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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

World’s oldest Qur’an supports claim that an existing text was changed to create the Islamic holy book

Dec 26, 2015 5:59 pm By Robert Spencer

“This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Quran’s genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from Heaven.” Or that others later used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda — which is what I argue in my book Did Muhammad Exist?.

birmingham quran

“World’s Oldest Quran Supports Claim That Muhammad Changed Text Already in Existence,” by Stoyan Zaimov, Christian Post, December 23, 2015:

New information surrounding the oldest discovered written version of the Quran, the Islamic holy text, has led some scholars to believe it was compiled for Egypt’s first mosque.

“It’s the most important discovery ever for the Muslim world,” declared Jamal bin Huwareib, managing director of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, in a BBC News report on Wednesday.

The story concerns 1,370-year-old fragments of the world’s oldest Quran uncovered by the University of Birmingham in the U.K. earlier this year, which made international news.

Researchers like Huwareib are now claiming there is evidence that the written work was commissioned by Abu Bakr, a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, for Egypt’s oldest mosque, the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As in Fustat.

The BBC report noted that academics were able to determine that the Birmingham manuscript is an exact match of other Quran fragments held at the National Library of France, which are known to have been kept at the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As.

There has been some dispute over the exact dating of the Birmingham fragments, however, with some British scholars suggesting that the written work actually predates the founding of Islam by Muhammad.

“This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Quran’s genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from Heaven,” Keith Small of Oxford’s Bodleian Library said back in August.

Mustafa Shah of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies disputed the allegation, however.

“If anything, the manuscript has consolidated traditional accounts of the Quran’s origins,” Shah said.

Radiocarbon testing is placing the date of the manuscript somewhere between 568 and 645, which leaves the question up for debate – as the recorded death of Muhammad is in 632.

David Thomas, Birmingham University’s professor of Christianity and Islam, suggested it is possible the writer of the oldest Quran might have known the Islamic prophet.

Huwareib, who has visited Birmingham to examine the manuscript, said that he believes Abu Bakr commissioned the Quran that the fragments belong to.

“This version, this collection, this manuscript is the root of Islam, it’s the root of the Quran,” he said. “This will be a revolution in studying Islam.”…

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Filed Under: Featured, Qur'an Tagged With: Birmingham, muhammad


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Comments

  1. Joseph says

    Dec 26, 2015 at 6:09 pm

    To me; they just found the oldest toilet paper in existence.

    • خَليفة says

      Dec 26, 2015 at 7:04 pm

      Quran roll. Yes they should make it so Muslims ( and stupid infidels ) can study Quran several minutes every day instead of “reading” porn, comics or other nonsense books while in the WC.

      • Neil Jennison says

        Dec 27, 2015 at 11:20 am

        I have many times suggested toilet roll printed with Koran, or maybe Mohammed’s image. I don’t think any company would be brave enough to make it alas!

        • Roger says

          Dec 27, 2015 at 5:08 pm

          Back in 1979 when the Iranians took over our embassy, some entrepreneur in my area was selling toilet paper rolls with Ayotallah Khomeni’s picture.

    • Michael F Poulin says

      Dec 26, 2015 at 7:40 pm

      I wouldn’t dirty my ass with it.

      • Joseph says

        Dec 27, 2015 at 1:39 am

        Michael F Poulin 🙂

    • Susan B says

      Dec 28, 2015 at 1:43 am

      Love it. LOL

  2. Chris says

    Dec 26, 2015 at 6:29 pm

    It has been altered a few times to fit the then current political aims.

  3. Wellington says

    Dec 26, 2015 at 6:43 pm

    Mohammed shaped things to his own advantage? Well, I’m shocked, shocked I say.

    Oh, for Christ’s sake, it should be obvious by now that Mohammed was a complete fraud (which went over the heads of seventh-century Arabs and which doesn’t say much for seventh-century Arabs). The Koran is a mishmash of hate, repetitiveness, tediousness, stupidity and incoherency. Anyone believing it is God’s word, word for word, simply confirms P.T. Barnum’s well known adage that a sucker is born every minute.

