‫بسم اللہ الرح ٰمن الرحیم‬

‫نحمدہ و نصلی علی رسوله الکریم و علی عبدہ المسیح الموعود‬

ANSWERING ALLEGATIONS RAISED AGAINST

PRESERVATION
OF THE HOLY QURAN

LUQMAN AHMED

KHAMISA

JAMIA AHMADIYYA
 ‫بسم اللہ الرح ٰمن الرحیم‬

‫نحمدہ و نصلی علی رسوله الکریم و علی عبدہ المسیح الموعود‬

‫رب انفخ روح برکة فی کلمی ھذا واجعل افئدة من النادس تھوی الیه‬

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Verily, We Ourself have sent down this Exhortation, and most surely We will
be its Guardian. (15 Al-Hijr: 10)

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Falsehood cannot approach it either from before or from behind it. It is a
(revelation from the Wise, the Praiseworthy. (41 Ha Mim Sajdah: 43

Introduction

In these verses of The Holy Quran, Allah has promised himself that after
sending his book down, he’s going to safeguard it himself and no falsehood
will ever be able to come near it. The topic that I have selected to discuss in
today’s seminar is ‘Answering allegations raised against the preservation of
The Holy Quran’. The reason for choosing this topic was that this year in
summer, when that whole ‘Burn the Quran Day’ drama was going on, an
anti-Islamic U.S-based Christian group named ‘Acts17’ released a video
entitled ‘The original Burn the Quran Day’. In this video, they talked about
how Hadhrat Usman ‫ رضضضی الل ضہ عنضضه‬ordered the burning of all Quranic texts
except one. They tried to prove that how different versions of Quran existed
at that time and the Quran that we have today isn’t exact same to what The
Holy Prophet ‫ صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬left us with. Since that time, I’ve studied various
literatures by Western scholars who raise such allegations against
preservation of Quranic text and Inshallah today I’ll discuss some of those
allegations alongside their answers.

BRIEF HISTORY

But before I start dealing with the actual allegations, I’ll just give a very brief
history of The Holy Quran and some important dates as far as Quran’s
compilation is concerned.

 On April 16, 610 A.D, The Holy Prophet ‫ صضضلی الل ضہ علیضضه وسضضلم‬starts to
receive The Holy Quran through revelation.

 The Holy Prophet ‫ صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬passed away on June 8, 632 A.D [12
Rabiul Awal, 11 Hijrah) and Hadhrat Abu Bakr ( ‫ )رضضضی الل ضہ عنضضه‬is
appointed as Khalifah of Muslims.

 In the same year, Battle of Yamama takes place with Musailma

Kazzab and several Huffaz of The Holy Quran were martyred.
Hadhrat Umar ‫رضضضی الل ضہ عنضضه‬, at this point, realizes that we should
compile an official copy of Quran because if we continue to lose
Huffaz, we might lose a portion of this Holy Book. Hadhrat Abu Bakr
‫ رضی اللہ عنه‬was a little hesitant but eventually accepted and liked his
idea. (Sahih Bukhari, Book: Virtues of the Quran)

 Hadhrat Abu Bakr called for Hadhrat Zaid Bin Thabit ‫ رضی اللہ عنه‬and
handed over this task to him. His reaction was same as Hadhrat Abu
Bakr meaning he also hesitated but eventually agreed. (Sahih
Bukhari, Book: Virtues of the Quran)

 Hadhrat Zaid ‫ رضی اللہ عنه‬compiled the Holy Quran in a book format
and handed it over to Hadhrat Abu Bakr ‫رضی اللہ عنه‬.
  When Hazrat Umar became Khalifa on Aug 23, 634, this copy went
to him and after him to his daughter Hadhrat Hafsa ‫رضی اللہ عنھا‬.

 In 650 A.D, Muslims’ General Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman leads an

expedition getting his troops partly from Syria and partly from Iraq.
He saw many disputes among his army-men about correct
recitation of The Holy Quran. He reported this matter to Hadhrat
Usman ‫رضی اللہ عنه‬.

 Hadhrat Usman ‫ رضضضی الل ضہ عنضضه‬formed a four-man committee and

asked them to make copies from the Quran of Hadhrat Hafsa ‫رضی‬
‫ اللہ عنھا‬had the original copy returned.

 These copies were then sent to different provinces so that Muslims

everywhere could be brought under one dialect and Hadhrat Usman
‫ رضی اللہ عنه‬ordered that all other copies should be burnt.

