How Do We Know That The Qur

Muhammad Muaz Bin Abdul Halim (1214253)
RKQS 1030 DR. Osmani
Section1
Authenticity Of the Quran
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How do we know that the Qur’an we have today is the word of Allah and it is still in its original state since it was revealed to the prophet Muhammad S.A.W? This question cannot be underestimated, the revelation and the authenticity of the Qur’an has remained suspicious to a lot of people, specifically the non-muslim and the 21st century orientalist. In this era, Islam is in a great danger, people around the world arguing about the authenticity of Islam, about the authenticity of Qur’an, people critic Islam as the terrorist religion especially among the westerner, the orientalist especially. The miss conception about Islam and Qur’an is widely spread around the world, people forte Islam in a very bad way there is even a term called Islamophobia which mean a phobia towards Islam, where people assume “muslim” as the barbarian. Our brothers and sisters have suffered because of this misconception especially our brothers and sisters in the middle east of the world. We as the muslims must fixed this, we must correct the misconception about Islam that widely spread and makes Islam look bad. However, before we fixed this matter and explain to the orientalist that they are wrong we must ask ourselves first how deep we know about our own religion, about our own Qur’an. To answer this question, we first need to ascertain Qur’an that we have today as the same as the one that was revealed to the prophet Muhammad S.A.W and we must convince them that no corruptions has taken place during the compilation, standardization and organizing of the Qur’an from the period of sahabah until this very day. Meaning to say, we need to prove that Qur’an has survived history and perfectly reserved until today. Secondly, we need to establish who the author of the Qur’an is originally.The recording and the preservation of the Qur’an must be explained in detail.
The divine Qur’an, the muslims book of guidance, was revealed in Arabic language to the prophet Muhammad S.A.W through the angel Jibril. The revelation takes over 23 years to complete, the revelation came in a brief verses and long chapters of Qur’an. In conveying the message to the companion the prophet reciting the exact same words he heard or dreamed in the exact order from Allah. This evidence shows that the words of Allah were directed specifically to him, for example the word “Qul” (“say to the people, o Muhammad”). The Qur’an rhythmic style and expression make it easy to be remembered and memorize. Allah purposely does this as he mentioned in the Qur’an. Allah mentions this as one of its essential for preservation and remembrances. In prophets times when writing is merely used, memory and oral transmission are the best method in conveying the messages of Qur’an, along the period of the prophet this method were used and because of this the large number of the prophet’s community memorized the Qur’an. The prophet S.A.W encourages the companion to learn and memorize it and then transmit it to others. The Qur’an was also required to be recited regularly as the act of worship especially during prayer (salat). The entire Qur’an was memorized word by word by some of the prophet’s companion. Moreover, the sequence of the Qur’an was arranged by the prophet himself as the order from Allah. Each ramadhan, the prophet would recite the entire Qur’an after the angel Gabriel in exact order as far as it had been revealed so far. As the result the companion spread out the revelation of the Qur’an to the various provinces with different populations and the Qur’an were revealed and memorize by many people across the seas and land.
The memorization of the Qur’an emerged as a continuous tradition across the centuries. With schools and centre were established across the muslim world. The Qur’an is the only book that covers everything (here and hereafter) that has been memorized completely by millions of people. This phenomena of Quranic recital means that the text and verses of the Qur’an has travel the centuries in an unbroken living sequence. People from every part of the world are reciting the same thing, memorizing the same thing as the Prophet memorizes it. This shows that Qur’an has survive history, just imagine when there is no writing document of the Qur’an and people only used oral transmission to convey the message but the message arrived just that same as the prophet tell us to convey and until now the Qur’an is still the same as from the period of the prophet. This forte that Qur’an is authentic, there is no corruption takes place from the period of our prophet until now. The codification of the Qur’an was done after the battle of Yamama, after the Prophet’s death, during the period of caliphate Abu Bakr. There are many Hifz (the people who remember the entire Qur’an) died in the battle and Caliph Abu Bakr was afraid that the Qur’an will be lost as the dead of the people who remember it. As the result of this, Umar suggest to Caliph Abu Bakr to compile the Qur’an as one book. Caliph Abu Bakr appointed Zaid Ibn Thabit to gather all the scattered recording of the Qu’ran. Zaid also have his own committee that will help him to gather all of the sources. To preserve the compilation from errors these committees only accept the material that was written in the period of the prophet (prophet still alive) and which can be verified by at least two trustworthy witnesses who actually heard the Prophet recite the passage. Once it was complete and approved by the Prophet’s companion these sheet ware kept with the Caliph Abu Bakr (13AH) then passed on to the Caliph Umar (13-23AH), and then Umar’s daughter and the Prophet widow, Hafsa.
