is quran pure?

[ark200]

this question is not a joke. there are several reason behind it. let me put it below:

 

prophet has 4 deciples whom he taught quran himself personally. these 4 deciples are:

 

1. abdullah ibn masud

 

2. salim, the freed slave of abu hudaifa

 

3.ubayy b. kaab

 

4.muadh bin jabal

 

according to

(Sahih Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 58, Number 150). [search on the referenced site to find the number "150" if you want to verify the written literature].

I heard the Prophet saying, "Learn the recitation of Qur'an from four persons: (1)Abdullah Ibn Mas'ud, (2)Salim (who was killed in the 633 CE battle), the freed slave of Abu Hudhaifa, (3)Ubayy B. Ka'ab and (4)Muadh bin Jabal."

 

each of this 4 men has his personal version of quran. after the prophet died in 632 CE, there was a great war organized by caliph othman. there he saw the warriors recited different quran; actually the 4 version of quraan. so he ordered zayd to write an official quraan.

 

The 2nd most trusted Hadith is called Sahih Bukhari. In Volume 6, Book 61, Number 510, the story about Muslim soldiers arguing about different versions of the Qur’an reads as follows: [search on the referenced site to find the number "510" if you want to verify the written literature].

"Hudhaifa was afraid of the different recitations of the Qur'an, so he asked 'Uthman, "O chief of the Believers! Save this nation before they differ about the Qur’an as Jews and the Christians did before."

In response to the request, the Caliph Uthman sent a message to Hafsah since she had the most important original manuscript sheets collected about 634 CE. We find written:

"Send us the manuscripts of the Qur'an so that we may compile the Qur'anic materials in perfect copies and return the manuscripts to you." Hafsah sent copies to Uthman.

Caliph Uthman had men who knew the Qur’an to assemble it again. We find written:

Uthman then ordered four men to rewrite the manuscripts in perfect copies. After this had been done, the Hafsah codex was returned to her. "Uthman returned the original manuscripts to Hafsah."

Having obtained this new version, Uthman ordered all other Qur’ans to be destroyed by fire. We find written:

Uthman sent to every Muslim province one copy of what they had copied, and ordered that all the other Qur'anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts or whole copies, be burnt.

 

 

after the official qurraan was written and all other quraans are burned by the order of othmaan, people express grivences in the following way:

 

1] Let’s begin with Mas’ud, who was asked to burn his personal version of the Qur’an.

"How can you order me to recite the reading of Zaid, when I recited from the very mouth of the Prophet some seventy Surahs?" "Am I," asks Abdullah, "to abandon what I acquired from the very lips of the Prophet?" (Masahif" by Ibn abi Dawood, 824-897 AD, pp. 12, 14).

 

the question is: Would Mas’ud accept the Qur’an of today as being pure since he refused to destroy his unique version?

 

It is important to ask, "Why did Mas’ud refuse to give in and destroy his version of the Qur’an?" Mas'ud was a close companion and personal servant of Muhammad.Mas'ud would have had confidence that he was qualified to create his unique version of the Qur'an.

 

2] lets consider the very original manuscript of quraan called hafsa codex which hafsa, wife of muhammad kept with her till her death. hafsa did not want to burn this original version. it was burnt after she died. question is why hafsa did not want to burn it?

 

there are differences between official quraan and quraan of these 4 people:

 

a] the Qur'an version created by Mas'ud did not have chapters 1, 113, and 114 that are in the "official" Qur'an of today. Is the Qur’an truly pure as believed by Muslims today?

 

b] Scholars have found that Ubayy's version differed from the "official" Qur'an with two additional chapters (entitled: Surat Al-Khal and Surat Al-Afd). Since Ubayy was taught the Qur'an by the prophet Muhammad, why doesn't the "official" Qur'an contain the two additional chapters?

 

all these things shows that drastic changes have occurred in official quraan. now it is important to ask : is the quraan pure?

 

it is the same official quraan compiled by zayd on the order of uthman we are reading today. it is important to ask : is it pure?

 

 

 

source: http://www.harvardhouse.com/quran_purity.htm

[Strange]

 

is the quraan pure?

 

What does that mean? It is a book that was written by humans, copied and edited by humans, and is interpreted by humans. So it is no more "pure" than any other such book.

[Phi for All]

I think purity is simultaneously a nebulous, improbable, and subjective concept. When it's used to refer to religious doctrine, you add all that emotion into the discussion, and you get nothing substantive, only opinion and flames.

 

Can you explain what you mean by pure, so it's not open to so much interpretation? Does pure mean perfect? Untainted by anything (if so, explain how something gets tainted)? Or do you just mean "as originally written, word for word, without the slightest change"?

[ark200]

I think purity is simultaneously a nebulous, improbable, and subjective concept. When it's used to refer to religious doctrine, you add all that emotion into the discussion, and you get nothing substantive, only opinion and flames.

 

Can you explain what you mean by pure, so it's not open to so much interpretation? Does pure mean perfect? Untainted by anything (if so, explain how something gets tainted)? Or do you just mean "as originally written, word for word, without the slightest change"?

by pure i mean original, authentic and as told by the prophet himself.

[Hans de Vries]

In terms of content, it is well preserves and is certainly more authentic than the Bible.