So this was a short history of different stages that The Holy Quran went
through in early Islamic days. Now I start with the actual theme under
discussion today.

During my study of the allegations raised against the integrity of The

Holy Quran, I’ve found that Islam basically faces three kinds of attacks today:

 The first ones are those that are directly leveled against The Holy
Prophet ‫ صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬himself meaning they say things like he
didn’t record his early revelations or he didn’t show much interest in
his early revelations or the fact that he didn’t do much in his
lifetime for his revelations to be compiled unchanged.

 The second ones are those that are leveled against the copy of the
Quran that Hadhrat Zaid ‫ رضی اللہ عنه‬compiled on the instructions of
Hadhrat Abu Bakr ‫رضی اللہ عنه‬. This attack comes in a sense that
instead of Hadhrat Abu Bakr (ra) making a team out of all of the
 main writers of Quran, he gave this responsibility to Hadhrat Zaid
Bin Thabit ‫ رضی اللہ عنه‬alone. So, the copy that we have today is the
result of just his effort. He could have forgotten or missed a verse
and since other copies have been destroyed, Muslims can never find
out the reality.

 The third kind of attacks are leveled against Hadhrat Usman ‫رضی اللہ‬
‫ عنه‬that either unknowingly through his decision of burning other
copies of Quran, he caused a whole bunch of verses to be lost or he
knew what he was doing and just to keep Muslims united under his
government, he came up with such an idea.

For today’s presentation, I’ve picked the first kind of allegations meaning
those that are raised directly against Prophet ‫صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬.

ALLEGATIONS #1, 2

We start off from the early years of the Prophethood of The Holy
Prophet ‫صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬. Here Western writers such as Ibn Warraq (1946 –
present) and William Muir (1819 – 1905) have attacked the integrity of The
Holy Quran by doubting early revelations. Sir William Muir writes in his book
‘Life of Muhammad’:

The contents were never, during the Prophet's life-time,

systematically arranged, or even collected together. We have no
certain knowledge how the originals were preserved. That there
did not exist any special depository for them, is evident from the
mode in which, after Mahomet's death, the various fragments
had to be sought for. Much of the Coran possessed only a
temporary interest, arising out of circumstances which soon
ceased to be important…..Such portions it is little likely he would
take any pains to preserved.
 [William Muir, Life of Muhammad (pg 3), Smith Elder & CO. (1961)]

So what he’s saying here is that early revelations of Qur’an were not
recorded properly because The Holy Prophet ‫ صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬did not show much
interest in them and he did not feel the need to record them. Similar ideas
are also presented by Ibn Warraq in his book ‘Why I am not a Muslim’. He
says:

We need to retrace the history of the Koran text to understand

the problem of variant versions and variant readings, whose very
existence makes nonsense of Muslim dogma about the Koran. As
we shall see, there is no such thing as the Koran; there never
has been a definitive text of this holy book.

[Warraq Ibn, Why I am not a Muslim (pg 108)]

So where Sir William Muir partially denied the fact that early Quranic
revelations were recorded, Ibn Warraq completely rejects the idea that the
Holy Quran was ever written down in its early phases.

ANSWER

Now to answer these allegations, the first thing that should be

understood here is that it was not hard for The Holy Prophet ‫صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬
and his companions to record each and every single word of the revelation
that was being received from Allah. Sometimes one might think that, as
lengthy of a book as Quran is, it must have been hard for early Muslims to
record every word of it. This idea has been rejected by Hadhrat Mirza
Basheer Ahmad Sahib ‫ رضی اللہ عنه‬through following calculation. He says:

‫ ہیں انحضرت صلی اللہ‬۶۲۳۴ ً ‫ن شریف کی مجموعی ایات کو جو قریبا‬ ِ ‫اگر حسابی طور پر قرا‬
‫ بنتے ہیں پھیل کر‬۷۹۷۰ ً ‫نبوت کے دنوں پر جو قمری حساب سے تقریبا‬ ‫علیه وسلم کےزمان ٔہ‬
‫ یعنی ایک ایت سے بھی کم کا حساب نکلتا ہے‬۷۸ ‫دیکھا جاوے تو فی یوم صرف‬
 [Ahmad Basheer, Seerat khatam un Nabiyyin (pg 532)]

“If we divide the total number of verses in The Holy Quran which are 6234 by
the total days of the prophethood of The Holy Prophet ‫ صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬which
according to lunar calendar are 7970, the result isn’t even one verse a day.

