Discussion with Orangeduck

[Orangeduck]

Hello. I am a recent convert from Islam to Christianity (2 years ago, so maybe not that recent)

I will be more than happy to answer any questions about Easter.

I will start with a few misconceptions:

1) Easter is based on a Jewish belief. It comes from the Jewish Passover.
2) Easter is NOT named from a Germanic goddess oaster (sometimes spelled ostara, and many other different spellings). The Germanic name didn't originate till the 7th century. Also the names only sound similar in English, which makes sense since English is a Germanic language. In any other language, the holiday is not called easter.
3) I will any any questions you might have

[marwen]

Hi Orangeduck. Welcome to the forum, and thank you for your contribution.

I am a recent convert from Islam to Christianity

I will any any questions you might have

Can we learn more about your experience with Islam. How you lived as a muslim, and what parts or aspects of Islam you didn't agree with, that made you convert to christianity ?

[Orangeduck]

Hi Orangeduck. Welcome to the forum, and thank you for your contribution.



Can we learn more about your experience with Islam. How you lived as a muslim, and what parts or aspects of Islam you didn't agree with, that made you convert to christianity ?

Hello. I was born and raised a muslim in America. I believed everything I was told by my parents, such as:

1) Mohammad is the last and final prophet
2) Mohammad was foretold in the Bible
3) the quran is perfect and has never been changed
4) I must pray 5 times a day
5) always fast durring islamic holidays

Basically, I was told to beleive everything islam taught. When I was in my 20's, I left islam after after studying Christianity, Judiasm, Hinduism, Sikhism...all from a secular point of view.

2 years ago, I converted to Christianity. My parents, while they don't disapprove, are not too excited about it either. Over the past 2 years, my parents have grown significantly less religious and my brother has give up on religion altogether.

[Orangeduck]

However, I realized that didn't fully answer your question.

What is disagree with about islam, is that lost things I was told to believe were wrong. Mohammad was not foretold in the Bible. The quran, the Bible, and all books written before the printing press have been changed.

What caused me to convert to Christianity was the message and the historical basis for the belief. Christianity and Judiasm, whe neither can be proven form a theological stand point, both are historical sound and verifiable.

[TrueStranger]

Orangeduck welcome to the forum.

Did you leave Islam because you had unanswered questions? What made you leave Islam for Christianity?

[Perseveranze]

However, I realized that didn't fully answer your question.

What is disagree with about islam, is that lost things I was told to believe were wrong. Mohammad was not foretold in the Bible. The quran, the Bible, and all books written before the printing press have been changed.

What caused me to convert to Christianity was the message and the historical basis for the belief. Christianity and Judiasm, whe neither can be proven form a theological stand point, both are historical sound and verifiable.

Prove the Qur'ans been changed. This should be very interesting.

[Orangeduck]

Prove the Qur'ans been changed. This should be very interesting.

Are familiar with the sana quran (sometimes called the sana manuscripts)? Unless you get invited to see them, your only option is look at photo copies online.

It's the oldest quran inexistance. Not only is it considerably different from the ciaro version of the quran, but it also ends at sura 95. There are suras in the Ciaro version that are not in the sana version (such as sura 19, 20, 21 and 22).

I could go on all.

If you want proof from islam itself, all you have to do is read Bukhari (spelling might not be correct). He makes it very clear that parts of the quran were forgotten and that the quran had been re-written.

However, if you want historical proof, just look at any book written before the printing press. All of them have seems editions. There is no way to refute this

[TrueStranger]

Are familiar with the sana quran (sometimes called the sana manuscripts)? Unless you get invited to see them, your only option is look at photo copies online.

It's the oldest quran inexistance. Not only is it considerably different from the ciaro version of the quran, but it also ends at sura 95. There are suras in the Ciaro version that are not in the sana version (such as sura 19, 20, 21 and 22).

You're assuming that the Sanaa manuscripts were perfect? While the Uthmanic codex is not? You questioned the authenticity of the Qur'an and Islam on a Quranic manuscripts that was found in Yemen, while ignoring the one that the Companion of the Prophet (PBUH), and the third Rightly Guided Caliph of Islam compiled. Do you even know who wrote or complied the Sanaa Qu'ranic manuscripts?

[Ğħαrєєвαħ]

Hello. I am a recent convert from Islam to Christianity (2 years ago, so maybe not that recent)

I will be more than happy to answer any questions about Easter.

I will start with a few misconceptions:

1) Easter is based on a Jewish belief. It comes from the Jewish Passov2) Easter is NOT named from a Germanic goddess oaster (sometimes spelled ostara, and many other different spellings). The Germanic name didn't originate till the 7th century. Also the names only sound similar in English, which makes sense since English is a German In any other language, t
3) I will any any questions you might have

Greetings of peace Orangeduck,

Great name btw!

I have a question, what it was that caused/inspired you to accept christianity?

[Orangeduck]

You're assuming that the Sanaa manuscripts were perfect? While the Uthmanic codex is not? You questioned the authenticity of the Qur'an and Islam on a Quranic manuscripts that was found in Yemen, while ignoring the one that the Companion of the Prophet (PBUH), and the third Rightly Guided Caliph of Islam compiled. Do you even know who wrote or complied the Sanaa Qu'ranic manuscripts?

Here is something I learned very early on in my studies. I do not say this to offend. I say this because this is what historians and secular scholars say. The idea of a perfect quran is purely apologetical and not historical. Muslim apologestists say that the quran was memorized, but historians reject that idea. Muslim apologestists say that the quran was written down early in the life of Islam, and while scholars agree with this, the quran that was written down is not the quran of today.

The oldest quran (the older the more authentic and closer to the original) is just 1 of 4 major metropolitan codex copies, none of which were identical.

As I said before, I don't mean to offend, but this is what secular scholars say. I will always trust a scholar over an apologestist (and so should everyone else)

Here is something else to keep in mind. The quran, according to the hadiths, was spoken in several different dialects. The Hadith said to write the quran in the dialect of mohammd (I have no idea how to spell it). Here is the problem. Arabic, at that time didnt have vowels. It is linguistically impossible to tell 1 dialect apart from another in a written form without vowels.

[Orangeduck]

Greetings of peace Orangeduck,

Great name btw!

I have a question, what it was that caused/inspired you to accept christianity?

