attributed to Ibn Mascud and Ubayy Ibn Ka'ab when compared to cUthmânic 'text'.
http://www.islamic-awareness.org/Quran/T...rgery.html
Surah al-Walayah and Surah al-Nurayn are considered forgeries by both Shi'ite and Western scholars. This is further confirmed by their absence in Jeffery's studies on "variants" attributed to `Ali as well as Zaid bin `Ali. The stylistic features of Surah al-Walayah and Surah al-Nurayn are a poor imitation of the Qur'an and riddled with grammatical errors. Contrary to the expectation that they are a Shi'ite forgery, modern research has shown that the composer of the two forged surahs is a Parsi.
And Allah knows best!