    As for Allah, one knows or should know by now that Allah was Mohammed’s alter ego, his hand puppet. Yes, Islam fully deserves to be called Mohammedanism. Islam is ultimately about Mohammed 24/7. Always has been. Always will be.

    • Peter Charles says

      Dec 26, 2015 at 10:37 pm

      Exactly, there is no better way to describe the idea of islam except as Mohammad’s self promotional manual.

      • Khuraibet says

        Dec 28, 2015 at 5:58 am

        Read about prophet Mohammed more. The quraan is what the prophet recieved from gabriel. Prophet peace upon him didn’t give any direct orders everything it what god want us to do nobody it force to do anything we can do what we want and we have the choice to bileve it all about the prophet and the massengers like (Eeisa) Jesus, (Mosa) Moses, (Ebraheim) Ibraham, Noah, Sulaiman and lot and the last one of them Mohammed peace upon him. Your choice muslim is who bileve in one god who has the control and the power of everything and he begin human with Adam the (Hawaa) Eva and till this day. Sent a lot of messengers to guide people to correct path away from eblees(Saitan) nothing from mohammed everything is from allah. As you notice everything i said you must know it if you christ or jew. Dont be stereotypic read more from quraan not about it. We love our prophet as we love other massengers.

  4. خَليفة says

    Dec 26, 2015 at 6:57 pm

    Putting on my ghutra and best taqiyya face to explain the matter, you see they put together the 1370 “year old” pieces to make a forgery – and they admit it is only one year old – who should believe science and history. I mean we all know Muhammed got the truth from Jibril Who got it from Allah, Muhammed said so, so it must be true.

    • Angry Aussie says

      Dec 26, 2015 at 9:45 pm

      Dr Zakir Naik…is that you? 😉

      • خَليفة says

        Dec 26, 2015 at 11:14 pm

        no

        But thanks for a great laugh. ?

        It’s not hard to imitate stupidity.

      • Joseph says

        Dec 27, 2015 at 1:37 am

        Dr Zakir Naik…..Man does that twerp annoy me

    • Godwin says

      Dec 27, 2015 at 12:22 am

      Yes. Koranic science says the earth is flat, the moon split into 2, the sun sets in a pool of muddy water n there was a flying donkey that nobody had seen except Mo.
      So much of the scientific facts form Jibril. Hahahaha !
      Don;t be so naive.

      • خَليفة says

        Dec 27, 2015 at 3:53 am

        And don’t forget the flying carpet in Quran….

        https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JEhYBT8umU0

        • Gart says

          Dec 27, 2015 at 9:19 am

          Thanks for the link. Imagining that super carpet made of wood gives me the willies. It must be the size of a super star destroyer from star wars. Its clear we need more archaeologists, and after they find the carpet we can all rest upon it, blown around by the wind.

        • St. Croix says

          Dec 27, 2015 at 12:31 pm

          Yeah, I think I saw that thing once, but a much smaller version; when I was out in a storm on the farm, trying to fix a chicken house–it came flying through the air and hit me on the head. It did look a lot like a piece of 4 x 8 foot plywood though, now that I think of it. And no horses, no people riding on it or anything. Maybe when it shrunk down in the atmosphere they all jumped off.

  5. Michael Copeland says

    Dec 26, 2015 at 7:08 pm

    The 8th century Topkapi manuscript contains 2,270 differences from today’s text.
    (An Historical Critique of Islam’s Beginnings – Jay Smith at 1.08.30)

  6. Kepha says

    Dec 26, 2015 at 7:11 pm

    How major are the differences between this oldest Qur’an and the “Received Text” (Uthmanic recension? Does Islam have such a thing?). How seriously would these variations affect essential Islamic doctrines?

    For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls showed a handful of readings that diverged from the Massoretic text of the Old Testament and seemed to agree with a text type similar to that underlying the Greek Septuagint version. Perhaps one of the biggest differences was where the DSS say “They shall see light” in one verse in Isaiah, whereas the Massoretic says, “They shall see”.