Hello my friend. Being a HUGE history buff, Christianity held a certain allure to me. The quran says that Christ didn't die in the cross, but historical records say He did. Being a history nut, I saw Christianity as a religion that had a historically sound and mostly verifiable foundation. This was very appealing to me.

If I didn't appreciate history as much as I do, I might not have every studied religion from a secular and historical point of view...and I might still be a muslim.

There is more than just the historical aspect, but that was probably the biggest influence. I never saw Christ in a dream where He spoke to me. None of the Saints ever appeared to me. I don't really have any grand conversion story. It's quite boring actually

[جوري]

Here is something I learned very early on in my studies. I do not say this to offend. I say this because this is what historians and secular scholars say. The idea of a perfect quran is purely apologetical and not historical. Muslim apologestists say that the quran was memorized, but historians reject that idea. Muslim apologestists say that the quran was written down early in the life of Islam, and while scholars agree with this, the quran that was written down is not the quran of today.

That's not what historians says however it is what orientalists says, and that has certainly been nipped in the bud by scholars!

Orientalists plot against the Qur'an under the guise of academic study and archive preservation

By Aisha Geissinger

In 1972, a 'paper grave' was found by labourers doing restoration work in the Great Mosque in Sana'a, Yemen. Between the mosque's inner and outer roofs was a collection of old parchment and paper documents, damaged books and individual pages. Centuries of rain and damp, and damage by insects and rats had made much of it unreadable. Qadhi Isma'il al-Akwa', then president of the Yemeni Antiquities Authority, thought that the find could be important, and tried to obtain the funds and expertise necessary to examine and preserve the documents. In 1979 he managed to interest a visiting German scholar in the documents, who in turn persuaded the German government to fund and organise their restoration.


The German government sent Gerd-R. Puin, a specialist in Arabic calligraphy and Qur'anic paleology, from Saarland University to supervise the project in 1981. Now, more than 15,000 documents have been cleaned and sorted, and lie in Yemen's House of Manuscripts. The documents include tens of thousands of fragments from almost one thousand different copies of the Qur'an. Some pieces may date back to the first and second centuries after the hijra, making them among the oldest surviving Qur'anic manuscripts. The Yemeni authorities do not want the fact that Orientalists are working on these documents to be widely known, fearing protest from concerned Muslims. So far, they have only allowed Puin and H.-C. Grant von Bothner, an Islamic art historian from the same university, to examine the documents closely.

To the excitement of Puin and von Bothner, some showed minor differences in wording and verse-order from Qur'ans in use today. Knowing that access to the documents could be prevented in future if Muslims realized the implications of their research, von Bothner took more than 35,000 pictures on microfilm of the texts. Now that the microfilm is safely in Germany, Orientalists are free to study the documents and publish their conclusions, and journalists, self-proclaimed reformers and other interested parties can also discuss the implications of the find without having to worry about jeopardizing Puin and von Bonther's research.


An article entitled What is the Koran? was published in the Atlantic Monthly in January 1999 about this restoration project. It clarifies its objectives: Puin wants to challenge the Muslim belief that the Qur'an is the unchanged word of God. Muslims, he says, have agreed with the textual critics of the Bible that the Bible has a history and "did not fall straight out of the sky", but have refused to accept that the Qur'an also has a history. He believes that the fragments found in Sana'a will prove that the Qur'an is "a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad" (p. 46). Andrew Rippin, professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary, Canada, claims that they show that the Qur'anic text "is less stable, and therefore has less authority, than has always been claimed" (p. 45).


The fact is that the existence of minor differences in wording and in the ordering of the surahs in the earliest masahif (manuscripts) is no surprise to Muslims familiar with classical Islamic scholarship of the Qur'an. Such variations occurred for several reasons. One factor is the dialectical differences then existing in different regions of Arabia. Another is that some of the Sahaba kiram (Companions) recorded such masahif for their own personal use. As these persons had either memorised the Qur'an in its entirety or large portions of it, such masahif were written merely as an aid to memory. Therefore, notes in the margins such as the wording of du'as (supplications) occurred, and the order of surahs varied. Books written by classical Muslim scholars, such as al-Suyuti's Itqan, go into great detail about such issues.


When the Khalifa 'Uthman ibn 'Affan ordered that one standard text be used and others destroyed, the Sahaba who possessed masahif containing variants did not object to this ruling, which shows that they agreed with his verdict. Moreover, in the subsequent civil war between the supporters of the Khalifa Ali ibn Abi-Talib and Mu'awiya, calls for arbitration according to the Qur'an never involved claims that the other side had an incomplete or changed Qur'an. This would have been a convenient and devastating weapon if it could have been at all convincing. Knowledge about these variations has been preserved by classical Muslim scholarship, and has been useful to scholars of tafsir (Qur'anic interpretation). It was never seen as evidence against the integrity of the Qur'anic text, however, and for this reason Orientalists have not succeeded in building a compelling argument upon it. Having their own documents to build speculations upon gives them much more room to manoeuvre, as they can define the terms and conditions of their research.


Studies of the texts are likely to achieve two main objectives. For Orientalists, the Sana'a fragments provide more material upon which to build conjectures about the 'evolution' of the Qur'anic text and events in early Islamic history. Would-be reformers will use the documents, or, more likely, Orientalists' conclusions about them, to undercut the authority of the classical scholars and contemporary ulama. The Atlantic Monthly indicates that some Orientalists and 'reformers' will work together on the project of reinterpreting the Qur'an: An Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, similar to Biblical encyclopedias written by textual critics, is being published to present the latest Orientalist approaches to Qur'anic interpretation. Nasr Abu-Zaid, who claims that the Qur'an can only be understood as a literary text, and was legally declared an apostate in Egypt in 1995, is on the advisory board.


Western study of the Qur'an and of Islam originated in missionary and military concerns. Modern 'specialists' in Islam have tried to distance themselves from this heritage and project their conclusions as secular, scientific and unbiased. However, the article reveals a persistent Biblical as well as secular bias These specialists seem blissfully unaware that Biblical criticism and their version of Qur'anic studies did not "fall out of the sky" either. These approaches to scripture are products of a particular historical, political and economic climate.


