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The Unchanging Qur'an Changes The Qur'an: Muhammad's Book? The Qur'an is Muhammad's foremost legacy and the primary source for knowledge of Islamic doctrine and (to a lesser degree) history. According to the Qur'an, the sole author of the Muslim holy book is Allah, who delivered the book piecemeal but in perfect form through the angel Gabriel to Muhammad: “It is We Who have sent down the Qur'an to thee by stages” (76:23). 1 Allah taunts the unbelievers with this fact: “It is surely a noble Koran in a hidden Book none but the purified shall touch, a sending down from the Lord of all Being. What, do you hold this discourse in disdain, and do you make it your living to cry lies?” (56:77–82). Those who do not accept this claim generally assume that it was Muhammad who wrote the Qur'an. Certainly the book gives an immediate impression of originating from a single author, what with its repetitions, its stylistic tics (such as ending verses with a tagline such as “Allah is Mighty, Wise,” which appears with slight variations forty times in the Qur'an), and its overall unity of message (despite numerous contradictions on particulars). For many, both Muslim and non-Muslim, the Qur'an itself is the principal indication that the canonical story of Islam's origins is essentially true. After all, if Muhammad never existed, or did little or nothing of what he is thought to have done, then where did the Qur'an come from? If Muhammad was not its author or conduit, then someone else must have been, for it speaks with a unified voice and bears the imprint of a singular personality—or so it is generally assumed. For Muslims, the Qur'an is a perfect copy of the perfect, eternal book—the Mother of the Book (umm al-kitab)—that has existed forever with Allah in Paradise. The Qur'an testifies this of itself: “By the Clear Book, behold, We have made it an Arabic Koran; haply you will understand; and behold, it is in the Essence of the Book [umm al-kitab], with Us; sublime indeed, wise” (43:2–4). It contains, quite simply, the truth: “These are the signs [ayats, “signs” or “verses”] of the Book; and that which has been sent down to thee from thy Lord is the truth, but most men do not believe” (13:1). Muslims throughout history have regarded the Qur'an as the unquestioned, unquestionable word of Allah, the supreme guide to human behavior, the inexhaustible fount of knowledge, wisdom, and insight into the inner workings of this world and the next. What's more, Muslims believe that the Qur'an's text as it stands today is the same as it was when the caliph Uthman compiled and published the standard canonical text. Nothing has been changed, nothing has been added, nothing has been lost. “The text of the Qur'an is entirely reliable,” says the modern-day Turkish Muslim political and educational leader Fethullah Gülen. “It has been as it is, unaltered, unedited, not tampered with in any way, since the time of its revelation.” 2 This view has been the standard in the Islamic world since at least the tenth century. The Mutazilites, alone among Muslims, believed the Qur'an
to be a human creation, not a perfect copy of an eternal divine book. But by the tenth century, this idea was generally regarded as a heresy. The Mutazilites, facing persecution, eventually died out, along with the idea that the text of the Qur'an was ever subject to human vagaries. And so the nineteenth-century non-Muslim historian William Muir asserted that the Qur'anic text had been preserved so carefully that “there are no variations of importance—we might almost say no variations at all—to be found in the innumerable copies scattered throughout the vast bounds of the Empire of Islam.” 3 The twentieth-century Qur'an commentator and politician Syed Abul Ala Maududi said that the Qur'an “exists exactly as it had been revealed to the Prophet; not a word—nay, not a dot of it—has been changed. It is available in its original text and the Word of God has now been preserved for all times to come.” 4 This claim is a commonplace of Muslim apologetic literature. Yet today's Qur'ans are based on a text that can be traced back to medieval Islamic tradition but no further. The standard text, published in Cairo in 1924, is based on Islamic traditions about the text of the Qur'an that date at their earliest from more than a century after Muhammad is supposed to have lived. 5 The lack of variation to which Gülen and so many other Islamic spokesmen refer reflects the fact that most Qur'ans today depend on the same medieval sources, not on anything close to an original seventh-century manuscript. And even that consistency breaks down on closer inspection. So, too, does the claim that the Qur'anic text has never been changed since the various suras were delivered to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel. Even Islamic tradition shows this contention to be highly questionable, with indications that some of the Qur'an was lost and other parts were added to or otherwise changed. There is little dispute, however, about the Islamic account that the Qur'an originated with Muhammad. For most people who consider the question at all, what is at issue is whether Muhammad was really reciting revelations from Allah or passing off warmed-over biblical stories and other material as the divine voice. But an examination of the records—including early Islamic tradition itself—indicates that the canonical text of the Qur'an cannot be attributed to Muhammad alone. Flexible Revelations Even the canonical Islamic accounts of how Muhammad received revelations suggest a less-than-heavenly origin to many Qur'anic verses. The hadiths concerning the circumstances of Qur'anic revelations sometimes betray a certain improvisational quality. Since, as we have seen, these stories are almost certainly not actual historical accounts, the question must be raised as to why they may have been invented. The answer to this lies in the evolving nature of Islamic tradition itself: These stories were developed as the particular characteristics of Islam were coming to the fore. Islam began to take shape as a religion different from—indeed, opposed to—Judaism and Christianity. Central to it was the figure of the prophet Muhammad, and tales of his exploits began to be circulated among the subjects of the Arabian Empire. But if the founding figure of the new religion was to have received a perfect new scripture from the supreme God, why not have the stories of its delivery emphasize its perfection and flawless transmission? To be sure, many hadiths emphasize just those things. If, however, Islam and the Qur'an were evolving
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DID MUHAMMAD EXIST? An Inquiry into
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Dedicated to all those who do not f
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Contents Foreword by Johannes J. G.
