Will the Ancient Quranic Manuscripts of

Sana’a Spell the Downfall of Islam?

The 1972 discovery of the earliest surviving Quranic manuscripts in the Great Mosque of Sana'a
conclusively shows that the present Quran is different from the early manuscripts. It proves the Islamic
claim---that the Quran is infallability, that it is Allah's original revelation word by word, and that it is copy of
the version kept in a tablet in heaven---outright false. Will this shocking find unravel the dawnfall of Islam?

“Respect for the faith of sincere believers cannot be allowed either to block or deflect the investigation of
the historians... One must defend the rights of elementary historical methodology”. --- Maxime
Rodhinson, 1981, p. 57

Muslims generally believe, thanks to Quranic

assertions, that both the Old and New Testaments
are corrupted and seriously changed. They say,
for a Holy Scripture to be authoritative, it has to be
preserved without any changes at all, and point to
the Quran, which, they claim, has been preserved
word by word and letter by letter, as was revealed
to Muhammad by Allah. The Quran itself claims:
'no change there can be in the words of God'
(10:64) and, 'there is none that can alter the words
(and decrees) of God' (6:34).

But then how ridiculous the 'doctrine of abrogation'

is, by which later revelations cancel previous ones, as Quran (2:106) confirms, 'revelations… We
abrogate or cause to be forgotten'. Also, a Hadith (6:558) from Sahih Bukhari confirms that Muhammad
forgot many verses. Again Sunaan ibn Majah (3:1944) records that, after Muhammad’s death, some
revelations were eaten up by a goat.

How divine words can be eaten, changed, cancelled or abolished, in spite of Allah’s specific claim in
10:64 and 6:34?

Are not all these claims of Allah self-contradictory?

Amazingly, these plain truths do not bother the Muslims at all. Probably, if we can present another
“authentic” Quran, which is different from existing standard form, Muslims may give way to logical
thinking.

The devastating truth is that a large number of ancient Quranic manuscripts, dating from first century of
Hijra were discovered in the Great Mosque of Sana’a (Yemen), which significantly differs from the present
standard one. Carbon dating system confirmed that these Qurans are not forged one by religious rivalries.
Moreover, these Qurans were discovered by Muslims, not infidels.

This is, probably, the most embarrassing event to Muslims in the 1,400-year history of Islam.

The Great Mosque of Sana’a is one of the oldest Mosques in Islamic history. The date of building goes
back to 6th year of Hijrah when Muhammad entrusted one of his companions to build a Mosque at
Yemen, which was extended and enlarged by Islamic rulers from time to time.

In 1972, during the restoration of this Great

Mosque (heavy rain had caused the west
wall of the Mosque to collapse), laborers,
while working in a crown space between the
structure’s inner and outer roofs, stumbled
upon an amazing grave-site, which they did
not realize at that time. Mosques do not
accommodate graves, and this site contained
no gravestone, no human remains and no
funeral relics. It contained an unappealing
mountain of old parchment and paper
documents, damaged books and individual
pages of Arabic text, fused together by rain and dampness for over a thousand years.

The ignorant laborers gathered up the manuscripts, pressed them carelessly into some 20 potato sacks,
and set them aside on the staircase of one of the Mosque’s minarets, where they were locked away. The
manuscripts would have been forgotten once again, were it not for Qadhi Isma’il al-Akwa, then the
President of Yemeni Antiquities Authority, who realized the potential importance of the find. Al-Akwa
sought international assistance in examining and preserving the fragments, because no scholar in his
country was capable of working on this rich find. In 1977, he managed to interest a visiting non-Muslim
German scholar, who in turn persuaded the German government to organize and find a restoration
project.
Soon after the project began, it became clear that the “paper grave” is a resting place for, among other
things, tens of thousands of fragments from close to a thousand different codices of the Quran. Muslim
authorities during early days cherished the belief that worn out and damaged copies of the Quran must be
removed from circulation leaving only the unblemished editions of the scripture for use. Also such a safe
place was required to protect the books from looting or destruction if invaders come and hence the idea of
a grave in the Great Mosque in Sana’a, which was a place of learning and dissemination of the Quran
and was in existence from the first century of the Hijrah.

Restoration of the manuscript has been organized and supervised by Gerd R. Puin of Saarland
University, Germany. Puin is a renowned specialist on Arabic calligraphy (the study of fine and artistic
handwriting) and Quranic paleography (the study of ancient writing and documents). For ten years he
extensively examined those precious parchment fragments. In 1985, his colleague H. C. Graf V. Bothmer
joined him.

