The Qur’an Is the Word of God as It Was Given to Muhammad.

The Qur’an is the word of God as it was given to Muhammad.
Critically assess this statement.

The Qur’an is considered the word of God by Muslims. The Islamic faith believes that the stories within the book were sent to the lowest of the seventh heavens by Allah, during the time of Ramadan, and revealed to the Prophet Muhammad over a period of time in instalments. A question that is often asked regarding the Qur’an is if its contents are recorded as they were once delivered to Muhammad or does it now differ to the original revelations. The problems that have been considered in relation to this are as follows, parts of the book may have been lost during the course of revelations being told to Muhammad and getting written down, the amount of verses in some places have reduced and during the time of writing the Qur’an certain language difficulties may of resulted in different meanings being recorded for certain words. “The term ‘Qur’an’ has the meanings of ‘the recitation’ or ‘that which is to be recited’ and ‘of that which is recited’” (Akbar, 2002, p. 27), thus how the text was originally delivered, through memory and recitation, which again creates questions surrounding the material contained in the text and its reliability. What this essay hopes to do is analyse the queries and ideas concerning whether the Qur’an is documented as it was delivered to Muhammad, or if it differs and varies in any way, and if so the impact that may have on the text.
The contents of the Qur’an are believed to be a record of the revelations as they were exactly given to Muhammad, as messages from Allah. It is a certainty that Muslims agree with this idea “The text of the Qur 'an is entirely reliable. It has been as it is, unaltered, unedited, not tampered with in any way, since the time of its revelation” (Gulen, 1993, p. 58), but the notion that it has not been edited or altered at all has often been criticised by scholars for a number of reasons. One reason for this is that the revelations were not originally documented very well. Some of the stories were written down but most were remembered by Muhammad and his followers, and although it is considered that all of the information was memorised precisely there is a strong possibility that it was not. Another problem with this belief is that people have supposedly re-told each of the revelations as they were exactly told to them, without exaggerating or altering anything, which again is highly unlikely.
There are contrasting opinions regarding when the Qur’an was written, with some Muslims believing Muhammad complied the text himself and others thinking it was written after his death. These conflicting views are due to a number of scholars claiming Muhammad was illiterate, and so would not be able to document what he was told, but it is apparent that many Muslims believe this is untrue, and claim that scholars in fact “fabricated the illiteracy lie” (Khalifa, 2008, p 668). The Qur’an was most likely written following Muhammad’s death, as it was believed that no more revelations were to be made. At this point two companions of Muhammad’s, Abu Bakr and Umar, gathered together the few stories that had been written down and what they had memorised themselves, and devised a text containing all of them. “Abu Bakr and Umar called themselves khalifa, Arabic for successor. In English the word is caliph” (Weston, 2008, p. 39). It was these men, along with two more, Uthman and Ali, that made up ‘The Rightly Guided Caliphs’, they were the earliest followers of Muhammad and they took it upon themselves to create a text that demonstrated what the Prophet had been told.
A little previous to the time of writing the Qur’an there is said to have been a battle, where a number of memorisers of the revelations were killed. This, along with Muhammad’s death, made writing the text extremely important, for there were less people that knew the stories and it would have been foolish to risk losing anymore before a text had been produced. “Abu Bakr was by far the most loyal of Muhammad’s followers” (Weston, 2008, p. 40) and according to the Sunni tradition it was he who set about compiling the stories together into one volume. Abu Bakr is aid to have ordered Zayn ibn Thabit to collect the stories that were revealed to Muhammad and it was he became scribe and devised several copies of the text. This must be taken into consideration when asking if the Qur’an is the word of God as it was given to Muhammad as not only was there a little for Zayn ibn Thabit to copy from when writing his text, maybe old leaves or thin stones, but what he did have to copy from was probably hard to understand, and worn out. Again this makes it hard to believe that the Qur’an as it is known today, is to the precise word that Muhammad heard from the angel. Zaid’s text then got finalised later on by Uthman, which he “proceeded to make the official text” (http://www.answeringislam.org/authors/shamoun/quran_compilation.html).
One issue that has been highlighted in reference to the text being an exact duplicate of what was revealed to Muhammad, or not, are as follows. There are passages within the Qur’an that suggest some of the original work was actually lost. A valid point that was brought to my attention was found at (http://www.answering-islam.org/Gilchrist/Jam/chap4.html): It is reported from Ismail ibn Ibrahim from Ayyub from Naafi from Ibn Umar who said: "Let none of you say 'I have acquired the whole of the Qur 'an '. How does he know what all of it is when much of the Qur 'an has disappeared? Rather let him say 'I have acquired what has survived. '" (as-Suyuti, Al-Itqan fii Ulum al-Qur 'an, p.524).
Thus, at the time of writing the Qur’an it was more a case of making do with what little information was existing, and had not been lost, rather than rectifying what had already been completed. It is clear that whether it is a lot or a little, some details, in some places have been lost, mainly due to the lack of original material available to follow. At the time of completion by Uthman some people commented that certain verses had decreased in length, including one of Muhammad’s wives Aisha bint Abu Bakr who revealed “The chapter of the parties used to be 200 verses when read, when Uthman edited the copies of the Qur’an, only the current verses were recorded” (http://www.answering-islam.org/BehindVeil/btv12.html).

