In Front Page, Moorthy Muthuswamy and I discuss a notable variant reading of the Koranic text, and its huge implications:
Muthuswamy: Thank you for the opportunity, Jamie. First, some background.In 1972, during the restoration of the Great Mosque of Sana'a, in Yemen, a gravesite containing a mash of old parchment pages was discovered. It became clear that this parchment hoard is an example of what is sometimes referred to as a "paper grave." In this case, the site was the resting place for tens of thousands of fragments from close to a thousand different parchment codices of the Koran, the Muslim holy book.
Using a technique called "carbon dating," some of the parchment pages in the Yemeni hoard were dated back to the seventh and eighth centuries, or Islam's first two centuries. Until now, three ancient copies of the Koran were said to exist. One copy in the Library of Tashkent in Uzbekistan, and another in the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul, Turkey, date from the eighth century. A copy kept in the British Library in London dates from the late seventh century. But the Sana'a parchment pages are even older. Moreover, these pages are written in a script that originates from the Hijaz--the region of Arabia where the prophet Muhammad purportedly lived. This makes the Yemeni Korans not only the oldest to have survived, but one of the earliest copies of the Koran ever.
In 1981, the first scientific undertaking to study the Yemeni Koran was initiated by a group headed by Gerd-R. Puin, a specialist in Arabic calligraphy and Koranic paleography based at Saarland University, in Saarbrücken, Germany. Puin and his group recognized the antiquity of some of the parchment fragments. Their preliminary inspection revealed unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations, and rare styles of orthography and artistic embellishment. Interestingly, some of the sheets were also palimpsests--versions very clearly written over even earlier, washed-off or erased versions.
To quote Puin: "So many Muslims have this belief that everything between the two covers of the Koran is just God's unaltered word... They like to quote the textual work that shows that the Bible has a history and did not fall straight out of the sky, but until now the Koran has been out of this discussion. The only way to break through this wall is to prove that the Koran has a history too. The Sana'a fragments will help us to do this."
The idea that the Koran is the literal Word of God, perfect, timeless, and permanent, is crucial to Islam, in particular, to the Islamists at the forefront of spreading sharia and jihad. However, some of the Sana'a fragments revealed small but intriguing aberrations from the standard Koranic text. Indeed, this evidence compels one to conclude that the Muslim holy book has undergone a textual evolution rather than simply the Word of God as revealed in its entirety to the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century.
This explosive ramification has made the State of Yemen reluctant to give further access to the Sana'a fragments. Fortunately, before the door was shut to Western scholars, another German academic, Graf von Bothmer, made 35,000 microfilm pictures of the fragments, which remain at the University of the Saarland.
FP: Robert Spencer, so the Yemeni Koran points to the fact that the Muslim holy book has undergone a textual evolution. Give us your view of the meaning and significance here.
Spencer: Moorthy is quite right: the idea that the Koran is perfect and uncreated, with no textual variants, is central to Islamic proselytizing. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says the Koran "was memorized by Muhammad and then dictated to his companions. The text of the Qur'an was cross-checked during the life of the Prophet. The 114 chapters of the Qur'an have remained unchanged through the centuries." This idea is also central to the worldview of jihadist groups. Osama bin Laden bragged in his 2002 letter to the American people that the Koran "will remain preserved and unchanged, after the other Divine books and messages have been changed. The Qur'an is the miracle until the Day of Judgment."
The textual variants in the Yemeni Koran, simply by showing that the text is not always and everywhere the same, explode the mainstream Islamic belief that the Koran was delivered in perfect form to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel, and has always been miraculously preserved from variant readings.
Yet oddly enough, early Islamic traditions recorded in the Hadith assume the existence of variant readings of the Koran. The impetus for collecting Muhammad's revelations into a single volume came after Muhammad and other important early Muslims started dying off. Late in the year Muhammad died, 632, a group of Arab tribes that Muhammad had conquered and brought into the Muslim fold revolted. The first caliph, Abu Bakr, led the Muslims into battle to subdue them.