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scholars will not be interested in
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650s-660s: Arabian conquest of Nort
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Muhammad and His Family, According
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Introduction
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historicity of Muhammad. Although t
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No one knows, for it has never rece
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Some of the bold scholars who have
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Influenced by this, the historians
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1
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ut this could apply to any of the Q
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Was That Muhammad? In light of all
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leader as the “devil.” It is un
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them, reprimand them, warn them, an
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was not even able to save himself f
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of polemical hyperbole or using a t
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2
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encountering some mention of Islam,
Page 42 and 43: The first biographer of Muhammad, I
Page 44 and 45: Allah [is] great in greatness and g
Page 46 and 47: This Qur'anic material is the earli
Page 48 and 49: that orthodox theologians produced
Page 50 and 51: Arabic language, he was eloquent an
Page 52 and 53: 3
Page 54 and 55: The same can be said of an explanat
Page 56 and 57: “anyone who establishes in Islam
Page 58 and 59: But with Muhammad held up as an exe
Page 60 and 61: When Ibn Umar says that yes, he did
Page 62 and 63: these are known as as-Sahih as-Sitt
Page 64 and 65: was self-contradictory or absurd on
Page 66 and 67: latter's “godlessness and opposit
Page 68 and 69: Switching On the Full Light of Hist
Page 70 and 71: Ibn Ishaq's Reliability So are thes
Page 72 and 73: Muhammad's virtues, or a combinatio
Page 74 and 75: Jansen administers the coup de grâ
Page 76 and 77: Central to Islam, therefore, is the
Page 78 and 79: (Nor, for that matter, do Muslim hi
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Page 82 and 83: The problem with the third option i
Page 84 and 85: years of age. 6 The earliest Islami
Page 86 and 87: elationship, the Qur'an also has Ma
Page 88 and 89: einforced the point that Muhammad h
Page 90 and 91: “worked on Allah's Apostle so tha
Page 94 and 95: during the eighth and ninth centuri
Page 96 and 97: did not worry over such matters, wh
Page 98 and 99: Rajam be inflicted on him who commi
Page 100 and 101: telling indications that it has bee
Page 102 and 103: ut suddenly verses 238 and 239 inte
Page 104 and 105: The Non-Arabic Arabic Qur'an A Book
Page 106 and 107: “We know indeed that they say,
Page 108 and 109: Puin explains: “The Koran claims
Page 110 and 111: a person dies, his Book (of deeds)
Page 112 and 113: The Syriac influence is not restric
Page 114 and 115: To provide the new religion with it
Page 116 and 117: What the Qur'an May Have Been A Clu
Page 118 and 119: An Islamic scholar writing late in
Page 120 and 121: Luxenberg states that if Qur'an “
Page 122 and 123: symbolism of the wine of Paradise.
Page 124 and 125: Syriac connection, has revealed—c
Page 126 and 127: unbelievers, may say, “What did G
Page 128 and 129: gods except the Creator of all, nor
Page 130 and 131: in Paradise reserved exclusively fo
Page 132 and 133: 9
Page 134 and 135: who have been true in their covenan
Page 136 and 137: for them to brandish. Nor is it eve
Page 138 and 139: The First Mention of the Qur'an If
Page 140 and 141: Uthman approved did not survive, ev
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10
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years after its birth, Islam has re
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The realm of political theology, th
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The real proliferation of material
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from long after the time he is supp
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Notes Introduction: The Full Light
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34 Ibid., 63-64 (= Patrologia Greca
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6 Al-Qastellani, X, 342 (quoted in
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7 Arthur Jeffery, “The Quest of t
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Chapter 6: The Unchanging Qur'an Ch
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29 Ibn Kathir, Tafsir Ibn Kathir, v
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49 Nevo and Koren, Crossroads to Is
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Further Reading There is a great de
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Acknowledgments I could not have wr
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Muhammad and, 2, 7, 24-28, 41, 48,
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Encyclopedia Britannica, 1 Ephraem
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Islamic calendar, 48-49, 204 Islami
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Mufid, Sheikh al-, 81 Mughira, al-,
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Rosenthal, Franz, 154 Ruqayya (daug
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