    As for the New Testament, the chief issue is that we have more manuscript evidence closer in time to the traditionally accepted time of composition than we have for any other piece of literature from the Graeco-Roman era, making the textual criticism of the NT a very large, difficult, and exhausting field.

    Yet it is also important to note that for both OT and NT, the variations do not affect doctrinal considerations. I’m wondering if the same is the case with this oldest known Qur’an.

  7. mike ryan says

    Dec 26, 2015 at 9:02 pm

    I have heard the story from several Jews, whose ancestors came from Muslim countries, of an apparently widespread folk story among their communities that the Quran was forcibly written by a Jew who had been thrown down a well by Muslims and not allowed out until he wrote the Quran.

    I am currently re-reading Ibn Kathir’s tafsir. Beyond all the Quran’s incredibly mind-numbing and boring iterations, there are a lot of echoes of stories I’ve learned from studying the Talmud and Midrashic literature.

    Allah’s little book is, without a doubt, the work of a poor plagiarist.

    • xxxChurch100 says

      Dec 27, 2015 at 11:29 pm

      An interesting piece of information you provide .
      I was wondering , and given that Isalm is such a concoction and mishmash of half truths , but I am particularly intrigued by the idea that a Jewish writer being thrown down a well to author the Quran .

      The Jews were known as the 12 tribes and the Jews understood the concept of judgement .

      The ” twelthers ” of Iran believe that their messiah , disappeared into a well after Muhammad’s death as a child Iman but given the right conditions i.e. the end of the world ( they have just got the go ahead to build a nuclear divice) he would come out of that well to deliver judgement as the 12th Iman….

    • mortimer says

      Dec 28, 2015 at 3:09 am

      Mike Ryan wrote: “the Quran was forcibly written by a Jew”

      The theory is supported by the internal evidence of the Koran which has garbled versions of the Hebrew Bible and Talmud. Every Jew would know instantly that Mohammed was a fraud. The howler is putting Pharaoh and Haman the Persian in the same story when they lived hundreds of years apart in different countries. The message in code would be recognized by all Jews: the two arch-enemies of Jews (pharaoh and Haman) were doubly represented in Mohammed…the false prophet! Beware of Islam…not your friend.

  8. PRODOS says

    Dec 26, 2015 at 9:06 pm

    The carbon dating gives 95% certainty that the fragments are from some time between 568 AD and 645 AD (a 77 year time range).

    Mohammed was born 570 AD. He first began presenting Islam at the age of 40.

    i.e. First verses of Koran were put forward in 610 AD.

    The fragments include part of Surah 18, which is a Medina verse.

    Mohammed when to Medina In 623 AD.

    From 568 AD (earliest carbon date period) until 623 AD (Mo-Go Medina) is 55 years.

    The midpoint between the earliest and the latest carbon date period is 606 or 607 AD, which is several years before Mohammed began preaching.

    And, more significantly, it’s 16 or 17 years before Surah 18 could have been written.

    The probabilities do not favour enthusiastic support for the Koran’s authenticity.

    • David, Thailand says

      Dec 26, 2015 at 10:32 pm

      Your arbitrary carbon dating ‘midpoint’ is erroneous, since we have a range that covers Mohamed’s entire prophet-hood with no evidence to specify when or over how long a period the fragments were compiled. And let’s not forget the 5% margin for error, which would be subject to the convenience of Islamic authorities.

      As for your claim that chapter 18 was revealed in Medina, every source I have accessed has it listed as a Meccan chapter.

      • mortimer says

        Dec 26, 2015 at 11:33 pm

        Carbon dating is the date when the organism died, rather than the date of the writing on the palimpsest.

        The best chance of dating is the style of the script which changes normally every 25 years.

        Conclusion: I won’t be impressed by reading any more HOT AIR about the year the animal died that offered its hide. The only conclusive dating will come from the dating of the SCRIPT (i.e. paleography).

        This is more inconclusive blah, blah.