The Bible is the implicit model against which the Qur'an is measured. It is considered a "cocktail" because it does not present material in the chronological or thematic order typical of Biblical narratives. Secular biases in both Biblical and Qur'anic studies are revealed in hostility to divine revelation in any form: any text dealing with miraculous occurrences is deemed inauthentic. Also, the Biblical form of any narrative is considered to be the most authentic, because it is older, while the idea that the Qur'an, as the latest revelation, could be correct in its different accounts of events is dismissed. The limitations of the purveyors of this 'unbiased' and 'scientific' study of the Qur'an are arrogantly imposed on the sacred text itself. Puin claims that one-fifth of the Qur'an is incomprehensible, apparently because he himself cannot understand it. Fourteen hundred years of Muslim scholarship, devotion and art issuing forth from the Qur'an are seen as carrying less weight than the opinions of a handful of non-Muslims who cannot even claim native fluency in classical Arabic.


The fact that the preservation of Qur'anic documents is left in the hands of such people is a tragedy that reflects the impotence and lack of faith of the Muslim Ummah. It brings to mind the ahadith which describe the disappearance of the Qur'an from the masahif and the memories of people which will occur in the Last Days. The openly political agenda of these Orientalists is evident; once the Muslims' confidence in the authenticity of the Qur'an is undermined, Islam will have no social or political authority. Muslims will no longer be able to claim to know what the divine will is on issues ranging from the implementation of Islamic laws to the liberation of al-Quds (Jerusalem).

Convenient solutions, based on the realities of the political and economic domination of the west, will be imposed upon them with utter impunity.

Muslimedia: May 16-31, 1999

Variant Korans-

The oldest quran (the older the more authentic and closer to the original) is just 1 of 4 major metropolitan codex copies, none of which were identical.

As I said before, I don't mean to offend, but this is what secular scholars say. I will always trust a scholar over an apologestist (and so should everyone else)

You only offend yourself and also come across with a poor performance for if you apply a sliver of that so called study toward Christianity then you wouldn't be christian at all would you?

Here is something else to keep in mind. The quran, according to the hadiths, was spoken in several different dialects. The Hadith said to write the quran in the dialect of mohammd (I have no idea how to spell it). Here is the problem. Arabic, at that time didnt have vowels. It is linguistically impossible to tell 1 dialect apart from another in a written form without vowels.

This is utter nonsense. If you have something of substance to impart or evince then why not bring us a before and after? I can do that with the bible(s) can you produce variations within the Quran?

Here's the deal, Islam is the fastest growing religion and I understand that has to be a terrible slap in the face to a medieval religion that's pretty much still struggling to rid itself of its illogical tenets. I guess the best bet for a dissimulator such as your person is to search through orientalist rubbish for a strawman with which you plainly can only convince like minded impostors. I guarantee that no Muslim no matter how weak in faith would choose christianity over Islam. I can see them becoming atheists or even agnostics but no one would choose a reasoned religion for an incongruous and absurd ideology and then come and speak of vowels.
The noble Quran to begin with is an oral tradition. Much as the OT with the difference is as the Quran is being used 17 times memorized and written down since its inception the OT was written a thousand years after the matter and only after it was lost, I am not going to even touch upon the bible(s) so how about you cut the crap?

I had taken a leave of absence from the forum, but I can't pass a chance to expose a hypocrite!

best,

[CosmicPathos]

I've been given one lec by Aisha geissinger. Interesting lady, my friend wanted to record her, went upto the podium to put the recorder and she said "please do not record me" to which my friend said in a weird funny way "ooh yea?" To this day we make fun of him. I digress.

Orangeduck: you cannot even spell Muhammad or any other Islamic names properly, and you claim to be a history buff? lol.

[جوري]

Hello my friend. Being a HUGE history buff, Christianity held a certain allure to me. The quran says that Christ didn't die in the cross, but historical records say He did. Being a history nut, I saw Christianity as a religion that had a historically sound and mostly verifiable foundation. This was very appealing to me.

You're indeed a huge something I'll give you that..
Which verifiable account is that?
Let's watch together shall we?

If I didn't appreciate history as much as I do, I might not have every studied religion from a secular and historical point of view...and I might still be a muslim.

oh ok!

There is more than just the historical aspect, but that was probably the biggest influence. I never saw Christ in a dream where He spoke to me. None of the Saints ever appeared to me. I don't really have any grand conversion story. It's quite boring actually

innit? all that was needed is that Jesus would appear to Saul a disciple who was never actually chosen by Jesus, for let's face it the actual disciples Jesus apparently chose like for instance 'peter the rock' had forsaken him three times.. that's of course before Jesus took to Gethsemane in a last ditch effort to pray to himself to not immolate, yet he forsook himself anyway, died somewhere in Bethlehem leaving the universe behind while he tries to resurrect himself.. and then he decided after his death that he didn't do a good job so he appears to his nemesis to abrogate his own commandments. A god who can't even makeup his mind whether he's ruthless or loving and apparently couldn't do it while alive so he appears after death to a self-appointed apostle..
but hey you're a history buff and a former Muslim

[جوري]

as is said by the predecessors -- Show me your degree in Uloom Al-Qur'an. (oh history buff)

Rather the Qur'an was memorized by every Muslim at the time of the Prophet saws, and preserved in mutawaatir chains.
Memorization
‘In the ancient times, when writing was scarcely used, memory and oral transmission was exercised and strengthened to a degree now almost unknown’ relates Michael Zwettler.(1)
Prophet Muhammad (S): The First Memorizer
It was in this ‘oral’ society that Prophet Muhammad (S) was born in Mecca in the year 570 C.E. At the age of 40, he started receiving divine Revelations from the One God, Allah, through Archangel Gabriel. This process of divine revelations continued for about 22.5 years just before he passed away.
Prophet Muhammad (S) miraculously memorized each revelation and used to proclaim it to his Companions. Angel Gabriel used to refresh the Quranic memory of the Prophet each year.
‘The Prophet (S) was the most generous person, and he used to become more so (generous) particularly in the month of Ramadan because Gabriel used to meet him every night of the month of Ramadan till it elapsed. Allah’s Messenger (S) use to recite the Qur’an for him. When Gabriel met him, he use to become more generous than the fast wind in doing good’. (2)

‘Gabriel used to repeat the recitation of the Qur’an with the Prophet (S) once a year, but he repeated it twice with him in the year he (Prophet) died’. (3)

The Prophet himself use to stay up a greater part of the night in prayers and use to recite Quran from memory.
Companions of the Prophet: The First Generation Memorizers
Prophet Muhammad (S) encouraged his companions to learn and teach the Quran:
‘The most superior among you (Muslims) are those who learn the Qur’an and teach it’. (4)