The two sides met in the Battle of Yamama, in which some of the Muslims who had memorized segments of the Koran were killed. One Islamic tradition notes that "many (of the passages) of the Qur'an that were sent down were known by those who died on the day of Yamama...but they were not known (by those who) survived them, nor were they written down, nor had [the first three caliphs] Abu Bakr, Umar or Uthman (by that time) collected the Qur'an, nor were they found with even one (person) after them." (Ibn Abi Dawud, Kitab al-Masahif)
The official compiler of the Koran, Zaid ibn Thabit, explained that he "started locating Quranic material and collecting it from parchments, scapula, leaf-stalks of date palms and from the memories of men (who knew it by heart). I found with Khuzaima two Verses of Surat-at-Tauba which I had not found with anybody else." Zaid's recollection testifies to the ad hoc nature of his work. For example, it was Khuzaima himself, Zaid's sole source for the last two verses of sura 9, who approached Zaid and informed him of the omission: "I see you have overlooked (two) verses and have not written them." When he had recited them, an influential companion of Muhammad and the future third caliph, Utman, declared, "I bear witness that these verses are from Allah." And so they were included in the Koran (9:128-129).
Other sections of the Koran, some mandating stringent punishments for unbelievers and other violators of Islamic law, were lost altogether. One early Muslim declared, "Let none of you say, 'I have acquired the whole of the Qur'an.' How does he know what all of it is when much of the Qur'an has disappeared? Rather let him say 'I have acquired what has survived'" (As-Suyuti, Al-Itqan fii Ulum al-Qur'an ). Other Koranic verses dropped out of the text without replacement. One of these stated, "The religion with Allah is al-Hanifiyyah (the Upright Way) rather than that of the Jews or the Christians, and those who do good will not go unrewarded." Al-Tirmidhi, the compiler of one of the six collections of Hadith, or Islamic traditions, that Muslims consider to be the most reliable, said that this verse was at one time part of sura 98. It is not found there, however, in Zaid's canonical version.
Who was Salman Faresi and What was their Agreement about?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b31dlMR-PrQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Efacebook%2Ecom%2Fprofile%2Ephp%3Fid%3D1117568445&feature=player_embedded
This sounds analogous to the story of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which gave insight to ancient Biblical texts.
How about making a "Da Vinci Code" type movie about the Koran? That would bring out all kinds of fatwas!
Salam,
It really pains me to think that some pages of the Koran Sharif maybe missing. My mother used to tell me that a goat eat some page(s) of that which can not be replaced...and that is why goats are killed and eaten at Bakr-Eid, the festival of sacrifice. In Urdu a BAKRI is a goat. It is rumoured that only (all) the goats know these pages ...and eathing them may bless you to know these words too....so yes we have a love-hate relationship with the goat.
On Bakr- Eid we sacrifice the goat. It is said that this sacrifice is a symbol of sacrifice made by prophet Abraham (that's Ibrahim to me).
Ofcourse others say that the real reason is that the newer generations of goat are to pay for the mistake that the said goat made sometime in the 7th centuary.
As to this false accusation that this "Koran" is different to all the others...I expect nothing different to be said by kufr...it's a blatant lie.
In the best of traditions early muslims knew the complete Koran by memory...and they could check ayats & understandings with Muhammed SAW.
Now the problems with this system started to occur when these same muslims sought paradise and were martyred in battle...and SO much knowledge went with him. (this IMHO is why the death of a muslim is mourned so much and considered "a crime to humanity"....you have deprived so many to the knowledge that the man could have imparted onto you).
So in some panic I think ....the 1st caliphate wanted it written down before it was lost....this was in stark contrast to Muhammed's way ....who preferred for muslims to commit it to memory....making them more more valuable and essential to protect from his Jewish enemies (another good reason I suspect for disliking them).
Obviously the man tasked to write it down (from memory) wrote it down ....and was to present it to the Caliphate, but died ovenight (possibly killed by a Jew or suffered a heart attack). As he fell over in pain some of his pages fell away to his goat ..who condemned goatship to sacrifice every year since.
Koran is the literal word of Allah SWT...., it is correct and precise as ALLAH SWT wished...but may have a couple of pages missing. .....let's leave it there please.
Recently, much progress has been achieved by applying statistical analysis to the Islamic doctrines themselves in order to understand why pious Muslims are waging jihad on unbelievers. Specifically, we now understand that about sixty-one percent of the contents of the Koran are found to speak ill of unbelievers or call for their violent conquest; at best only 2.6 percent of the verses of the Koran are noted to show goodwill toward humanity. Get this: about seventy five percent of Muhammad’s biography (Sira) consists of jihad waged on unbelievers. - Front Page article
With statistics calling for force and violence so overwhelmingly, 61% as anti-non believers, it is not 'cherry picking' to say the Koran is a book of violence and animosity. The archeological find at Yemen, hopefully others in some undisturbed historic sites, are proof this book was not dropped complete from heaven but a creation of men, and by not too well informed men of the 7th century steeped in ignorant local traditions and superstitions; these were also spiteful men who in their evil hearts could only consent to 2.6% with good will toward humanity. In its 1400 years of history Islam has proved these statistics over and over again. The term "religion of peace" is a complete oxymoron in Islam. This is a political-superstition and slavery ideology that has plagued humanity for too long, and it is time for honest inquiry and scientific investigation to set the record straight: the Koran is a war manual for a powerful warlord of the 7th century after booty and slaves, especially women. Sharia and jihad are the logical outcome of this war manual, why it still plagues the planet today.
