The Quran is considered like the backbone of Islam although the bulk of the religion is made from the sunna, or Mohammed’s traditions, which is based on his hadiths or sayings and considered second to the Quran in its importance. Practicing Islam is impossible without sunna because the Quran doesn’t explain anything about the Islamic rituals or sharia and refers Muslims to take Mohammed’s example which only comes through his hadiths (Q.59:7).

It is frustrating that whenever ‘intellectual’ Muslims are debated they become very quick to distance themselves from any hadith that seems implicate their religion, no matter how authentic that hadith was. Denying a hadith is an easy defence tactic by Muslim apologists in their effort to maintain the integrity of Islam. Their logic is that Islam doesn’t fall by the loss of one hadith or two because Islam is kept up by the Quran. On the other hand, those Muslims are not ashamed to quote other hadiths, no matter how unauthentic they are, to boost their argument. However, most ordinary Muslims remain strong believers in both the Quran and hadith, which they rightly consider to complement each other. The main stream Muslims consider those who deny the hadith as infidels who would eventually deny the Quran as well.

Behind the declared reason for denying the hadith is another undeclared, but true, reason. The hadiths come in detailed language and with several narrations that support each other, which leaves little room for word games or manipulating the meanings. On the other hand, the Quran comes in a vague abridged and self contradicting format that leaves more room to twist the language and meanings of its words. The Quran is covered with a thick layer of haze and some Muslims use that lack of clarity to argue and claim they can see a different picture from the others.

How authentic is the hadith?
There are different collections of hadiths that Muslims consider to be the most authentic; the most well known collections are Sahih al Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. Other collections include Al Nissaey, Al Tirmithy, Ibn Dauod and Ibn Maja. Together, these six collections are called the authentic six, the Sahih Sitta.

The ‘science of hadith’ or ‘Ilmul Hadith’ is a well known and prestigious speciality in all Islamic universities. It teaches how those scholars managed to gather their collections and how they travelled the Islamic world to accomplish their objective. The methodology they used, considering its time, was exemplary. They studied each hadith in details; its text and its chain of narrations and classified them into grades according to their authenticity. Even by today’s standards, their scholarship and dedication to objectivity was amazing. Most of the two hundred thousand or so hadiths that were subjected to their thorough assessment were rejected and only a few thousands made it to their Sahih (correct) books. Their objectivity meant that many ‘good looking’ hadiths had to be rejected while others, not so good looking ones, had to be included. If Muslims can be proud of anything at all it is that objective academic approach adopted by those scholars who collected the hadiths.

Those early Muslim scholars, like Al Bukhari and Muslim, were no ordinary people; they were well informed highly educated and intelligent. In short, they were the geniuses of their time. It is laughable that some Muslims of today, with questionable knowledge and education, dare to dismiss the works of those scholars as faulty just because it happens not to go well with their biased opinions.

How authentic is the Quran?
Q.2: 106. Any verse We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We substitute with something better or similar. Don’t you know that Allah can do anything?
The above verse is a short answer to those who claim the Quran was preserved. The verse is a clear admission that the Quran contains contradicting (Muslims call it abrogated) verses, as well as verses that have been completely forgotten! But not to worry, Allah was capable to bring similar to those verses or even better!

Unlike the hadith, the collection of the Quran was politically motivated with none of methodology or high standards of scrutiny that characterized the hadiths’ collection. The vulnerability of the Quran lies in the fact that the presence of only one error, say a misplaced word or letter, is a good enough proof that the entire book is a hoax.

It is essential in Islam to believe that the Quran is the preserved word of Allah. Therefore, it has an unquestionable authenticity. Indeed the Muslims do not question the authenticity of the Quran, which is where their problem lay. The Muslims believe that the reason why Islam came to existence was the distortion which the previous holy scriptures were subjected to. In other words, the Muslims believe that Allah revealed the Quran with the determination to preserve it. With that in mind, one would expect Allah to have employed extra ordinary measures to preserve what is supposed to be the most important document to mankind. But He didn’t! On the contrary, all the circumstances created an ideal setting for the Quran to be lost, which it did.

The Quran was revealed to Mohammed who was, as Muslims insist, illiterate and therefore unable to verify the accuracy of the scripts written for him by some volunteering scribes. Trusting Mohammed with the Quran is like trusting an illiterate person to edit a newspaper. With a document as important as the Quran, it would not be enough just to assume that the scribes were honest and trustworthy, especially that at least one of them, Abdulla Ibn Abi Al Sarh, admitted that he regularly made changes to the text of the Quran without Mohammed even noticing!(1)

Although the Muslims claim that the Quran was completely written during Mohammed’s life time, but there is no acceptable evidence to support such a claim. It is logical to believe that the Quran was not properly written in the first thirteen years of Islam while Mohammed was still in Mecca because he simply didn’t have the resources to do it. One would expect writing the Quran to be Mohammed’s first priority after he assumed power in Medina, but he was too busy in wars to think of it.