‘Some of the companions who memorized the Quran were: ‘Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, Ali, Ibn Masud, Abu Huraira, Abdullah bin Abbas, Abdullah bin Amr bin al-As, Aisha, Hafsa, and Umm Salama’. (5)

‘Abu Bakr, the first male Muslim to convert to Islam used to recite the Quran publicly in front of his house in Makka’. (6)

The Prophet also listened to the recitation of the Qur’an by the Companions: ‘Allah Apostle said to me (Abdullah bin Mas’ud): "Recite (of the Quran) to me". I said: "Shall I recite it to you although it had been revealed to you?!" He Said: "I like to hear (the Quran) from others". So I recited Sura-an-Nisa’ till I reached: "How (will it be) then when We bring from each nation a witness and We bring you (O Muhammad) as a witness against these people?"’ (4:41) ‘Then he said: "Stop!" Behold, his eyes were shedding tears then’. (7)

Many Quranic memorizers (Qurra) were present during the lifetime of the Prophet and afterwards through out the then Muslim world.
‘At the battle of Yamama, many memorizers of the Quran were martyred. ‘Narrated Zaid bin Thabit al Ansari, who was one of those who use to write the Divine Revelations: Abu Bakr sent me after the (heavy) casualties among the warriors (of the battle) of Yamama (where a great number of Qurra were killed). Umar was present with Abu Bakr who said: "Umar has come to me and said, the people have suffered heavy casualties on the day of (the battle of) Yamama, and I am afraid that there will be some casualties among the Qurra (those who memorized the entire Quran) at other place…"’ (8)

‘Over the centuries of the Islamic Era, there have arisen throughout the various regions of the Islamic world literally thousands of schools devoted specially to the teaching of the Quran to children for the purpose of memorization. These are called, in Arabic, katatib (singular: Kuttab). It is said that the Caliph ‘Umar (634-44) first ordered the construction of these schools in the age of the great expansion’. (9)

Second Generation Memorizers
"…Quranic schools were set up everywhere. As an example to illustrate this I may refer to a great Muslim scholar, of the second Muslim generation, Ibn ‘Amir, who was the judge of Damascus under the Caliph Umar Ibn ‘Abd Al-Aziz. It is reported that in his school for teaching the Quran there were 400 disciples to teach in his absence". (10)

Memorizers in Subsequent Generations
The Number of Katatib and similar schools in Cairo (Egypt) alone at one time exceeded two thousand. (11)
Currently both in the Muslim and non-Muslim countries thousands of schools with each instructing tens of hundreds of students the art of memorizing the entire Quran. In the city of Chicago itself, there are close to 40+ Mosques, with many of them holding class for children instructing them the art of Quranic memorization.
Further Points of Consideration
- Muslims recite Quran from their memory in all of their five daily prayers.
- Once a year, during the month of Fasting (Ramadan), Muslims listen to the complete recitation of the Quran by a Hafiz (memorizer of the entire Quran)
- It’s a tradition among Muslims that before any speech or presentation, marriages, sermons, Quran is recited.
Conclusion
Quran is the only book, religious or secular, on the face of this planet that has been completely memorized by millions. These memorizers range from ages 6 and up, both Arabic and non-Arabic speakers, blacks, whites, Orientals, poor and wealthy.
Thus the process of memorization was continuous, from Prophet Muhammad’s (S) time to ours with an unbroken chain.
"The method of transmitting the Quran from one generation to the next by having he young memorize the oral recitation of their elders had mitigated somewhat from the beginning the worst perils of relying solely on written records…" relates John Burton (12)

"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 hifz (Quranic Memorization) has made the Qur’an 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" reflects Kenneth Cragg (13)
Variant Korans-

[CosmicPathos]

Your brother is smarter than you, dude.

[جوري]

Are familiar with the sana quran (sometimes called the sana manuscripts)? Unless you get invited to see them, your only option is look at photo copies online.

Question is are you? You'd be better off doing some research before you write with gusto on an Islamic board. You need more training at the indoctrination camp oh history buff!

Due to the benefit it contains, I’ve been wanting to post Professor Muhammad Mustafâ al-A’zamî’s introduction to his book titled The History of The Qur’ānic Text from Revelation to Compilation: A Comparative Study with the Old and New Testaments for some time now, but never really had the time to sit down and transcribe it until now. Allah willing the visitors to my blog will benefit greatly from what the Professor mentions in it. He touches on some very pertinent issues concerning revisionist thought in Islam, as well as some things concerning the famous Yemeni parchments so often mentioned on various websites about Islam (both hostile and friendly). Enjoy … . Prof. al-A’zamî writes,

يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ كُونُواْ قَوَّامِينَ للهِ شُهَدَآءَ بِالْقِسْطِ وَلاَ يَجْرِمَنَّكُم شَنَئَانُ قَومٍ عَلَى أَلاَّ تَعْدِلُواْ اعْدِلُواْ هُوَ أَقْرَبُ لِلتَّقْوَى وَاتَّقُواْ اللهَ إنَّ اللهَ خَبِيرٌ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ

“O you who believe! Stand out firmly for Allāh, as witnesses to fair dealing, and let not the hatred of others to make you swerve towards inequity and depart from justice. Be just: that is closer to Piety: and fear Allāh, for Allāh is well-aquinted with all that you do.”[1]

Guidance, comfort and beauty. For the believing Muslim the Holy Qur’ān is all this and much more: the heartbeat of faith, a remembrance in times of joy and anguish, a fountain of precise scientific reality and the most exquisite lyricism, a treasury of wisdom and supplications. Its verses hang from the walls of shops and living rooms, lie etched in the minds of young and old, and reverberate through the night from minarets across the globe. Even so, Sir William Muir (1819-1905) adamantly declared it one of the “most stubborn enemies of Civilisation, Liberty, and the Truth which the World has yet known”.[2] Others have been no more charitable, seeing fit to heap abuse or cast suspicion upon it throughout the centuries and up to our present day, among them scholars, missionaries, and now even the occasional politician. Such a dichotomy is aggravating to Muslims and certainly perplexing to the non-Muslim, who would be well justified in supposing that each group was alluding to a different book altogether. What are the facts and what is the evidence? Faced with such an immense and sensitive topic brimming with ideas to consider, I could have begun my exploration anywhere; the starting point, as it finally turned out, was to be an article by someone I had never heard of before.