 

But all of t does not matter really. It's easily in the top 5 of the worst books ever written - due to both it's negative influence on mankind and horrible composition.

[overtone]

In terms of content, it is well preserves and is certainly more authentic than the Bible.

Authentic what? The Book of Mormon is even more reliably original and unchanged than the Quran, but one would not use the word "authentic" for any of its content. Likewise the major texts of Scientology.

 

Angels sent by an omnipotent Deity with no better means of communication did not dictate the Quran, agreed? The book is mostly rehashed and slightly modified Abrahamic mythology, with an extra dose of bragging and threatening and a couple of the best stories omitted. In what sense is it "authentic"?

 

 

 

 

by pure i mean original, authentic and as told by the prophet himself.

The hypothesis that some text delivered by the Prophet is missing would be one consideration. The more critical issue for you (I don't care one way or the other, but Muslim people seem to) is whether the entire book as we have it now is from one source word for word, the words in it spoken by one person exactly as they are written .

 

And as the Biblical and other literary scholars have shown, it is possible to get a reasonable answer, either way, to that question. For works in English there are fairly reliable computer programs that can do much of the grunt work - similar programs and research in Arabic literature and prose analysis would seem to be a high priority for Muslims.

Edited February 10, 2015 by overtone

[Phi for All]

by pure i mean original, authentic and as told by the prophet himself.

 

I know the Jews have methods they use when making copies of their Bible to minimize the chances of any mistakes being made. Does Islam have something similar? That might preserve the text in its original language, but interpretation and translation are almost impossible to integrate into that methodology.

[Gabriel Chase]

Muslims repeatedly claim that 'allah said in the qur'an', but the actual myth is that allah told Gabriel told Muhammad to have his followers commit passages to memory or write them down on scraps of paper or the scapulae of oxen until they could be collected by a committee appointed by the third rightful caliph in order to stem the spread of alternative recensions.

That doesn't really sound 'pure', does it? At best that sounds like fourth-generational hearsay.

[Strange]

Makes you wonder how reliable Gabriel was ...

 

"Um ... yeah, maybe that's it. Oh and something about women and education. I can't remeber if He was for it or against it. I don't suppose it matters; you decide."

[Phi for All]

"Um ... yeah, maybe that's it. Oh and something about women and education. I can't remeber if He was for it or against it. I don't suppose it matters; you decide."

 

Gabriel must have been the one to explain how male believers get multiple virgins to wed in heaven, while females get just one man they'll be satisfied with. Do the females get a non-believer man, since a believer would be with his virgins? If a woman dies a virgin, is she part of a believer's harem, or does she get her single guy?

 

Religious texts are so often contradictory, it makes you wonder how anyone ever thought they were pure to begin with.

[Hans de Vries]

 

Authentic what? The Book of Mormon is even more reliably original and unchanged than the Quran, but one would not use the word "authentic" for any of its content. Likewise the major texts of Scientology.

 

Angels sent by an omnipotent Deity with no better means of communication did not dictate the Quran, agreed? The book is mostly rehashed and slightly modified Abrahamic mythology, with an extra dose of bragging and threatening and a couple of the best stories omitted. In what sense is it "authentic"?

Authorship of the Quran is a secondary issue here. Muhammad probably suffered from some kind of mental ilness during the first part of his prophetic career, and later (once hallucinations stopped) he simply started making things up according to his own whims and wishes.

 

Neverthless, it can be regarded as more reliable because the period of it's oral transmission was shorter. Muhammad's "revelations" started in 609 or 610 AD and ended in 632 AD a few months before his death. The first written Qurans come from, I believe, 680s and you see them regularly in 8th century. So it took about half a century of oral transmission before we see a fairy standarized text. Now look at the Old Testament. It was compiled around 600 BC and it's latest part dates back from 900 BC(?) but describes events from between 2000 and 1400 BC. So in the best scenerio you have 500 years of oral transmission of OT stories before their written record shows up - so many centuries of storytelling can render any story unrecognizable. But 50 years is not a long period of time and during that time the transmission of the Quran wasn't completely oral as people used to record verses on tablets, leaves etc.

[ark200]

In terms of content, it is well preserves and is certainly more authentic than the Bible.

 

But all of t does not matter really. It's easily in the top 5 of the worst books ever written - due to both it's negative influence on mankind and horrible composition.

really? a book that is first written and destroyed and rewritten. we have the second version. we should say that this second version is worst. we don't know anything about the first version.

here people still believe that prophet Muhammad was the way we found him in modern Qur'an which was forged. people don't understand the possibility of a completely different character of prophet Muhammad in the original manuscript or its 4 versions.

 

Qur'an was forged. the original manuscripts are destroyed. drastic changes are made in the new "official" Qur'an. the implication of this is that the real Islam as we found it today was not the same in the earlier times (i mean in original manuscripts.hence they were burnt.). the character of prophet may be different in the original manuscript.

[Hans de Vries]

It is absolutely impossible to create any reconstruction of Muhammad's life based on Quran alone. The word "Muhammad" is mentioned only four times through the Quran, in such an ambigous way that it;s impossible to say whether it's a name, a title etc.

 

95% of info about Muhammad and the early history of Islam does not come from the Quran. It comes from hadiths and sira (Muhammad's biography). Do you reject them as well?