So after knowing that recording The Holy Quran was something easy
and trouble-free, let’s now take a look at early years of Islam to see how The
Holy Quran was being recorded.

The first thing we find in this regard is from THQ itself. In Surah Furqan, Allah
mentions this saying of disbelievers of Mecca that:

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And they say, ‘These are fables of the ancients; and he has got them written
down, and they are dictated to him morning and evening.’ (Al-Furqan: Verse
(6

Now in this verse, it’s being clearly said that The Holy Quran was being
written down from the very start. Now this Chapter of The Holy Quran Surah
Furqan is unanimously accepted by both Muslim and Western commentators
that it was revealed in the early Meccan period. [Comprehensive
Commentary of The Holy Quran by Reverend Werry – Vol III (pg 207)]. This
clearly shows that the people of Mecca had seen written text with Muslims;
only then they would have said such a thing. So these bold claims of Sir
William Muir and Ibn Warraq are completely false that The Holy Quran wasn’t
written down from beginning and ‫ نعوذ باللہ‬Muslims didn’t show much interest
and passion for early revelations of The Holy Prophet ‫صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬.
 If we read The Holy Quran, we also find other proofs of how illogical
this allegation really is. For example we see that the word book (‫)کتضضاب‬
meaning something written has been used so many times for The Holy Quran
but never did the opponents of The Holy Prophet ‫ صضلی اللضہ علیضه وسضلم‬raise this
allegation that you don’t even carry a book with you. Now obviously if people
didn’t see any physical written text with The Holy Prophet ‫صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬, they
would have definitely raised this question and we would have found such
narrations in abundance. But we do not find any such narrations in the books
of history or Ahadith.

PROVING FROM HISTORY /AHADITH

These claims of William Muir and Ibn Warraq, that early Quranic
revelations were not recorded properly, can also be proven false by looking
at early Islamic history and sayings of The Holy Prophet ‫صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬. I’ll just
present one example from history:

The first example is of Hadhrat Umar ‫ رضی اللہ عنه‬who accepted Islam in
the 5th or 6th year of Prophethood. About him, Ibn Hisham writes in his history
that after getting into a fight with his sister, he got ashamed of seeing blood
on his sister. He then asked her to bring him whatever she was reading but
she told him that he wasn’t pure because of being indulged in polytheism. So
he washed himself and then took the page from her in which was Surah
Taha. [Seerat Ibn Hisham (English translation – pg 61)]

So this clearly proves that Muslims of Mecca in 5 th year of prophethood had

texts of Quran with them. Following Ahadith of The Holy Prophet ‫صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬
also prove this point:

َ َ ُ ْ ‫سافََر ِبال‬ َ
‫ض‬
ِ ‫ن إ ِلى أْر‬
ِ ‫قْرا‬ َ ُ‫ن ي‬
ْ ‫ه صلى الله عليه وسلم أ‬ ِ ّ ‫ل الل‬
ُ ‫سو‬ َ ‫ َقا‬،‫مَر‬
ُ ‫ل ن ََهى َر‬ َ ُ‫ن ع‬ ِ ّ ‫ن ع َب ْدِ الل‬
ِ ْ‫ه ب‬ ْ َ‫ع‬
ّ‫ال ْعَد ُو‬
Narrated on the authority of Ibn 'Umar ‫ رضی اللہ عنھما‬who said: The Messenger
of Allah (may peace be upon him) forbade that one should travel to the land
of the enemy taking the Qur'an with him. (Sahih Muslim – The Book on
Government, Ch 24)

In another Hadith, Prohet ‫ صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬says:

‫ل تکتبوا عنی شیئا سوی القران‬

Do not write anything from me except The Holy Quran (Musnad Ahmad Bin
Hanbal)

So these narrations do not only prove the fact that early Quranic
revelation was being recorded, but also that The Holy Prophet ‫صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬
was very careful while dictating to his scribes. So these historical proofs
confirm to the fact that the ideas of both Ibn Warraq that early Quranic
revelation wasn’t written down and of William Muir that Prophet ‫صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬
didn’t show much interest in recording the revelation received in Meccca are
both wrong and unjustified.