“What is the Koran?”, the lead article of the January 1999 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, raised many issues concerning the origins and integrity of the Qur’ān.[3] The author’s credentials, a certain Toby Lester, are given in the magazine and suggest that he does not have any knowledge of Islam aside from having lived in Yemen and Palestine for a few years, though this hardly seems to hinder him for he delves headlong into controversy. He mentions that:

Western Koranic scholarship has traditionally taken place in the context of an openly declared hostility between Christianity and Islam…. The Koran has seemed, for Christian and Jewish scholars particularly, to possess an aura of heresy….[4]

After citing William Muir’s denunciation of the Qur’ān he states that even early Soviet scholars subjected Islam to their ideological biases: N.A. Morozov for instance flamboyantly argued that “until the Crusades Islam was indistinguishable from Judaism and … only then did it receive its independent character, while Muhammad and the first Caliphs are mythical figures”.[5]
Such passages may suggest to some that Lester’s approach is purely academic: a curious reporter filing an objective report. In an interview with the ash-Sharq al-Awsat Daily[6] he denies any bad intentions, hard feelings, or wrongdoing towards Muslims, insisting that he sought only the truth. But there is no doubt that he has taken pains to collect his information strictly from the anti-traditionalist camp, heralding the arrival of secular reinterpretations of the Muslim Holy Book. He extensively quotes Dr. Gerd R. Joseph Puin, associated with the restoration of old Qur’ānic fragments in San’ā’, Yemen (which I have seen recently, and for which he and his team deserve great gratitude). Now a bookbinder who completes a magnificent binding of a complex mathematical text will not automatically ascend to the rank of mathematician, but because of his restoration of the pages of old manuscripts, Puin is fashioned into a world-authority on the Qur’ān’s entire history.

“So many Muslims have this belief that everything between the two covers of the Koran is God’s unaltered word,” [Dr. Puin] says. “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 San’ā’ fragments will help us to do this.”[7]

Lester’s next point of reference is Andrew Rippin, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary, who states that:

“Variant readings and verse orders are all very significant. Everybody agrees on that. These manuscripts say that the early history of the Koranic text is much more of an open question than many have suspected: the text was less stable, and therefore had less authority, than has always been claimed.”[8]

Personally I find Prof. Rippin’s comments baffling; on the one hand variant readings (or rather, multiple readings) have been recognised and commented on by Muslim scholars since the time of the Prophet. By no means are they a new discovery. On the other hand not even Puin (as far as I am aware) claims to have uncovered differences in the order of the verses in his manuscripts, though his views on the Qur’ān are in line with modern revisionism.

“My idea is that the Koran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of Muhammad,” [Puin] says. “Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. Even within the Islamic traditions there is a huge body of contradictory information, including a significant Christian substrate; one can derive a whole Islamic anti-history from them if one wants.” Patricia Crone defends the goals of this sort of thinking. “The Koran is a scripture with a history like any other – except that we don’t know this history and tend to provoke howls of protest when we study it.”[9]

Arabic speakers have long held the Qur’ān as a Book of unique beauty; even the idol-worshippers of Makkah were spellbound by its lyricism and failed to produce anything resembling it.[10] Such qualities do not deter Puin from speaking disdainfully about it.

“The Koran claims for itself that it is ‘mubeen’, or ‘clear’“ he says, “But if you look at it, you will notice that every fifth sentence or so simply doesn’t make sense. Many Muslims – and Orientalists – will tell you otherwise, of course, but the fact is that a fifth of the Koranic text is just incomprehensible.”[11]

G.R. Puin strings many words together but provides no examples, which is unfortunate because I have absolutely no idea where this incomprehensible fifth of the Qur’ān happens to be. Lester then states that the unwillingness to accept the conventional understanding of the Qur’ān only began in earnest in the 20th century;[12] he references Patricia Crone, quotes R.S. Humphreys,[13] and ends up at Wansbrough. The main thrust of Wansbrough’s work is to establish two major points: firstly, that the Qur’ān and hadīth were generated by various communities over the course of two centuries; and second, that Islamic doctrine was modelled on Rabbinical Jewish prototypes. Puin is apparently re-reading his works now, for his theories have been germinating slowly in certain circles even though “many Muslims understandably find them deeply offensive.”[14] Readers have known Cook, Crone and Wansbrough for a quarter of a century, but the new face to emerge from this piece is Dr. Puin, whose findings form the backbone of Lester’s lengthy article. Some of the Yemeni parchments, dating back to the first two centuries of Islam,

[reveal] small but intruiging aberrations from the standard Koranic text. Such aberrations, though not surprising to textual historians, are troublingly at odds with the orthodox Muslim belief that the Koran as it has reached us today is quite simply the perfect, timeless, and unchanging Word of God. The mainly secular effort to reinterpret the Koran – in part based on textual evidence such as that provided by the Yemeni fragments[15] – is disturbing and offensive to many Muslims, just as attempts to reinterpret the Bible and the life of Jesus are disturbing and offensive to many conservative Christians…. [Such secular reinterpretation] can be nonetheless very powerful and – as the histories of the Renaissance and the Reformation demonstrate – can lead to major social change. The Koran, after all, is currently the world’s most ideologically influential text.[16]

So the entire matter lies before us:

• The Qur’ān is currently the world’s most ideologically influential text.
• Many Muslims look to the Qur’ān as the Christians once did to the Bible, as God’s unaltered Word.
• The Yemeni fragments will help secular efforts to reinterpret the Qur’ān.
• Though offensive to countless Muslims, this reinterpretation can provide the impetus for major social changes that mirror what Christianity experienced centuries ago.
• These changes may be brought about by ‘showing’ that the Qur’ān was initially a text, one which the Muslim community contributed to and freely rearranged over several centuries, implying that the Qur’ān was not as sacred then as it has now misguidedly become.

