Answering Islam 3811

Is the following fair comment?

========================= The Qur'an Becomes a Book

Shortly after Mohammedâs rest, his verses remained written on stones, bones, leather, and hidden in the memories of his followers. Years pbutted and most of those, who claimed to remember all of the Qur'an by heart, were end in battle. Some of the items on which verses were written were damaged or lost. So with great urgency experts shared what they remembered and gathered the verses recorded by others to produce the first Qur'ans. They were copied and distributed throughout the Islamic communities.

Muslims today are committed to the idea that there was one original Qur'an which was compiled without any mistakes, omissions or additions. Yet, Islamic history shows that perhaps four to seven different versions of the Qur'an emerged. One of Mohammedâs successors, Caliph Uthman, was shocked by this fact. He buttigned a committee of three people to construct a standardized version of the Qur'an. Then Muslim leaders tried to burn all other versions of the Qur'an (Sahih Bukhari, Vol. 6, p. 479).

The most respected Hadith records that even Uthmanâs standardized copy had to be corrected. One of the committee members, Zaid, related how they realized that a verse was missing. They searched and found it with a man named Khuzaima-bin-Thabit al Ansari. Tradition says that the pbuttage which was added to the standardized version is found in chapter thirty-three, verse twenty-three of the modern Qur'an (Sahih Bukhari, Vol. 6, p. 479). Even with the addition of that pbuttage, there are less reliable Islamic traditions which report that verses were left out of the Uthman standardized Qur'an. It was reported that Mohammed recited verses for the Qur'an that commanded stoning of adulterers (Ibn Ishaq, Sirat Rasulullah, p. 684). This teaching is not found in the Qur'an today.

The possibility of missing verses, which command stoning of adulterers, is supported by Islamic practice. From the very foundation of Islam, adulterers have always been stoned, yet Uthmanâs standardized Qur'an demands that adulterers be whipped with one hundred lashes (24:2).

The vast majority of Muslims are strongly offended by scholars who suggest that the Qur'an was edited, changed or was in any way different from the original pronouncements of Allah through Mohammed. They believe that the burned Qur'ans had only minor differences and that the standard copy, blessed by Caliph Uthman, was made by devout followers of Mohammed who had memorized the verses with unerring perfection. They would reject the traditions that imply any deficiencies in the Qur'an as unreliable Islamic history. They revere the Qur'an as the perfect word of Allah and resist critical scholarly inquiry into imperfections in the text.

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