Greetings Hugo,
format_quote Originally Posted by
Hugo
Well you must read it for yourself but I cannot quite see how you can speak about the 'rest of the book' if you have not seen the preface? But what he says there is echoed later in chapter 11 "Causes of variant Readings" where for example he speak of "genuine errors' and Chapter 13 "The So called Mushaf of Ibn Mas'ud and Alleged Variances we he talks of erroneous reading die to 'slips of memory'. So it seems to me you are ignoring the evidence. So the much vaunted claim of perfect transmission both orally and textually is refuted.
"Refuted" by misquoting a few words? I am surprised you call that a refutation, Hugo. While you highlight allegations discussed in the book, you fail to mention the conclusions Dr Al-Azami has made concerning them, which of course would be the author's main reason of mentioning them in the first place.
While I have not read Dr Al-Azami's book, I have a reasonable idea of what it is about - I know that it refutes many western allegations against the Qur'an and I've read some small details in this regard from others who have read it. Thus, I don't need to have read the entire book to realise that an ambiguous statement in the preface does not reflect the detailed research and clear conclusions drawn in the main body of the book. I'm sure you must have read many a book to research a topic, yet I wonder for how many of them you concluded your research solely from the preface? I cannot understand why you so readily do this for a book about the Qur'an.
I cannot see how I have committed the strawman fallacy as all I asked was what exactly was this tablet in Islamic understanding?
I'm afraid you weren't asking anything at first, rather you were presenting a distortion of the facts. You said,
Originally posted by Hugo
"The original Qu'ran according to Islamic doctrine is in heaven so it is not accessible so you whole faith rests on one man and what he said happened. I mean no disrespect here I am simply stating the facts."
So there is the strawman fallacy - using an incorrect understanding about the Qur'an to discredit the Qur'an.
However, I see that in essence you agree that the revelation relies on the word of one man and so cannot be verified beyond that - its a matter of belief. Perhaps now you can see why this is from a strict logical perspective difficult because you have introduce another premise (and I mean no offence here but I don't know any other way of saying it) - that of the prophet speaking the truth and indeed you would I think go further and speak of all the prophets being as Dr Al Azami puts it 'purged and paragons of virtue and piety'
There is no new premise introduced - one only believes in the Preserved Tablet if he accepts the truthfulness of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), which is more or less what the whole thread seeks to establish. So the first step is to establish the truth of the Qur'an (and Sunnah) and the belief in the unseen follows, not the other way round.
OK, but that mean no details as far as my research has gone. Indeed some Islamic scholars have said that it contains the Hebrew Bible, The NT and the Quran and they accept they are different and that is the end of the matter.
I haven't gone into any more detail as the Preserved Tablet is not the main discussion of this thread. But it is true that it contains a record of all things, big or small. Remember that Muslims do not consider the whole Bible as it stands today to be the preserved revelation given to Jesus (upon him be peace).
I
think this goes too far but it is nevertheless circular as it is self-referential because he is claiming and in the Qu'ran claims the supernatural.
I'm not sure what made you think this. The Qur'an makes it very clear that,
Say (O Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم): "I am only a man like you... [18: 110]
In simple terms suppose I proclaim a message so am I lying, am I deluded or am I truthful? But of course logically this is a false dilemma as there are many more possibilities than just the three three you offered.
What is being referred to is a claim of prophethood. So with regards to the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) all possibilities fall into those three categories. If you believe there are others, feel free to mention them.
But does it not strike you as odd that at eternal book does this - take the case of the false claims about the prophets wife and how he had to wait a month for a revelation and what eternal significance can that have had? You might be right but I remain unconvinced.
The Qur'an mentions many incidents and stories, all of which have a purpose and contain lessons and guidance - there is nothing odd about this. The fact that the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) had to wait a period of time until the verses were revealed is further evidence of his truthfulness because if he was making up the Qur'an, he would have cleared the name of his beloved wife immediately.
Well this is orthodox Islam but I fail to see how an eternal God, who created the heavens and the earth should in the space of 23 years change his mind so many times. I would be a little more disposed to accept your explanation if it extended to Sharia; that it can be updated since it was unquestionably created by man.
This was already explained. Abrogation does not imply any imperfection whatsoever on the part of God. It does not mean that God made a mistake or that he didn't foresee an event. Rather, God knew in advance, and intended to send temporary laws for the early Muslims that would later be abrogated once the Muslim society became established.
It is analogous to a Professor who asks his students to perform 30 minutes of studying everyday for the first week. During the second week, he 'abrogates' his initial command and asks his students to perform 1 hour of studying every day. The Professor did not make a mistake initially, nor did he react to an unforeseen event. Rather, he had always planned to give a lighter load the first week to his students, and then increase the workload the next week because he knew they would be ready for it. In fact, he had his plan for the entire course written down and recorded. So when he initially gave the order to perform 30 minutes of homework, he knew that he would later abrogate this command.
Similarly, Allah initially gave some rulings that were later abrogated, but He knew and intended.
As for your comments on the Shariah, it would be less convincing that the Shariah was a divine law if it was constantly changing to meet the needs of society. The fact that the law was perfected during the lifetime of the Messenger (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and has remained unchanged is evidence of its superiority over all other laws.