The majority of Lester’s references, those quoted or mentioned in his piece, are non-Muslim: Gerd-R. Joseph Puin, Bothmer, Rippin, R. Stephen Humphreys, Gunter Luling, Yehuda D. Nevo, Patricia Crone, Michael Cook, James Bellamy, William Muir, Lambton, Tolstov, Morozov and Wansbrough. He also spreads the glad tiding that, within the Islamic world, revisionism is on the move. In this category he names Nasr Abū Zaid, Tāha Husain, ‘Alī Dushtī, Muhammad Abdu, Ahmad Amīn, Fazlur-Rahmān, and finally Muhammad Arkoun and his fervent advice to battle othodoxy from within.[17] Scholars from the traditional school of Islamic thought are largely cast aside and ignored, with only Muhammad Abdu’s contraversial name being included.
But what is the revisionist school? Lester fails to define it clearly, so I will allow Yehuda Nevo, one of the authorities he quotes, to supply the definition:

The ‘revisionist’ approach is by no means monolithic… [but they] are united in denying historical validity to accounts based purely on ‘facts’ derived from the Muslim literary sources… The information they provide must be corroborated by the ‘hard facts’ of material remains… [The written sources] should always be checked against external evidence, and where the two conflict, the latter should be preferred.[18]

Because external evidence must necessarily be found to verify every Muslim account, absence of such corroboration helps to negate the account and implies that the event never took place.

That there is no evidence for it outside of the ‘traditional account’ thus becomes positive evidence in support of the hypothesis that it did not happen. A striking example is the lack of evidence, outside the Muslim literature, for the view that the Arabs were Muslim at the time of the Conquest.[19]

The outcome of this revisionist approach is a complete erasure of Islamic history, and the fabrication of another in which such events as the pre-Islamic presence of paganism in Makkah, the Jewish settlements near Madinah, and the Muslim victory over the Byzantine Empire in Syria are absolutely denied. In fact, revisionism agrues that the paganism which afflicted Makkah prior to Islam is simply a fictitious back-projection of a pagan culture that thrived in southern Palestine.[20]
The central point, which must be made clear, is that there is a definite motive behind all these ‘discoveries’. Such findings do not exist in a vacuum or fall unexpectedly into the scholar’s lap; they are the brainchild of a particular ideological and political arena, served up in the guise of breakthrough academic research.[21]
Attempts to distort Islam and its sacred texts are in fact as old as the religion itself, though the strategy behind these efforts has fluctuated according to the intended goal. Beginning with the rise of Islam and up until the 13th century A.H. (7th-18th century C.E.), the first objective was to establish a protective fence around Christians to counteract the rapid advance of the new faith in Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Libya etc. Among the notables of this period were John of Damascus (35-133 A.H./675-750 C.E.), Peter the Venerable (1084-1156 C.E.), Robert of Ketton, Raymond Lull (1235-1316 C.E.), Martin Luther (1483-1546 C.E.) and Ludovico Marraci (1612-1700 C.E.), their pens dipped in unsophisticated yet wilful ignorance and falsehood. Spurred by the change in political fortunes and the start of colonialism from the 18th century onwards, the second phase of attack witnessed a shift in posture from defensive to offensive, aspiring to the mass conversion of Muslims or, at the least, of shattering any pride and resistance that emanated from their belief in Allāh.
Abraham Geiger (1810-1874) belongs squarely to this second period; his 1833 dissertation, Was hat Mohammed aus den Judentum aufgenommen? (“What did Mohammed take from Judaism?”), inaugurated the search for ulterior influences on the Qur’ān and lead to innumerable books and articles aimed at branding it a poor biblical counterfeit, replete with mistakes.
Future chapters will bring to light other names which have spearheaded this second phase, including Nöldeke (1836-1930), Goldziher (1850-1921), Hurgronje (1857-1936), Bergsträsser (1886-1933), Tisdall (1859-1928), Jeffery (d. 1952) and Schacht (1902-1969). A third phase, beginning in the mid 20th century on the heels of the founding of Israel, has actively sought to purge all verses that cast an unfavourable light on Jews. Among the followers of this school are Rippin, Crone, Power, Calder and not least of all Wansbrough, whose theory, that the Qur’ān and hadīth are a community product spanning two centuries which were then fictitiously attributed to an Arabian prophet based on Jewish prototypes, is doubtlessly the most radical approach to ousting the Qur’ān from its hallowed status.
The previous decades have witnessed a quickened maturation of these last two phases, swelling in multi-faceted ways; a fairly recent scheme for assailing the Qur’ān has been its reduction to a cultural text, one which is a by-product of a particular era and is therefore obsolete, rather than a Book that is meant for all nations at all times.

Traditional Islam had not been resistant to the notion that the revelation reflected the milieu in which it was revealed… But traditional Islam could never have made the leap from the idea of a scripture which engages the society in which it was revealed to the notion of one which is a product of it. For most Muslims in the modern world any significant move in this direction is still hardly an option, and it is unlikely to become one in the near foreseeable future.[22]

This was the inspiration for Nasr Abū Zaid (declared an apostate by Egypt’s highest court and according to Cook, a ‘Muslim secularist’[23]), whose central belief about the Qur’ān was that,

If the text was a message sent to the Arabs of the seventh century, then of necessity it was formulated in a manner which took for granted historically specific aspects of their language and culture. The Koran thus took shape in a human setting. It was a ‘cultural product’ – a phrase Abu Zayd used seveal times, and which was highlighted by the Court of Cassation when it determined him to be an unbeliever.[24]

Approaching the Qur’ān from a textual view point appears benign enough to the uninitiated; how insiduous could concepts such as ‘semantics’ and ‘textual linguistics’ be? But the focus is not a study of the text itself so much as it is a study of the evolution of the text, of how forms and structures within the Qur’ān can be derived from 7th/8th century Arabic literature.[25] This essentially leads to a thorough secularisation and desanctification of the text. Speaking of the Biblical scholar Van Buren, Professor E.L. Mascall states that “[he] finds the guiding principle of the secularization of Christianity in the philosophical school which is commonly known as linguistic analysis.”[26] If such is the aim of linguistic analysis in Biblical studies, what other motive can there be in applying it to the Qur’ān?
This being outside the realm of what is tolerable to Muslims, an alternate strategy is to substitute the holy text with vernacular translations, then inflate their status such that they are held on par with the original Arabic. In this way Muslim societies, three-quarters of which are non-Arab, can be severed from the actual revelations of Allāh.