        • Kilfincelt says

          Dec 26, 2015 at 11:59 pm

          Agreed! What passed for paper in the 6th and 7th century was very expensive and often reused; thus, the date of the script would tell us more about the actual age of these pages from the Qur’an. I believe that Robert Spencer is well aware of that.

        • Miao Zedong says

          Dec 27, 2015 at 6:35 am

          “Conclusion: I won’t be impressed by reading any more HOT AIR about the year the animal died that offered its hide.”
          —
          Good point.

          I’m still waiting for the mosaic “tablet” to be rediscovered, proving that the word of god is millions of years old.

          What a dilemma for both – creationists AND evolutionists..

      • PRODOS says

        Dec 27, 2015 at 1:35 am

        David wrote: “As for your claim that chapter 18 was revealed in Medina, every source I have accessed has it listed as a Meccan chapter”

        Yes, you’re correct about that! My mistake.

    • Arthur says

      Dec 27, 2015 at 12:17 pm

      Isn’t this the same document that people argued was old paper with newer ink? So the carbon dating doesn’t accurately authenticate the time of authorship?

  9. mortimer says

    Dec 26, 2015 at 11:50 pm

    The connection of the Birmingham MS with Amr ibn al-As mosque in Fustat is pure speculation. Moreover, Amr ibn al-As mosque was built facing Petra in modern Jordan (likely the really holy city of the Koran), rather than towards southern Arabia.

    All the internal evidence in the Koran supports Petra being the real holy city, rather than Mecca, which has no archeology predating 700 AD, no evidence of a wall and no evidence of having been conquered. In short, Mecca has nothing going for archeologically and doesn’t fit the story of Islam. Mecca appears to be a fraud. What else in Islam is fraudulent. Scholarship will continue to show one fraud after another. When the Birmingham MS yields its fragments, Muslims will quickly hush up about it.

    • saroj says

      Dec 27, 2015 at 12:20 am

      but the quran gives a reference to “bakka”.also, it is known that prophet muhammed was born in mecca.the quraish tribe belonged to mecca.

      • mortimer says

        Dec 28, 2015 at 3:15 am

        There was no ‘Mecca’. Petra was the only place that fits the description of Mohammed’s city and the only place close to the destination of Muslims…northward to the Holy Land, Syria and Byzantium where they sought pilfered loot and slaves!

        Allah was actually ‘Qos’ the Arabian version of Mars, the god of war. The symbol of Qos is the bow or the crescent moon.

        Scholarship will continue to reveal the frauds of early Islam. When too many anomalies appear in the record, there is no question that a coverup or coverups occurred.

  10. Custos Custodum says

    Dec 27, 2015 at 12:34 am

    One additional point may not be obvious to most readers regarding the two words mentioned by Robert Spencer, akbar and kabir.

    Both words contain the key consonants k-b-r. This is not a mere coincidence but a regular feature of Semitic languages such as Arabic and Hebrew where adding different vowels within the consonant framework creates related words with different shades of meaning. For example, words containing k-b-r cover various meanings related to the idea of “great,” such as “great” vs. “greater” in here.

    Many other words can be formed using the k-b-r “root.” The slogan “Allahu akbar” is itself known as the takbir in Arabic, again with the k-b-r root.

    • Custos Custodum says

      Dec 27, 2015 at 12:43 am

      Sorry posted in wrong thread.

  11. Adrian says

    Dec 27, 2015 at 1:04 am

    o great…. now we can have a new clean, revised copy of Muhammad’s sick and violent commands and the rest of the inept drivel…

    ho-hum

  12. Expat88 says

    Dec 27, 2015 at 1:11 am

    I believe that Akbar means great, whereas Kabir means big.

    • MarThoma says

      Dec 27, 2015 at 2:41 pm

      Kabir means big, akbar means bigger (comparative) and al akbar means biggest (superlative). According to context, kabir can also mean great or old. I note that Muslims do not use the superlative (Allah is the greatest), which is would would be expected, but the comparative (Allah is greater).