Carbon-dating puts the origin of some of the parchments to 645–690 CE, while calligraphic dating has
pointed to their origin in 710–715 AD. Some of the parchment pages seemed to date back to the seventh
and eighth centuries, i.e. Islam’s first two centuries, perhaps the oldest Quran in existence.

In 1984, the House of Manuscripts (Dar al

Makhtutat) was founded close to the Great
Mosque, as part of a cooperation project between
the Yemeni and German authorities. An enormous
endeavor began to restore the Quranic fragments.
Between 1983 and 1996, approximately 15,000
out of 40,000 pages were restored, specifically
12,000 fragments on parchment and manuscripts
dating back to the seventh and eighth centuries.

Until now, only three ancient copies of the Quran

are found. The one preserved in the British Library
in London, dates from the late seventh century and was thought to be the oldest one. But the Sana’a
manuscripts are even older. Moreover, these manuscripts are written in a script that originates from the
Hijaz—the region of Arabia where prophet Muhammad lived, which makes them not only the oldest to
have survived, but one of the earliest authentic copies of the Quran ever. Hijazi Arabic is the script
(Makkan or Madinan), in which the earliest Quran was written. Although these pieces are from the earliest
Quran known to exist, they are also palimpsests (manuscripts on which the original writing has been
effected for re-use).
The rare style of fine and artistic handwriting in the manuscripts had fascinated both Puin and his friend
Bothmer, but more surprise was awaiting them. When these ancient Qurans were compared with the
present standard one, both of them were stunned. The ancient texts were found to be devastatingly and
disturbingly at odds with the existing form. There are unconventional verse ordering, small but significant
textual variations, different orthography (spelling) and different artistic embellishment (decoration).

It shattered the orthodox Muslim belief that the Quran, as it has reached us today, is “the perfect,
timeless, and unchanging Word of God”. It means Quran has been distorted, perverted, revised, modified
and corrected, and textual alterations had taken place over the years purely by Human hands.

The sacred aura surrounding this Holy Scripture of Islam, which remained intact for some 14 centuries is
gone with this astonishing discovery and the ‘core belief’ of 1.4b Muslims that the Quran is the eternal,
unaltered word of God is now clearly visible as a great hoax, a downright falsehood.

Not only this, the Quranic claim that nobody can alter the words of God is also a fake. Quran is supposed
to be, in the words of Guillaume (1978, p. 74), “The holy of holies. It must never rest beneath other books,
but always on top of them, one must never drink or smoke when it is being read aloud, and it must be
listened to in silence. It is a talisman against disease and disaster”. Muslims call the Quran the ‘Mother of
Books’, and believe that no other book or revelation can compare (Caner & Caner, 2002, p 84). However,
it’s all gone now. The end-result of whole Islamic struggle of the last fourteen centuries is a big zero.

As if it is not enough, many manuscripts showed the sign of palimpsests, i.e., versions very clearly written
over even earlier washed off versions. The underwriting of palimpsest is, of course, often difficult to read
visually, but modern tools, such as ultraviolet photography, can highlight them. It suggests that the Sana’a
manuscripts are not only variants to the present version of the Quran, but the Sana’a manuscripts
themselves were variants of earlier version, re-written on the same paper. It means, Allah’s claim that
original text is preserved in heaven on golden tablets (Q 56: 77–78; 85:21–22), which none can touch
except angels is also a fairy-tale.

Puin, after extensively studying these manuscripts, came to the conclusion that the text is actually an
evolving text rather than simply the word of God as revealed in its entirety to Muhammad (Warraq, 2002,
p. 109). He wrote:

“So many Muslims have this belief that everything between the two covers of the Quran is just God’s
unaltered word. 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 Quran has been out of discussion. The only way to break through
this wall is to prove that the Quran has a history too. The Sana’a’s fragments will help us to do this.”
Puin even concluded (cited Taher, 2000) that “It is not one single work that has survived unchanged
through the centuries. It may include stories that were written before the prophet Mohammed began his
ministry and which have subsequently been rewritten”.

During their research, as Puin (Lester, 1999) recalls, “They [Yemeni authorities] wanted to keep this thing
low profile, as we do too, although for different reasons. They don’t want attention drawn to the fact that
there are Germans and others working on the Qurans. They don’t want it made public that there is work
being done at all, since the Muslim position is that everything that needs to be said about the Quran’s
history was said a thousand years ago.”