Even though the Qur’an was revealed in the Qurayshi dialect of Arabic to the Prophet, it was also later revealed in seven different Arabian dialects to aid the understanding of those belonging to non-Quraysh tribes. Urged by Hudhayfah to take heed of how the Ahl al-Kitab (People of the Book) had differed among them regarding Allah’s Word, Uthman perceived the danger of divisions, disunity and corruption arising on the basis of different readings/dialects of the Qur’an which were earlier on approved by the Prophet. He therefore requested Hafsa to send him the manuscript of the Qur’an which was in her safekeeping, and ordered the production of several bounded copies of it (masaahif, mushaf) using the Quraysh dialect . This task was entrusted to the Companions Zaid ibn Thabit, Abdullah ibn Az-Zubair, Sa‘id ibn As-‘As, and Abdur Rahman ibn Harith ibn Hisham. Upon completion (in 25AH), Uthman returned the original manuscript to Hafsa and sent the copies to the major Islamic provinces to replace other materials that were in circulation. copies of the Qur’an which differed from that undoubted “official” copy be burnt so that the Qur’an would not suffer the same fate of alterations, uncertainty of authenticity and contradictory versions which characterized prior religious scriptures. This action of Uthman was unanimously approved of by the Prophet’s Companions, as evidenced in the accounts of Zaid, Mus’ab, and Ali that the Companions had gathered in large numbers to witness the burning, with no-one speaking out against it. Their accounts also reveal that many had openly declared their support for Uthman at the time, and how pleased they were with the measures he had taken. It was therefore not the “Original” Qur’an that was burnt, nor a fabricated story to discredit Uthman in the eyes of the community, as some critics of Islam claim.
The story of how Qur’an came to be persevered as described is taken from authentic hadith. However, some orientalist critics claim that the narration in hadith collections cannot be trusted due to their being recorded by “muslim sources’’. These orientalists ignore the fact that news and social history have always been uncovered through eye-witness reports, and that early Muslim scholars have developed some of the most rigorous criteria to examine such reports for authenticity. The majority of what we know about the Prophet life and his companion is from Mutawaatir reports.This ongoing and dynamic science has produced highly precise reports of Muslim history. Through this science, thousands of scholars have repeatedly analyzed the hadith collections in order to identify and filter out any fabrication. The claim that most Muslim scholarship has been based on fake would necessarily implicate that all the geographically scattered scholars of the first four centuries of Hadith collection, who belonged to varied and competing schools of thought, collaborated together in a mutual conspiracy – an idea which neither appeals to reason nor the fact that such scholars were renowned for their piety and integrity of character. The historical credibility of the Qur'an is further established by the fact that one of the copies sent out by the Caliph Uthman is still in existence today. It lies in the Museum of the City of Tashkent in Uzbekistan, Central Asia. A exact copy of the mushaf in Tashkent is available at the Columbia University Library in the USA . This copy is proof that the text of the Qur’an we have in passage today is identical with that of the time of the Prophet and his companions. A copy of the mushaf sent to Syria duplicated before a fire in 1310AH destroyed the Jaami' Masjid where it was housed, also exists in the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul, and an early manuscript on gazelle parchment exists in Dar al-Kutub as-Sultaniyyah in Egypt. More ancient manuscripts from all periods of Islamic history found in the Library of Congress in Washington, the Chester Beatty Museum in Dublin (Ireland) and the London Museum have been compared with those in Tashkent, Turkey and Egypt, with results confirming that there have not been any changes in the text from its original time of writing. The Institute for Koranforschung, for example, in the University of Munich (Germany), collected over 42,000 complete or incomplete ancient copies of the Qur’an. After around fifty years of research, they reported that there was no clash between the various copies, except the rare mistakes of the copyist which could easily be ascertain. This Institute was unfortunately destroyed by bombs during the world war two WWII. Due to the efforts of the early companions, with Allah’s assistance, the Qur’an as we have it today is recited in the same way as it was revealed. This makes it the only religious scripture that is still completely retained and understood in its original language. Indeed, as Sir William Muir states, “There is probably no other book in the world which has remained centuries with so pure a text’’. The evidence is confirms in Allah promise in the Qur’an. The Qur'an has been preserved in both oral and written form in a way no other book has, and with each form providing a check and balance for the authenticity of the other.