      • mortimer says

        Dec 28, 2015 at 3:26 am

        ‘Kabir’ or chabra or chabar was used to describe Allat or Manat…the Arabian ‘mighty Aphrodite’ or ‘Great Diana’…the Morning Star previously called ‘Astarte’.

        Allat chabra was twisted into ‘Allah akbar’… greater than Venus-Allat.

        The moon and star symbol are the signs of Qos-Allah and Allat-Venus.

  13. Expat88 says

    Dec 27, 2015 at 1:28 am

    I saw another very old Qur’an of Caliph Uthman at Tashkent. It used to be in Samarqand, Uzbekistan and before that it was in St. Petersburg. It is from 2nd Century Hijira (carbon dated in Oxford from 640-765 CE).

    • خَليفة says

      Dec 27, 2015 at 10:14 pm

      There are multiple versions of Quran.

      Lots of Hadith references state so
      http://www.inthenameofallah.org/Seven%20Versions%20of%20the%20Quran.html

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o-SNEauif1c

  14. Gary says

    Dec 27, 2015 at 9:27 am

    “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep”

    Who made the above statement? Jesus Christ? Or…. The Liar?

    You will know them by their fruits.

  15. atheist says

    Dec 27, 2015 at 9:52 am

    All holy book are fake! If any god is omnipotent, would encode religion in genes, no need to learn to read, specially in holy book times only a few can read! Because it never happened, so no omnipotent or other gods are existing.
    Capish?

    • skai says

      Dec 27, 2015 at 10:47 am

      atheist ” All holy book are fake ” Tell me how many of them have you read?

      • Kepha says

        Dec 27, 2015 at 3:00 pm

        skai, he doesn’t need to read them. He learned the truth from his favorite High School teacher, who, at the time, was in full orbed rebellion against everything he had been raised to believe. Further, the HS teacher went to “collage” and read _The Communist manifesto_, _Quotations from Chariman Murmeltier Zedong_, _The Wetched of the Earth_, and _Soul on Ice_.

        Now, as far as I’m concerned, I can even see how God has encoded religion in our genes. Just go to China and look at the people bowing to Mao’s mummified cadaver; or the hushed tones some people use when they pronounce the word “science”. This seems to verify that if fallen people won’t worship the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, they’ll go make little gods (idols) of anything.

        And now, atheist is going to stick his head between his legs to avoid appearing reverent about anything. Pfiffle!

    • Adrian says

      Dec 27, 2015 at 10:58 am

      Whether all holy books are “fake” (meaning whether the quotes attributed inside are verbatim, or even actually were spoken by the persons they attribute) is one thing…

      But that is not their core significance. It is the philosophy they illustrate. If it hadn’t been for the “words” of Christ, you Mr. Atheist would not be sitting in the comfort of your easy chair and partaking of the physical and spiritual freedoms of the fruits of Western Civilization…

      Verstehen?

    • Western Canadian says

      Dec 27, 2015 at 11:38 am

      And the atheist holy books are the biggest fakes of all.

      • خَليفة says

        Dec 27, 2015 at 11:25 pm

        You can’t have “holy” w/o God

    • eduardo odraude says

      Dec 27, 2015 at 2:52 pm

      Charles Hartshorne and Alfred North Whitehead argue there is a God but God is not omnipotent or omniscient. Hartshorne suggests the emergence of liberal democracy and freedom during the course of human history made it more possible for people to conceive God without omnipotence or omniscience. I believe Hartshorne also suggested there was nothing in the Bible that really necessitates the idea of divine omnipotence. God has other superlative qualities, according to Hartshorne and Whitehead, but he is not akin to a Great Dictator.

      • billybob says

        Dec 28, 2015 at 1:19 pm

        Well I would certainly agree that the Islamic god Allah is not likely omnipotence or omniscience. He is a weak god that Muslims need to constantly defend. Imagine a god that requires defending by mere mortals. Then his power must be weaker than common mortals.