In fact, Puin and Bothmer knew for sometime during their study that the Quran is an evolving text, but
they wisely understood the possible implications of their findings and kept quiet. If Yemeni authorities
come to know about this discovery, they may even refuse them further access. This is actually what Puin
called ‘different reasons’. So both sides kept quiet, and those two scholars carried on their research
unabated.

Puin’s findings also confirm Wansbrough’s assumption on the Quranic text. In the 1970s, Wansbrough
concluded that the Quran evolved only gradually in the seventh and eighth centuries after a long period of
oral transmissions; different sects used to argue furiously with each other on the genuineness of the
revelations. The reason that no Islamic source-materials from the very beginning of Islam never survived
is because it never existed. In fact, Puin admitted ‘rereading Wansbrough’ during the course of analyzing
the Yemeni fragments (Warraq, 2002, p. 122).

Puin's other radical theory is that pre-Islamic sources have entered the Quran. He argues that two tribes it
mentions, As-Sahab-ar-Rass (Companions of the Well) and As- Sahab-al-Aiqa (Companions of the
Thorny Bushes), are not part of the Arab tradition, and the people of Muhammad's time certainly did not
know about them. He also disagrees that the Quran was written in the purest Arabic. The very word
‘Quran’ itself is of foreign origin. Contrary to popular Muslim belief, the meaning of ‘Quran’ is not
recitation. It is actually derived from an Aramaic word, ‘Qariyun’, meaning a lectionary of scripture portions
appointed to be read at divine service. Quran contains most of the biblical stories but in a shorter form
and is ‘a summary of the Bible to be read in service’.

Bothmer has painstakingly finished taking more than thirty-five thousand microfilm pictures of the
fragments by 1997, and brought the pictures back to Germany (Warraq, 2002, p. 109). It means now
Bothmer, Puin and other scholars will finally have a chance to scrutinize the texts and to publish their
findings freely.

Puin is interested to write a book on this in the future, but already wrote several short essays on their
findings in various science magazines, where he pointed out several aberrations between the ancient
Quran and the present standard version (cited Warraq, 2002, p. 739–44). In refuting the sacredness of
the Quran, Puin wrote:

“My idea is that the Quran is a kind of cocktail of texts that were not all understood even at the time of
Muhammad. Many of them may even be a hundred years older than Islam itself. The Quran claims for
itself that it is ‘mubeen’, or clear. But [contrary to popular belief] if you look at it, you will notice that every
fifth sentence or so simply does not make sense…the fact is that a fifth of the Quranic text is just
incomprehensible. If the Quran is not comprehensible, if it can’t even be understood in Arabic, then it’s not
translatable into any language. That is why Muslims are afraid. Since the Quran claims repeatedly to be
clear but is not—there is an obvious and serious contradiction. Something else must be going on”.

The extraordinary discovery of Puin had fascinated Andrew Rippin, a Professor of religious studies and a
leading expert on Quranic studies. Rippin (cited Warraq, 2002, p. 110) concluded, “The impact of the
Yemeni manuscripts is still to be felt. Their variant readings and verse orders are all very significant.
Everybody agrees on that. These manuscripts say that the early history of Quranic 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”.

Rippin’s observation was superb. During the period of early Caliphs, Islam grew as political movement
and not as a religious movement. A book like the Quran was required to keep the Muslims united. The
Quran is just like a ‘status symbol’ of Islam, without which Islam would have died during the time of
Muhammad only. The Quran is purely manmade. Some sort of Divinity was attached to the Quran so that
it can command some respect, because it could not stand on its own worth. This way, in acknowledging
the claims of the Quran as the direct utterance of the Divinity, the early manipulators had blocked all
criticisms, which can otherwise expose it. The Quran itself prohibits criticism in verses 5:101 and 5:102.
We do not know when religious blindness crept in, but undoubtedly, the early Muslims after Muhammad
were more liberal than the present generation we are seeing today. The authenticity of many verses had
been called into question by the early Muslims themselves. Many Kharijites, who were followers of Ali in
the early history of Islam, found the Sura recounting the story of Joseph offensive, an erotic tale that
cannot belong to the Quran (cited Warraq, 1998, p. 17).

Warraq (1998, p. 14) has the same view as Rippin, “Muslim scholars of the early years of Islam were far
more flexible in their position, realizing that parts of the Quran was lost, perverted and that there were
many thousand variants which made it impossible to talk of ‘the’ Quran”.