SECOND ALLEGATION

The second allegation that I’ll be discussing today is that many

Western commentators and writers say that since the so-called Quranic
revelation continued till the end of Prophet’s ‫ صضضلی اللضہ علیضضه وسضضلم‬life, he never
really got a chance to put everything together and as a result many of his
works were lost. Jay Smith in his book, The Quran – A Christian Apologetic
says:

Muslim Tradition tells us that Muhammad had not foreseen his

death, and so had made no preparations for the gathering of his
 revelations, in order to place them into one document. Thus,
according to tradition, it was left up to Muhammad's followers to
write down what had been said.
[Smith Jay, The Quran – A Christian Apologetic (pg 18)]

Another historian on compilation of The Holy Quran, John Gilchrist, writes:

Regarding the written materials there are no records as to
exactly how much of the Qur'an was reduced to writing during
the lifetime of Muhammad. There is certainly no evidence to
suggest that anyone had actually compiled the whole text of the
Qur'an into a single manuscript.
(Gilchrist John, The Codification of the Quran text, Ch 1)

And to prove his case, he says that if Prophet ‫ صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬had done
anything in this regard, then Hadhrat Zaid wouldn’t have to work so hard. He
says:
If Muhammad had in fact bequeathed a complete, codified text
of the Qur'an as is claimed by some Muslim writers, there would
have been no need for a collection or recension of the text after
his death. Yet, once the primary recipient of the Qur'an had
passed away, it was only logical that a collection should be made
of the whole Qur'an into a single text.

(Gilchrist John, The Codification of the Quran text, Ch 1)

ANSWER
Basically what these two writers have tried to prove is that The Holy
Prophet ‫صلی اللہ علیه وسلم نعوذ باللہ‬, out of his ignorance or carelessness didn’t do
much to compile The Holy Quran. It was only after him that his followers
decided to do that and as a result, much of Quranic revelation was lost. A
partial answer to these allegations has been given before as well. By proving
that Quranic scripts existed in early Meccan period, it’s clear that Prophet
‫ صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬was already doing much to safely compile The Holy Quran. In
answer to this allegation, I’ll prove that Prophet ‫ صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬did as much as
humanly possible to make sure that not a single word of Quran is lost.
Basically he constituted two separate systems for this purpose:

i). System of Hifzul Quran or memorization.

ii). Appointing certain men to write down Quranic revelations as

soon as they came down.

System of Hifzul Quran

One of the most important ways that The Holy Quran was preserved was by
the companions of The Holy Prophet ‫ صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬memorizing it. Hadhrat
Mirza Basheer-ud-Din Mahmood Ahmad ‫ رضی اللہ عنه‬says:

‫یہ بھی یاد رہے کہ ایسے ادمیوں کا میسر ا جانا جو اسے حفظ کرتے اور نمازوں میں‬
‫کرنا ؐپ‬
‫پڑھتے تھے انحضرت صلی اللہ علیه وسلم کی طاقت میں نہ تھا۔ ان کا مہیا ا‬
‫تعال ٰی نے فرمایا انا نحن نزلنا الذ کر و انا له‬
‫کے اختیار سے باہر تھا۔ اسی لئے اللہ‬
‫لحافظون کہ ایسے لوگ ہم پیدا کرتے رہیں گے جو اسے حفظ کریں گے۔ اج اس‬
‫ن مجید کے کروڑوں حافظ گزر چکے ہیں‬
ِ ‫اعلن پر تیرہ سو سال ہو چکے ہیں اور قرا‬
۱۰ ‫ر کبیر جلد چہارم زیر تفسیر الحجر ایت‬
ِ ‫))تفسی‬

With the revelation of The Holy Quran, the Holy Prophet ‫صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬
made sure that his companions not only write it down but also memorize it
and recite it in prayers and throughout their day. Hadhrat Abdullah Ibn
Mas’ood relates that Surah Maryam, Taha, Bani Israel, Al-Kahf and Al-Anbiya
were among his first earnings meaning these were one of the early ones he
memorized. (Sahih Bukhari – Virtues of Quran) These Surahs are all known to
have been revealed in Mecca. This shows that The Holy Prophet ‫صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬
understood the significance of his message very well and was making sure
from the very start that Quran is well-established in the hearts of his
companions. These historical facts also wash away such allegations of critics
of Islam who say that the fact that Hadhrat Zaid ‫ رضی اللہ عنه‬had to work so
hard to gather The Holy Quran proves that no one at the time of The Holy
Prophet ‫ صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬had fully memorized The Holy Quran. Jay Smith in his
book, The Quran – A Christian Apologetic says:

This shows that there were no Muslims at that time who had
memorized the entire Qur'an by heart, otherwise the collection
would have been a simple task. Had there been individuals who
knew the Qur'an by heart, Zaid would only have had to go to any
one of the companions and write down what they dictated.
Instead, Zaid was overwhelmed by the assignment, and was
forced to "search" for the passages from these men who had
memorized certain segments.