The fact that Abu Bakr’s version of the text was not the only one written also needs to be taken into account, “Others such as Ubayy Bin Kab and Abdallah ibn Masud also compiled Qur 'ans of their very own” (http://www.answeringislam.org/authors/shamoun/quran_compilation.html). The question needs to be asked why it was Zaid’s version of events that got finalised and not anybody else’s, for if everybody who remembered the stories of the revelations recited the exact same, as they were delivered to Muhhamaad, then surely the texts’ would be identical? This leads one to believe that maybe a certain amount of editing was in fact done when the final production of the text was finished. The final edition “was at first met by misgivings and resistance. But, soon afterwards the consonantal text was accepted as the ultimate authority” (Schoeler, 2006, p 84).
When the final edit of the Qur’an was developed into Arabic there were problems with the spoken dialect “justifiable doubts have been entertained concerning the reliability of the oral transmission” (Luxenburg, 2007, p 68) but the written language has too been criticised. During the early stages of Arabic’s structure the language did not have any vowels, only consonants, “The real problem in the early Arabic script was in the consonants, only six of which are clearly distinguishable by their form, whereas the remaining 22, due to their formal similarities, were only distinguishable from each other by the context” (Luxenburg, 2007, p 31). The lack of vowels was a problem when reading the Qur’an, along with the use of symbols, which were hard to interoperate. The symbols were not easy to distinguish which meant that a word could easily be mistaken for another word; therefore when one read the text they could derive a meaning from it that was wrong, or dissimilar to another person reading the same text. This is yet another problem that is encountered when considering if the Qur’an is the word of God as it was given to Muhammad. For later editions could have been changed due to the lack of understanding of the language.

Another issue that has often been raised regarding problems with the early development of the language used in the Qur’an is that there are elements of Aramaic within the text. It is considered that, the book was written in an “Aramaic-Arabic hybrid language” (Luxenburg, 2007, p 327), thus making it hard to interpret for the inhabitants of Mecca, where the book was first developed. Stories that had been passed down through the Aramaic’s “had either been misinterpreted or were inexplicable from the point of view of Arabic”, (Luxenburg, 2007, p 327). What this again suggests is that the word of Muhammad and the stories that were revealed to him may have changed during the course of them being told to the Prophet and to the time of the Qur’an being written. The understanding of the language was most likely a problem due to the lack of knowledge surrounding it, as well as the initial difficulty of whether the stories had been translated correctly or not.

Abrogation must also be considered when asking if the Qur’an is the word of God as it was given to Muhammad. An ongoing argument has been if some parts of the original text could have been annulled or not. Many Muslims would completely disagree with this view but there have been scholars who recognise this idea as possible. Scolars “Fuqahā’ and Mufassirūn in particular have been aggressively hostile to one another over abrogation in the Qur’an” (http://iiit.org/Research/ScholarsSummerInstitute/TableofContents/ArgumentsforAbrogationintheQuranACritique/tabid/241/Default.aspx), with conflicting opinions as to whether some parts of the text could have been removed. The arguments for this idea do not generally have any evidence to support the theory, but it is a possibility that must be taken into account. Although the revelations in the Qur’an are not written in chronological order verses that appear later in the text retell the same stories but some passages are found to be missing, which suggests the idea that information could have removed from the text. In contrast to this theory is, of course, the wider belief within Islam, that abrogation is not applicable in the Qur’an, “According to al-Aṣfahānī, the statement of the Qur’an that negates the existence of abrogation in the Qur’an is, “No falsehood can approach it from before or behind it: it is sent down by One Full of Wisdom, Worthy of all Praise” (41:42)” (http://iiit.org/Research/ScholarsSummerInstitute/TableofContents/ArgumentsforAbrogationintheQuranACritique/tabid/241/Default.aspx).

There are a number of ideas surrounding whether the Qur’an is a true resemblance of the revelations that were once told to Muhammad. Although Muslims believe that the text is the exact word of God, as told to the Prophet, it seems highly unlikely. This is due to the ways in which the stories were first interpreted and delivered, for instance they were not documented well and only memorised. The possibility that information was forgotten or lost during the time between the revelations being given to Muhammad and to being written down must also be considered. One believes it is a rather naïve assumption to think that the stories in the Qur’an have not been modified in any way since they were first revealed. The arguments against the idea that the Qur’an is the word of God as it was given to Muhammad are more convincing than those supporting it. This is because the text took a long time to be created, over a number of years, with language difficulties and lack of evidence to follow.

Bibliography
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