There is another proof that Quranic messages were distorted in the early days of Islam and nothing like
‘The’ Quran does exist any more. Inscriptions of several Quranic verses are decorated on the Dome of
Rock of Jerusalem, which is most probably the first Islamic monument meant to be a major artistic
achievement, built in 691 CE (Whelan, 1998, p. 1–14). These inscriptions significantly differ from the
present standard text (Warraq, 2000, p. 34).

Mingana (cited Warraq, 1998, p.80) laments that “The most important question in the study of the Quran
is its unchallengeable authority”. This is the only reason that critical investigation of the text of the Quran
is a study which is still in its immaturity. As Rippin (1991, p. ix) lamented, “I have often encountered
individuals who come to the study of Islam with a background in the historical study of the Hebrew Bible
or early Christianity, and who express surprise at the lack of critical thought that appears in introductory
textbooks of Islam. The notion that ‘Islam is born in the clear light of history’ still seems to be assumed by
a great many writers of such texts.’”

Cook and Crone (1977, p. 18) concluded that “[The Quran] strikingly lacking in overall structure,
frequently obscure and inconsequential in both language and content perfunctory in its liking of disparate
materials and given to the repetition of whole passages in variant versions. On this basis, it can be argued
that the book is the product of a belated and imperfect editing of materials from a plurality of traditions.”
Crone (cited Warraq, 1998, p. 33) wrote elsewhere that “The Quran has generated masses of spurious
information”.

But in case of the Bible, it is different, as Rodhinson (1980, p. viii) observed: “[For Bible] the scientific
attitude begins with the decision to accept something as fact only if the source has been proved reliable”.
Muslims wrongly interpret the honesty Christians display about some variant readings of the Bible as
weakness (Ali & Spencer; 2003, p. 76–9). Christians, like Hindus, want to see their Holy book through
scientific and historical point of view. When old Biblical manuscripts, parchments or ancient Hindu
manuscripts are discovered, Christian and Hindu scholars almost climb over each other’s shoulder to gain
an early access to them. Such findings cause great excitement to them. But sadly, no such excitement
exists in Islam. Christians and Hindus are eager to see more and more light shed on the earliest
manuscripts of their scriptures, while Muslims resist, often with violent determination. The contrast is
really striking: while both Hindu and Christian faiths are strongly backed up by archeological and historical
evidence, so far as concerns Islam, neither any archeological exploration was allowed in Mecca and
Medina, nor is there any prospect in the future (Peters, 1986, p. 72–4).

Muslim criticism of the Quran is very rare and almost nonexistent as Sina (2008, p. 6) lamented, “Muslims
are genuinely incapable of questioning Islam”. Recently, ex-Muslim websites are doing some remarkable
work on this. Ultimately, these enlightened people will successfully free their Muslim brothers and sisters
from the Islamic prison. Otherwise whatever criticism is done on the Quran are all by the Christian
scholars. But Muslims should not take the Christian criticism as a mark of religious opposition. Christian
scholars have done much more criticism of their own religion than Islam (Sproul & Saleeb, 2003. p. 17;
Spencer, 2007, p. 1).
But once the Sana’a findings are published in details, Islam will not be the same as it was for fourteen
centuries. Islam is definitely going to take a strange position. Many Muslims will cast doubt on sacredness
of the Quran, and the very ‘romantic’ concept of the Quran will gradually disappear, and then a very
interesting development can be observed. The first question, which will appear in their mind is: which
version is superior. But then, it is not possible to choose a Quran and discard the other by preference.
Because the Muslim belief also confirms that he, who denies a single verse of the Quran, denies the
entire revelation. This is a logical impossibility and since scientific research had already spoken out the
truth, many Muslims will seek a way out of this nonsense, and will try to free themselves from the
tyrannical oppression of living in a false religion.

While discussing Muslim’s apathy to science, reason and natural law, Jaki (cited Spencer, 2002, p. 127)
wrote, “What is occurring in the Muslim world today is a confrontation, not between God and devil… but
between a very specific God and science which is a very specific antagonist of that God, the Allah of the
Quran, in whom the will wholly dominates the intellect”.