    • qedlin saltum says

      Dec 28, 2015 at 12:38 am

      Interesting, never heard this one before.

      If an omnipotent god would have embedded religion in genes there would still be only a few who could read it and we would have had to wait 4000 years to even begin to read it. Sounds like the kind of esoteric obscurantism you would expect form atheists, who generally exalt science as the arbiter of all things.

      Somehow the Big Bang origin of space, matter, and time, the multilevel embedded coding of information in DNA and the lack of naturalistic explanations for life, reason, sentience, mathematics, logic, art, music, etc. will not dissuade atheists from their own religious beliefs in a god of their own imagination.

      Of course, all holy books are false, says the incoherent and illogical.

    • PRODOS says

      Dec 28, 2015 at 2:12 am

      atheist writes: “If any god is omnipotent, would encode religion in genes”

      Not necessarily.

      The God of Christianity and Judaism (and I think it may also be the case with the Zoroastrians) created Man with free will. That means it’s Man’s job to discover and recognise what is right or wrong, good or evil, for himself.

      Even when God or a prophet declare something to be right or wrong, each individual needs to verify it for himself.

      In Judaism — Old Testament/Hebrew Scripture — there are even cases of Man arguing with God.

      God’s “omnipotence” is not presented as open-ended or whimsical. In fact it’s very confined. To Love, Logos, Justice, etc.

      Islam’s Allah, on the other hand, is very different in nature.

      A small, fascinating, scholarly comparison of the Christian and Islamic Gods is Mark Durie’s:

      “Which God?: Jesus, Holy Spirit, God in Christianity and Islam”

      http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0987469142/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0987469118&linkCode=as2&tag=markduriecom-20

  16. tim says

    Dec 27, 2015 at 11:48 am

    The Sirat and Hadith itself has testimonies that declare that Muslims looted other religious texts and altered them as it suited them best. No angel Gabriel at all who revealed anything to some ‘prophet’ of theirs.

    • mortimer says

      Dec 28, 2015 at 3:18 am

      If there was an actual Koran revealed to Mohammed, it would not need to be ‘collected’…Such a precious copy of the actual ‘Words of Allah’ would not have been treated casually.

      It shows that all Arabia knew that Mohammed and his revelations were simply madness, delusion and opportunism.

      When Mohammed died, most Arabs tried to leave this evil Death Cult.

  17. SoCalMike says

    Dec 27, 2015 at 12:40 pm

    The koran, Sura and Hadith are frauds compiled after Mo lived and the Mos conquered everything from India to Spain.
    They were and are a gang of warlords and pedophiles who needed a canonical text to peddle their theological fraud so it was thrown together long after the fact by people who never even met the original pedophile warlord Mo.
    They needed everyone to believe their mafia was really a religion so they spun it out of their own oral tradition and what they lifted out of the Old and New Testament.

  18. eduardo odraude says

    Dec 27, 2015 at 2:38 pm

    Brilliantly educational and humorous video by David Wood and Nabeel Qureshi

    “The Original Burn the Qur’an Day”

    • خَليفة says

      Dec 27, 2015 at 11:36 pm

      Allah would not permit a Quran to be burned UNLESS he wanted it to burn.

      Test Allah, burn a Quran and see if Allah wanted you to burn it. I’m betting that Allah does indeed want you to burn it and that it will, with Allah’s blessing, burn and burn.

      Im betting too that Allah does not want you to try and flush a Quran down a toilet, and if you try, Allah will prevent your toilet from flushing it.

      I’m speculating that Allah would not mind you taking a dump on a Quran. If you open a Quran and made your move Allah would bless your endeavor and allow you to poop on the Quran. I mean, if he didn’t want you to do it he would constipated you, right?

    • billybob says

      Dec 28, 2015 at 1:48 pm

      Wow – that is one courageous woman!

  19. Angemon says

    Dec 27, 2015 at 5:49 pm

    “This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Quran’s genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from Heaven,” Keith Small of Oxford’s Bodleian Library said back in August.