(Smith Jay, The Quran – A Christian Apologetic)

Such allegations seem really groundless when you consider the fact
that to this day, Arabs of that time are known for their skill of memorizing
things. Their memory was of such a high-level that they used to have their
family trees memorized dating back to their ancestors. One person would
memorize thousands of couplets. So one wonders that if they were this good
with memorizing ordinary things in life, then how much effort would they
have put in memorizing The Holy Quran to which they were so emotionally
attached. This is exactly what some of the Western scholars have
acknowledged. Sir William Muir in his book ‘Life of Muhammad’ says:

The Coran was accordingly committed to memory more or less

by every adherent of Islam, and the extent to which it could be
recited was reckoned one of the chief distinctions of nobility in
 the early Moslem empire. The custom of Arabia favored the task.
Passionately fond of poetry, yet possessed of but limited means
and skill in committing to writing the effusions of their bards, the
Arabs had long been habituated to imprint them on the living
tablets of their hearts. The recollective faculty was thus
cultivated to the highest pitch; and it was applied, with all the
ardour of an awakened Arab spirit, to the Coran.

[William Muir, Life of Muhammad (pg 3), Smith Elder & CO. (1961)]

So despite the fact that William Muir has his doubts about The Holy
Quran, but here he also accepts the fact that Quran was perfectly memorized
by the companions of The Holy Prophet ‫صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬. The following
statements of The Holy Prophet ‫ صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬also demonstrate the passion
he had that people should memorize this book as it was being revealed:

ُ ّ ‫ت ترت‬
‫ل فی الدنیا‬ َ ‫یقال لصاحب القران اقرأ وارتق و رتل کما کن‬

On the Day of Judgment, it will be said to the person who memorizes The
Holy Quran that go and keep increasing in status and recite it eloquently just
like you used to recite it.

(Sunan Abi Dau’d – Kitab ul Witr)

He also said:

‫ان الرجل الذی لیس فی جوفه شیء من القران کالبیت الخراب‬

A person who hasn’t memorized any portion of The Holy Quran is like an
abandoned house.

(Sunan Ad-Darmi – Virtues of Quran)

The system of writing down The Holy Quran

Much of this has already been covered in answering the first allegation that
how The Holy Prophet ‫ صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬had established this system of writing
down every single verse that came to him. Sahih Bukhari mentions five such
companions who were especially designated for this job. But some Muslim
scholars have said that if you combine together all of the narrations, about
sixty five writers of revelation are mentioned in total.

The following narrations also show how Prophet ‫ صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬was very
regular in recording the revelations he received:

‫اذا نزل علیه شیء دعا بعض من کان یکتب‬

That whenever he received anything, he would call one of his scribes who
would write it down. )Musnad Ahmad Bin Hanbal)

At the time of the death of Prophet ‫صلی اللہ علیه وسلم‬, four people had gathered
The Holy Quran:

‫ ابو زید ؓ۔‬، ؓ ‫ زید بن ثابت‬، ؓ ‫ معاذ بن جبل‬،ؓ ‫ابو درداء‬

(Bukhari – Virtues of Quran)

These facts clearly prove that Prophet (saw) had indeed laid the foundation
for gathering The Holy Quran in his lifetime. The Holy Quran had been fully
written and memorized within his lifetime and therefore all of the allegations
raised against him and false and baseless. I end my presentation with these
blessed words of The Promised Messiah (as):

‫ن مجید کی طرح خالص اور محفوظ کلم ِ الہی‬ ِ ‫اگر تمام دنیا میں تلش کریں تو قرا‬
‫کبھی نہیں مل سکتا۔ بالکل محفوظ اور دوسروں کی دستبرد سے پاک کلم تو‬
‫ن مجید ہی ہے۔)مسیِح موعود علیہ الصلوۃ و السلم‬ِ ‫)صرف قرا‬