The Sana’a discovery will just add fuel to the fire. Today the Muslim world is beset with frustration. Islam
is supposed to be the final revelation and Muslims are supposed to be the “Best of Mankind”, but the
reality is just opposite. Muslim nations are poorest in the world (Ohmyrus, 2006, p. 128). A time will come
when the religious authorities will be asked by common Muslims to refute the critics by logic, science and
reason, not by violence or Fatwa. As Parvez Manzoor wrote, “Sooner or later [we Muslims] will have to
approach the Quran from methodological assumptions and parameters that are radically at odds with the
ones consecrated by our tradition” (Warraq, 2002, p. 123)

The Sana’a manuscripts will also provoke another question. If the Quran is a lie, how the lie survived for
so many centuries? The reason is that the Divinity attached to Quran is not ‘A Small Lie’, but ‘The Big Lie’.
The big lies are very powerful, and it always has a psychological effect on the listeners. The bigger the lie,
the more believable it is. Adolf Hitler wrote in Mein Kamph (1925), “The broad mass of a Nation will fall
victim to a big lie than to a small one.” Big lies are extraordinarily convincing, because it offsets the scale
of the listener’s commonsense, as Sina (2008, p. 179) explains: an ordinary person does not dare to tell a
big lie thinking that it would not be believed and he would be ridiculed. Since there is no one who had
never told a lie in his life, small lies are often detectable sooner or later. But the big lies are so strange
that it often startle the listener. When the lie is gigantic, the average person is left to wonder how anyone
can have the courage, the impudence to say such a thing.

Big lies always work wonder in politics. As George Orwell (cites Sina, 2008, p. 179) said, "Political
language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and give an appearance of
solidity to pure wind".
Today, when the divinity of the Quran is shattered by the Sana’a manuscripts, the spiritual nature of Islam
is also exposed. Islam is nothing but a pure Arab political movement. The Divinity was attached to the
Quran, when Arabs started conquering the surrounding nations, and Islam was imposed on them by
force. Arabs not only imposed Islam on others, but also imposed this irrational belief of Quranic divinity to
the minds of their victims, so that once Arabs are gone, the conquered people cannot come out from this
mental enslavement, and return back to their original faith. It is a rare political skill. Many companions of
Muhammad clearly knew that the Quran was fake, but they remained with their prophet to share the booty
and to enjoy the women. We all know, after Muhammad’s death, several Arab tribes returned back to their
original belief, and idolatry flourished, but were forced back to Islam with the sword and bloodbath.

With much shock to Muslims, modern study on Psychology had spoken out the truth that Muhammad was
an imposter, a madman, who was suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Narcissists are such
self-absorbed persons, who are pathological liars. It means, either they are unaware of their lies or feel
completely justified and at easy in lying to others. Their mental condition is such that they have that rare
capability to believe their own lies (Vaknin, 1999, p. 24).

And, yes, Adolf Hitler, who was aware of the power of Big lie, and misguided millions of Germans, is also
recognized as a Narcissist. Today Hitler is the most hated historical figure in Germany. Like a
mathematical certainty, Muhammad will earn the same fate. But we really do not know, how many million
more will die before we can put Muhammad in dustbin with his Allah, Quran and Islam altogether. For
Hitler, it was National Socialism (another name of Nazism) and for Muhammad it was Islam, but deep
down, both were two sides of same coin—successful manipulators.

Sina (2008, p. iv, 260) commented that “Islam is like a house of cards, sustained by lies. All it takes to
demolish is to challenge one of those lies holding it together. It is a tall building, erected on quicksand;
once you expose its foundation, the sand will wash away and this mighty edifice will fall under its own
weight”, and that “Islam stands on a very shaky ground. It rests on nothing but lies. All we have to do to
demolish it is to expose those lies and this gigantic edifice of terror and deception will collapse.”

Let’s see, once the sacred aura of Quran is gone, what other lies are exposed.

First, if there are two or more versions of the Quran, then there must be equal number of Allahs. So, if
only two Qurans are authentic, will Islam be deemed monotheistic any longer? And how to decide which
Allah gave which Quran? If there is only one Allah, then which Quran is authentic, and which is fake?

Second, if we still believe that one Quran is authentic, then how Allah allowed the others to survive?

Third, is it anymore true as the Quran says Allah’s words do not change (10.64); this is indeed the mighty
achievement?
If yes, what more than one Quran is doing now? If not, how this false revelation is recorded in the Quran?
Did Satan put it?

Finally, Bukhari (4.52.233) records that “Unbelievers will never understand our signs and revelations.” But
we see, for understanding the Sana’a Quran, the Yemeni authorities invited German scholars, because
there was no one in Yemen capable of working on this rich find.