    Assuming muhammad existed to begin with. As for those views being peripheral, peripheral doesn’t mean erroneous. If, like you imply, they’re not correct, you should be able to provide evidence to back such an assertion. If not, if all you’ve got is whining about those “peripheral” views getting more ground, then you might want to reevaluate your own views. Using logic, not feelings, and without the burden of the fear for your afterlife.

  20. Baucent says

    Dec 28, 2015 at 1:55 am

    “Huwareib, who has visited Birmingham to examine the manuscript, said that he believes Abu Bakr commissioned the Quran that the fragments belong to”

    Huwareib is not a serious scholar but a wishful believer.

    But this fragment is intriguing simply because of it’s claimed age. If it is contemporary with Mohammed it is an unprecedented discovery. Something akin to finding an original copy of one of the Apostle Paul’s letters. How many Koran would have been in circulation during the Prophets lifetime? Not many I would have thought. The fact that these writings are bound into a book containing other writings, perhaps collected at the time of Mohammed from earlier books and manuscripts is completely plausible as it is terrifying for muslims like Huwareib to comprehend.

    • mortimer says

      Dec 28, 2015 at 3:21 am

      Baucent wrote: “The fact that these writings are bound into a book containing other writings, perhaps collected at the time of Mohammed from earlier books and manuscripts is completely plausible as it is terrifying for muslim…”

      There were a number of Arabian ‘prophets’ in the hadiths. How do we know their ‘prophecies’ were not included in the Koran…some hadiths suggest they were incorporated in ‘Mohammed’s’ writings without attribution!

  21. Ben says

    Dec 28, 2015 at 2:09 am

    The most striking detail to me of Mohammed’s supposed revelation from the angel Gabriel I stay afterwards he was frothing at the mouth, as if possessed. This description of his receiving a message from the spirit world strongly suggest that it was demonic, as prophets of God in the bible never had such effects, rather they were encouraged to repent, they always had the spirit of the fear of the Lord and had the awe of God. This single detail of Muhammad is very very telling of the source of his revelation, if he even had it, and that it was from the enemy, the father of lies, the deceiver. It makes sense that so much of the QURAN copies pieces from the bible, as the devil is great at counterfeiting truth. He was demon possessed and the one apparently giving the revelation was the counterfeiter saying he was Gabriel. The Angels as messengers always proclaimed Jesus, the Lamb, who came to take away the sins of the world! I pray that millions of Muslims would come to know the man in white, ISA, as the one true God!

  22. Sergio says

    Dec 28, 2015 at 5:30 am

    It would be awesome if they make the whole text publicly available. I am sure that the text contains significant textual variations that will forever destroy the myth about the invariability of the Qur’an. That alone would reduce Islamic terrorism by 50%.

    • Michael Copeland says

      Dec 28, 2015 at 6:10 am

      The oldest manuscripts vary considerably, and are incomplete.
      This is from the muslim site http://www.islamic-awareness.org/
      See “An Historical Critique of Islam’s Beginnings – Jay Smith” at 58 mins (youtube).

      • PRODOS says

        Dec 28, 2015 at 7:06 am

        Michael Copeland writes: //See “An Historical Critique of Islam’s Beginnings – Jay Smith” at 58 mins//

        Here is that video:

    • Michael Copeland says

      Dec 28, 2015 at 6:46 am

      When the discovery was first announced it was artfully suggested that the text might have been an “aide-memoire” for an early imam. This is a crafty way of admitting that it is not the same as the accepted Koran of today.

      • Sergio says

        Dec 29, 2015 at 7:36 am

        Thanks Michael and Prodos

  23. Terry W says

    Dec 28, 2015 at 10:54 am

    Can someone better explain why this document could be written earlier than what Islam claims?

    If the date range for this document is 568-645, then the middle of this period is 606.5 AD. According to Wikipedia, Muhammad received his revelation starting about 609 AD. So this would put the manuscript close to the period of time Muhammad received revelations.

    I understand he received his revelations over a period of time, but with a quick search I cannot find the period of time over which this took place.

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