There is necessarily a mismatch between the Arabic of the Koran and the local language of primary education… The tension is exacerbated by the fact that modernity brings an enhanced concern for the intelligibility of scriptures among the believers at large. As the Turkish nationalist Ziya Gökalp (d. 1924) put it: “A country in whose schools the Koran is read in Turkish is one in which everyone, child and adult, knows God’s commands”.[27]

After describing the futile Turkish efforts to displace the actual Qur’ān with a Turkish translation, Michael Cook concludes,

To date, the non-Arab Muslim world shows little sign of adopting the idea of a vernacular scripture in the manner of sixteenth-century Protestantism or twentieth-century Catholicism.[28]

If all other strategems are left in tatters, one last resort remains. As described by Cook:

In a modern Western society it is more or less axiomatic that other people’s religious beliefs (though not, of course, all forms of religiously motivated behaviour) are to be tolerated, or perhaps even respected. Indeed it would be considered ill mannered and parochial to refer to the religious views of others as false and one’s own as true… the very notion of absolute truth in matters of religion sounds hopelessly out of date. It is, however, a notion that was central to traditional Islam, as it was to traditional Christianity; and in recent centuries it has survived better in Islam.[29]

Cook writes this under the heading “Tolerating the beliefs of others”, but what he expounds instead is universalism. Imbued with tolerance, Islam maintains clear and firm injunctions governing the rights of non-Muslims; this is well known. Cook’s thrust here is instead about doubt and relativism: the notion that all religions are equally valid because to think otherwise is to betray oneself as provincial and ignorant. This, sadly, is an easier pitfall for many contemporary, ill-educated Muslims. And as a corollary to this idea, “There [is] a nearly unanimous rejection of any attempt to distinguish between non-Muslim and a Muslim scholarship in present-day Qur’ānic studies.”[30]
A rising chorus of Western scholars now come forward to assail the traditional tafsīr literature,[31] demanding something altogether new. Arguing for the exclusive right to interpret the holy text, many Orientalists dismiss earlier Muslim writings on this topic “on the grounds that Muslims – being dupes, as it were, of the notion that [the Qur’ān] was Scripture – of course could not understand the text so well as could a Western scholar free from that limitation”.[32] Basetti-Sani and Youakim Moubarac both insist that tafsīr be made compatible with ‘Christian truth’, a sentiment endorsed by W.C. Smith and Kenneth Cragg.[33] This last, an Anglican bishop, urges Muslims to scrap the verses revealed in Madinah (with their emphasis on the political and legal aspects of Islam) in favour of their Makkan counterparts, which are generally more involved with basic issues of monotheism, leaving precious little of the religion intact aside from the verbal pronouncement that there is no god except Allāh.[34]
All these concepts are meant to shake the already-slender faith of wary Muslims, arming them with Orientalist barbs and setting them out to queistion and dismiss the very Book which they have inherited, in the process becoming more susceptable to Western ideology. Toby Lester’s article is just another card in this deck, and the tales behind the Yemeni fragments simply another bait. Dr. Puin himself has in fact denied all of the findings Lester ascribes to him, with the exception of occasionall differences in the spelling of some words. Here is a part of Puin’s original letter – which he wrote to al-Qādī Ismā’īl al-Akwa’ shortly after Lester’s article – with its translation.[35]
[Rasheed: Here al-A’zamî included a photocopy of the hand-written letter from Puin to al-Akwa’. I will just be presenting the Arabic text of that letter, rather than the image of the photocopy.]

المهم والحمد لله لا تختلف المصاحف الصنعانية عن غيرها في متاحف العالم ودور كتبه إلا في تفاصيل لا تمسّ القرآن كنصّ مقروء وإنما الاختلاف في الكتابة فقط. هذه الظاهرة معروفة حتى من القرآن المطبوع في القاهرة حيث ورد كتابة
ابرهيم على جانب ابرهم
قران [على جانب] قرن
سيماهم [على جانب] بسيمهم على جانب بسيمهما
لخ
اما في اقدم المصاحف الصنعانية فتكثر ظاهرة حذف الالفات مثلا.

The important thing, thank God, is that these Yemeni Qur’ānic fragments do not differ from those found in the museums and libraries elsewhere, with the exception of details that do not touch the Qur’ān itself, but are rather differences in the way words are spelled. This phenomenon is well-known, even in the Qur’ān published in Cairo in which is written:

Ibrhīm (ابرهيم) next to Ibrhm (ابرهم)
Qurān (قران) next to Qrn (قرن)
Sīmāhum (سيماهم) next to Sīmhum (سيمهم) etc.
In the oldest Yemeni Qur’ānic fragments, for example, the phenomenon of not writing the vowel alif is rather common.

This deflates the entire controversy, dusting away the webs of intrigue that were spun around Puin’s discoveries and making them a topic unworthy of further speculation.[36] But let us suppose for the sake of argument that the findings are indeed true; what then is our response? Here we face three questions:

1. What is the Qur’ān?
2. If any complete or partial manuscripts are uncovered at present or in the future, claiming to be Qur’ān but differing from what we now have in our hands, what impact would this have on the Qur’ānic text?
3. Finally, who is entitled to be an authority on the Qur’ān? Or in general terms, to write about Islam and all its religious and historical facets?

These will be pondered over the course of this work, to reveal not only the following answers but also the logic which stipulates them:

1. The Qur’ān is the very Word of Allāh, His final message to all humanity, revealed to His final messenger Muhammad and transcending all limitations of time and space. it is preserved in its original tongue without any amendments, additions or deletions.
2. There will never be a discovery of a Qur’ān, fragmental or whole, which differs from the consensus text circulating throughout the world. If it does differ then it cannot be regarded as Qur’ān, because one of the foremost conditions for accepting anything as such is that it conforms to the text used in ‘Uthmān’s Mushaf.[37]
3. Certainly anyone can write on Islam, but only a devout Muslim has the legitimate prerogative to write on Islamic and its related subjects. Some may consider this biased, but then who is not? Non-followers cannot claim neutrality, for writings swerve depending on whether Islam’s tenets agree or disagree with their personal beliefs, and so any attempts at interpretation from Christians, Jews, atheists, or non-practicing Muslims must be unequivocally discarded. I may add that if any proffered viewpoint clashes with the Prophet’s own guidelines, either explicitly or otherwise, it becomes objectionable; in this light even the writings of devout Muslims may be rejected if they lack merit. This selectivity lies at the very heart of Ibn Sīrīn’s golden rule (d. 110 A.H./728 C.E.):

إن هذا العلم دين فانظروا عمّن تأخذون دينكم

This knowledge constitutes your deen (religion), so be wary of whom you take your religion from.[38]