No wonder that Sina (2008) concluded: “No matter how you look at Islam it turns out to be a foolish
religion.”

Although Muslims have sold their soul to Muhammad, can they logically clear the above doubts? The
Sana’a episode had put them in such an awkward position that even circular reasoning or absurd logic
will not help. Isn’t it time for prudent Muslims to give a second thought to their cherished faith? Instead of
trying hard to reason out the above doubts, isn’t it more sensible to agree that the entire Muslim ummah
had been fooled by a vulgar imposter named Prophet Muhammad? Isn’t it time for Muslims to care truth?
As poet Thomas Gray (cited Sagan, 1997, p. 12) wrote, “… where ignorance is bliss, “Tis [It is] folly to be
wise”.

To protect the Quran from more humiliation, Yemeni authorities already debarred Puin and Bothmer from
further examination of those manuscripts. In fact, now they do not allow anyone to see those manuscripts
anymore except some very carefully selected non-Quranic parchments, which are at display at the ground
floor of Dar al-Makhtutat Library. But this is not going to help; the bird is out of the cage already; it is
useless closing the door now. More than thirty-five thousand microfilms are out of Yemen before the
authorities came to know; and already, several duplicates have been made. The present author is sure
that, at this very moment, in some undisclosed location in Germany, a group of experts are endlessly
working on those microfilms and Puin is burning enough midnight oil to complete his book, which, once
published, will hammer another nail in the coffin of Islam. Islam is in real danger now.

Obviously, by realizing the Divine downfall within sight, many Muslims are disturbed and offended. The
fundamentalists will not accept Puin's and Bothmer’s work as having been done with academic objectivity,
but see it as a deliberate attack on the integrity of the Quranic text (Taher, 2000). Naturally, those two
German scholars will be at the forefront of Muslims’ rage. Puin fears a violent backlash from orthodox
Muslims because of his "blasphemous" theory, which he says, he cannot take lightly. By recalling the
Salman Rushdie affair he wrote, “My conclusions have sparked angry reactions from orthodox Muslims.
They've said I'm not really the scholar to make any remarks on these manuscripts”. If Puin's views are
taken up and trumpeted in the media, and if there are not many Muslims being rational about it, then all
hell may break loose. There will be some hostile response and riots causing much death and destruction,
may be another fatwa from Khomeini and surely some hollow threats from our camera-loving Bin Laden,
and his ideological brothers. But can they stop the truth from spreading?
UNESCO has shown genuine interest in the Sana’a manuscripts ever since the Memory of the World
programme started. In 1995, the Organization also produced a CD-ROM in Arabic, English and French
illustrating the history of the collection containing both Quranic and non-Quranic materials. The CD-ROM
offers 651 images of 302 Quranic fragments, indexed by script, frames etc., a general introduction to the
Yemenite manuscripts collections, and a brief description on the evolution of Arabic calligraphy (Abid,
1997).

Ursula Dreibholz, a preservation expert, who worked on the Sana’a project for eight years as the chief
conservator, is much frustrated by seeing the lack of concern of Yemeni authorities to protect those
manuscripts by using modern technology (1983, p. 30–8). Neither the security devices are correct, nor is
adequate attention being given to the manuscripts to avoid further deterioration (1996, p. 131–45). In fact,
Dreibholz (1999, p. 21–5) said that it was her greatest concern to create a safe and reliable permanent
storage system for the restored fragments. Also, the poor storage hardly has any protection from insects
and water. Most importantly, there is a lack of fire prevention or detection system, keeping in mind the
truly catastrophic fires that have destroyed important libraries and artworks around the world throughout
history. The Yemeni authorities said they have neither money nor means to install fire protection systems.
She does not understand the genuine reason behind the apathy of Yemeni authorities.

Here Muslim fundamentalists can see a silver lining in the cloud. No one knows when a devastating fire
will break out ‘accidentally’ and destroy all the Quranic manuscripts, a cause of intense heartburn to them.
After all, for saving Islam, the Quran must be saved, for which Muslims will go any length. If necessary,
they will burn the Quran to save it from logical analysis. Their devotion to stupidity is really that high.
Probably, the Yemeni authority’s unwillingness to install fire-protection systems is an initial preparation for
such an act in the future. Never underestimate the destructive capability of the brainless bigots.

References

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find and its conservation treatment. AIC Preprints of papers presented at the 11th annual meeting in

Baltimore, Maryland, 25-29 May 1983. Washington DC.

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London

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