Of course, for the true believers this is pure anathema, to find the Koran is a cobbled together book written by men. They would rather not look at the evidence, find some simple way to explain it away, and continue on with their self-proclaimed assertion that it is the work of some deity. They sleep and do not wish to wake, or it will burst their bubble of superiority and world conquest. It will not happen, as there is no Allah.
For an objective reader of the Qur'an, several things are evident:
1) The Qur'an was derived from Christian and Jewish sources.
2) It was written by human beings.
3) It was revised (probably at several different points in history).
4) Islamic sources revealed that early in Islamic history there were several different versions of the Qur'an kept by different individuals.
5) The difference between the verses created in Mecca and the verses created in Medina, in my opinion, indicate that there were probably two different prophets who sayings and history were combined by latter editors of the Qur'an.
The Qur'an from Yemen will reveal that the Qur'an is a human work and not created by any "other worldly" source. I believe that President Lincoln once said - "You can fool all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."
"Obviously the man tasked to write it down (from memory) wrote it down ....and was to present it to the Caliphate, but died ovenight (possibly killed by a Jew or suffered a heart attack). As he fell over in pain some of his pages fell away to his goat ..who condemned goatship to sacrifice every year since."
You see allacadabra is a jokester. After all, it was his will that this comedy was allowed to take place...goats eating holy texts delivered by an angel that can never be reproduced...his followers passing goat flesh through their intestines in hopes of receiving some of that precious knowledge through bacterial osmosis.
Yeah, that allah sure was a goof-ball.
I stick with Jehovah.
> Robert Spencer, so the Yemeni Koran points to the fact that
> the Muslim holy book has undergone a textual evolution.
Yeah, but where is the proofs? Where is the Yemeni Qur'an and which parts have been changed and how did they changed?
You can talk for eternity but all your talk is worthless WITHOUT ANY PROOFS! I heard he took millions of fotographs of the Yemeni Qur'an. Well, what did he do about it?
Why on eart did Puin hide the result of his research? I thought this book "The Hidden Origins of Islam: New Research into Its Early History" (edited by Puin) is the result of the Yemeni Qur'an project, but it is not. The book just contains a bunch of essays without explaining page by page of what they found out in that so called Yemeni Qur'an.
WHY NOBODY EVER BOTHERED TO PRODUCE ANY BOOK REGARDING THE TEXT IN YEMENI QUR'AN?
It has been more than 40 years, since the time Puin started to do research about it. FORTY YEARS and still no book at all about it!! What on earth is going on here? Do we have to wait until he is death before he dares to reveal the result of his research?
If they are somehow shocked from their sleep, they will have to conclude the Islamic jihad of the last 1400 years and the continuation of the jihad is effectively meaningless, and that their entire history has been nothing but an unforgivable crime.
I am reluctantly forced to agree. Did the academics working on this material have to sign compromising agreements to gain and maintain access? What is the role of German Koranic scholar Angelika Neuwirth in all this? What sort of time-frame for release of findings are we looking at? Or might this story be just an echo of Macbeth's plaintive
"it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" ?
Is this related to
Promises, promises.
Shakespeare is appropriate again, as Othello tells Iago to put up or shut up:
"Villain, be sure thou prove my love a whore,
Be sure of it; give me the ocular proof."
Hi all:
The Yemeni koran highlights the mortal dangers of sola scriptura.
I've always had problems with the Moslem claim towards the koran because of the absolute sovereignity of God. There's that famous quote that God's not bound by his own word and can change it at any time without having to justify or explain that change of mind. He can make us worship idols if he said so.
So how can the koran be unchanging and eternal if God can change his mind? That makes the koran unreliable.
This unrealiability has further implications for shar'ia. How can it be the basis for an unchanging and totally inflexible system of law if God as divine legislator keeps changing his mind? If he can change and not be bound by what he says, how come society must remain fixed for all eternity? Can't it evolve as he changes his mind? If not why not?
Finally, the most serious issue that Moselm apologists must answer cogently is, if God is so absolutely sovereign that he's not even bound by his own word how can anything he commands be eternal and unchanging like the koran and shar'ia as Moslems claim?
xavier