Some may argue that Muslims do not have any sound arguments with which to counteract non-Muslim scholarship, that for them the case is based entirely on faith and not on reason. I will therefore bring forward my arguments against their findings in future chapters, though I will first begin by recountering some passages from early Islamic history as a prelude to an in-depth look at the Qur’ān.
————————————————� �—————————-
Endnotes:
[1] Qur’ān, 5:8.
[2] Quoted in M. Broomhall, Islam in China, New Impression, London, 19878, p. 2.
[3] Cited thereafter as Lester. Also, though this article spells the Qur’ān as ‘Koran’, this is technically incorrect and I will utilise the proper spelling wherever I am not directly quoting.
[4] Lester, p. 46.
[5] ibid, pp. 46-7.
[6] London, 18 February 1999.
[7] Lester, p. 44. Italics added.
[8] ibid, p. 45. Italics added. It must be noted that all these damaging judgements have been passed even before anyone has thoroughly studied these manuscripts. Such is often the nature of Orientalist scholarship.
[9] ibid, p. 46.
[10] See this work pp. 48-50.
[11] Lester, p. 54.
[12] ibid, p. 54.
[13] ibid, p. 55.
[14] ibid, p. 55.
[15] Just for the record: in my assessment Türk ve Islam Eserleri Müzesi (Museum of Islamic Art) in Istanbul may house an even greater collection than that in Yemen. Unfortunately I was denied access to this collection, so this notion must remain speculative, though according to F. Déroche it houses about 210,000 folios [“The Qur’ān of Amāgūr”, Mansuscripts of the Middle East, Leiden, 1990-91, vol. 5, p. 59].
[16] Lester, p. 44. Italics added.
[17] ibid, p. 56.
[18] J. Koren and Y.D. Nevo, “Methodological Approaches to islamic Studies”, Des Islam, Band 68, Heft 1, 1991, pp. 89-90.
[19] ibid, pp. 92.
[20] ibid, pp. 100-102. See also this work pp. 337-8.
[21] For more on this essential topic, refer to Chapter 19.
[22] Michael Cook, The Koran: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford Univ. Press, 2000, p. 44.
[23] ibid, p. 46.
[24] ibid, p. 46. Italics added.
[25] For details, refer to Stefan Wild’s (ed.) Preface to The Qur’an as Text, E.J. Brill, Leiden, 1996, p. vii-xi.
[26] E.L. Mascall, The Secularization of Christianity, Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd., London, 1965, p. 41.Dr. Paul M. Van Buren is the author of “The Secular Meaning of the Gospel”, which is based on the analysis of Biblical language [ibid, p.41.]
[27] M. Cook, The Koran: A Very Short Introduction, p. 26. Interestingly Ziya Gökalp was a Donma Jew who converted to islam [M. Qutb, al-Mustashriqūn wa al-Islam, p. 198].
[28] M. Cook, The Koran: A Very Short Introduction, p. 27.
[29] ibid, p. 33, emphasis added. Cook’s words ‘that was central to traditional Islam’, seem to imply that it is no longer appropriate for modern Islam.
[30] Stefan Wild (ed.), The Qur’an as Text, p. x. The original contains ‘was’ instead of ‘is’, but changing the tense seems valid given that nothing else has changed. In fact, Muslim scholarship concerning the Qur’ān is generally relegated to second-class status in Western circles, since the former espouses tranditionalism while the latter seeks revisionism.
[31] Exegesis of the Qur’ān.
[32] W.C. Smith, “The True Meaning of Scripture”, IJMES, vol. 11 (1980), p. 498.
[33] Peter Ford, “The Qur’ān as Sacred Scripture”, Muslim World, vol. lxxxiii, no. 2, April 1993, pp. 151-53.
[34] A. Saeed, “Rethinking ‘Revelation’ as a Precondition for Reinterpreting the Qur’an: A Qur’anic Perspective”, JQS, i:93-114.
[35] For the Arabic text of his complete letter, see the Yemeni newspaper, ath-Thawra, issue 24.11.1419 A.H./11.3.1999.
[36] I will cover Puin’s discoveries and claims in pp. 314-8.
[37] i.e., the skeleton of the text which may show some variations in vowel writing, see further Chapters 9, 10 and 11. We must nevertheless take into consideration that there are over 250,000 manuscripts of the Qur’ān scattered all over the globe [see p. 316 note 38]. When comparing them it is always possible to find copying mistakes here and there; this is an example of the human fallibility, and has been recognised as such by authors who have written extensively on the subject of “unintentional errors.” Such occurrences cannot be used to prove any corruption (تحريف) within the Qur’ān.
[38] In fact Ibn Hibbān has credited this saying to other scholars as well, e.g. Abū Huraira (d. 58 A.H.), Ibrāhīm an-Nakha’ī (d. 96 A.H.), ad-Dahhāk b. al-Muzāhim (d. circa 100 A.H.), al-Hasan al-Basrī (d. 110 A.H.) and Zaid b. Aslam (d. 136 A.H.). [Ibn Hibbān, al-Majrūhūn, i.21-23].

http://rasheedgonzales.wordpress.com...-quranic-text/


best,

[TrueStranger]

Here is something I learned very early on in my studies. I do not say this to offend. I say this because this is what historians and secular scholars say. The idea of a perfect quran is purely apologetical and not historical. Muslim apologestists say that the quran was memorized, but historians reject that idea. Muslim apologestists say that the quran was written down early in the life of Islam, and while scholars agree with this, the quran that was written down is not the quran of today.

The oldest quran (the older the more authentic and closer to the original) is just 1 of 4 major metropolitan codex copies, none of which were identical.

As I said before, I don't mean to offend, but this is what secular scholars say. I will always trust a scholar over an apologestist (and so should everyone else)

Here is something else to keep in mind. The quran, according to the hadiths, was spoken in several different dialects. The Hadith said to write the quran in the dialect of mohammd (I have no idea how to spell it). Here is the problem. Arabic, at that time didnt have vowels. It is linguistically impossible to tell 1 dialect apart from another in a written form without vowels.

A former Muslim, who supposedly does not know how to spell the Prophet's (PBUH) name?

I suggest you do a little bit more reading, one that is holistic in nature, and not just listen to some "His"-torians.

The evangelists got to you easily.

[جوري]

The evangelists got to you easily.

I very much doubt he is who he professes.

5) always fast durring islamic holidays

Apparently can't name those either..

One can't seem to take a hiatus from the devil within and without..

[TrueStranger]

I very much doubt he is who he professes.

Apparently can't name those either..

One can't seem to take a hiatus from the devil within and without..

I doubt him as well. But it's better when the truth rolls down like a domino effect.