But why destroy written copies and produce an official one if it was just a matter of recitation? Surely, if there were no differences it was just a copy of what already existed - if I burnt a Qu'ran today you would be very angry would you not?
Because such copies were neither verified nor authorized under the consensus of the Companions and consequently they could be written according to a specific dialect which would lead to confusion and bickering, or they could even contain the odd scribal error which could also lead to confusion. So Uthman ordered that all parchments other than the official copy should be disposed of as a necessary step to preserve the unity of the Muslims on the proper recitation of the Qur'an.
Well you can say that of course but the fact remains you have no original manuscripts and so there is an unbridgeable gap but all we can do here is agree to disagree because there is no basis for discussion - nothing exists.
Yet you ignore the oral preservation of the Qur'an: it has reached us through chains of narration going back to the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), where in each generation so many people narrated it that there is no question of its authenticity. It was not transmitted by a few persons in one generation to a few persons in the next. It was handed over by the entire generation to the next generation. The generation of the Companions witnessed the revelation and compilation of the Holy Qur'an during the life of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and then handed it over to the next generation and so on.
The very fact that hundreds of thousands of people today recite the Qur'an without a single difference is evidence of its profound preservation. Even orientalists have said the same:
A.T. Welch, a non-Muslim orientalist, writes:
“For Muslims the Quran is much more than scripture or sacred literature in the usual Western sense. Its primary significance for the vast majority through the centuries has been in its oral form, the form in which it first appeared, as the “recitation” chanted by Muhammad to his followers over a period of about twenty years…The revelations were memorized by some of Muhammad’s followers during his lifetime, and the oral tradition that was thus established has had a continuous history ever since, in some ways independent of, and superior to, the written Quran… Through the centuries the oral tradition of the entire Quran has been maintained by the professional reciters (qurraa). Until recently, the significance of the recited Quran has seldom been fully appreciated in the West.”
The Encyclopedia of Islam, ‘The Quran in Muslim Life and Thought.’
The Quran is perhaps the only book, religious or secular, that has been memorized completely by millions of people. Leading orientalist Kenneth Cragg reflects that:
“…this phenomenon of Quranic recital means that the text has traversed the centuries in an unbroken living sequence of devotion. It cannot, therefore, be handled as an antiquarian thing, nor as a historical document out of a distant past. The fact of hifdh (Quranic memorization) has made the Quran a present possession through all the lapse of Muslim time and given it a human currency in every generation, never allowing its relegation to a bare authority for reference alone.”
Kenneth Cragg, The Mind of the Quran, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973, p.26
It also important to note:
The Holy Qur'an constituted the life blood of the early Muslim community during the life of Holy Prophet. It was recited five times a day, people used to commit it to their hearts and used to study it with utmost care and concentration. People were graded and appreciated on the basis of their knowledge and the extent of the Qur'an that they had memorized. All affairs of the state as well as the social life of Arabia were governed in the light of the provisions of the Qur'an. All civil servants, military commanders and judges used to seek guidance from the Qur'an. During the Prophet's life time, when he used to send governors and judges to far off places, he used to instruct them that they have to govern and decide in the light of the Qur'an. These facts show that Qur'an was alive in that society not because of written manuscripts but as a necessity of faith and an inevitable source of guidance for social, political and legal affairs.
The Topkapi has about 1,600 Qu'ran's so which one are you talking about? There is supposed to be an Uthamn copy but as far as I know it has never been on display. The one in Taskent was I think lost and all that remains is a the equivalent of a photocopy. The ref to Dr Al Azami's book is incorrect and what you quote is on p151 and it is as he says "my estimate" but he offers nothing more, nothing; except in an earlier chapter we have a few pictures that illustrate early writing.
In light of the above, I guess this isn't of huge importance anyhow.
This disappoints me, no scholar will misuse a word like recension' and I think you must ask yourself are you torturing the data you yourself offered.
You are being unreasonable in taking parts of things I said or quoted and ignoring the rest. In short, it wouldn't make any difference whether you take those quotes out, hence there would be no need to "torture" it in the first place.
Well I dispute this, the Bible as we have it today is supported by perhaps as many as 6,000 manuscripts dated back in some case 400BCE
Which Bible are you referring to? Is it the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, Ethiopic, Coptic or the Syriac? Thus, how can you claim that the Bible is similar to the Qur'an in preservation, when so many different versions exist? We could get into a full-fledge discussion on this topic alone, though that would be getting way off-topic.
No I think you will find that others introduced the Bible element not me.
In the discussion between you and me, you keep making comparisons to the Bible, such as in the last post you compared the Qur'an's universality with that of the Bible and you also brought it up in the preservation aspect. It would be better for us to focus on the topic at hand.
Peace.
Rational thinking and logic does not discount supernatural, you are wrong in saying so. Only scientific reasoning, which is based on observing natural phenomena, discounts supernatural. And that also under the assumption that whatever happens in nature, it has to be natural, no matter how rare. Of course, that might be true but the failure to repeatedly observe the same phenomenon makes it very unnatural. But then there would be assumptions made by those sitting in the Ivory Towers regarding this unique phenomenon they observed in order to discount any supernatural intervention. But those assumptions just remain that. Mere assumptions. Conjectures of disbelieving minds.
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