After establishing his Islamic state in Medina, Mohammed could have ordered a formal recording, indexing and safe keeping of the most important document of Islam. Even he could have stamped it because he owned a stamp. But Mohammed did nothing of that, which indicates that he never took the matter seriously. In fact, there are reasons to believe that Mohammed actually benefitted from that chaotic state of the Quran. An undocumented Quran gave Mohammed the freedom to change his mind or contradict himself and get away with it because the earlier verses were forgotten or faded away from memory. Recording the ‘revealed’ verses in Medina took place in a casual manner that was carried out by whoever was available from those volunteering scribes. Some verses were written by more than one scribe, causing confusion, while others may never had the chance to be written at all, causing even more confusion.

The Quran was revealed in the seventh century in Arabic, a language that had not yet a well developed script. Many Arabic words with different meanings shared the same script. The Arabs solved this problem by adding different numbers of dots to the letters that share the same appearance, but that solution came years after Mohammed’s death. As an example, the Arabic word harb, which means war, has the same appearance like a dozen other words with completely different meanings, like these:

حرب.خرب.حزب.جرب.حزن.جزت.حزت.خزن

(The above words mean: war, damaged, party, tried, sadness, rewarded, caused pain, stored)


If you strip the letters from their dots, all the words look exactly the same, and it was left to the readers’ common sense and intelligence to work out which particular word was meant by a particular script.

Ideally, for a better preservation of the Quran, Allah should have educated Mohammed and created the dots before ‘revealing’ the Quran.

The Arabs claim that their language is a superior language, hence chosen by Allah as His official means of communication. Other Muslims agree with that claim and praise the language as the most beautiful, without even speaking the language. The truth is that Arabic is a complicated language that is difficult to develop especially that it is now attached to the Quran, which is holding it back.

Even in our time, and after the ‘invention’ of the dots, reading an Arabic text is still a guess work. Arabic books and newspapers are printed without the diacritical marks to reduce the clutter around the words. The diacritical marks were ‘invented’ over a century after the dots. Without the diacritical marks, the fourth word in the above example, Jarab, could be read as follows: Jarraba=tried, Jurriba=has been tried, Jarab=plague, Jurub= suffering of plague!

Writing technology in Arabia was very primitive and employed poor quality and perishable writing materials like palm leaves and bones.

Although we only read the Islamic history from it’s heavily biased Islamic sources, but we frequently stumble upon some historical facts like the following:

Ibn Massoud was renowned among Mohammed’s companions as the most notable in his knowledge of the Quran; it is claimed that he recorded his own copy which he kept with him. Ibn Massoud’s copy of the Quran was significantly different from the official copy of Uthman, which he refused to recognize (2). Some verses were lost, even the ones kept in Mohammed’s own house! Aysha admitted that she used to keep the stoning verse under her bed until it was eaten by a goat! (3)

AlHajaj Ibn Youssef Al Thakafi, the ruthless ruler of Iraq during the Umayyad dynasty, made many changes to the official Quran many years after Uthman(4).

Political corruption, power struggle and instability characterised the period of Uthman’s rule. It was in such unhealthy political climate when Uthman ordered the compilation of the Quran.

Uthman sent four copies of his official Quran to the various regions of the expanding Islamic state and kept one copy in Medina. None of those copies seem to have survived. There is no evidence that any of the old copies of the Quran we have today dates back to Uthman’s time. The oldest copy available, which is the manuscripts of Sanna/ yemen, dates back to many decades after Uthman and contains significant differences from the current copies of the Quran (5).

Many Muslim scholars are aware of the weakness of the argument that the Quran was documented during Mohammed’s time. They claim that the Quran was preserved mainly in the Muslims chests, the written documentation was only a backup! Unfortunately for them, making such a claim is like digging the grave for the Quran because the main reason behind writing a formal copy of the Quran, and burning all the others, was to stop the disagreements between Muslims. The Quranic verses that were preserved in the Muslims’ chests were so different that they accused each other with kufr (unbelieving)!

The Quran is probably the least authentic document in Islam as evidenced from the state of confusion and disagreements that prevailed among the early Muslims. The early Muslims disagreed on what constituted part of the Quran and what didn’t. Ibn Massoud’s copy of the Quran included two chapters less than Uthman’s copy because he did not believe the last two chapters were actually Quranic chapters (2). Others reported that surat tauba (chapter nine, which contains 129 verses) used to be as long as surat Bakara (chapter two, which contains 286 verses) before the verses gone missing (2). Abdullah Ibn Umar reportedly said, 'Let none of you say, "I have got the whole of the Qur'an." How does he know what all of it is? Much of the Quran has gone’. Let him say instead, I have got what has survived (6). The enormous amounts of repetitions and contradictions could be an indication of some degree of duplication and manipulation of the original text.

According to the existing Quran, the penalty of adultery is only described in verses Q. 24:2 (flogging hundred lashes) and Q4: 15 (house detention) and nowhere in the Quran is stoning mentioned. However, Muslims agreed for fourteen hundreds years that the penalty of adultery is stoning to death because the verse, which abrogated the above two verses, was there and remains effective in its orders hukman even though its words were cancelled kawlan. We can add this logic to the pile of other bizarre justifications used by Muslims to understand the Quran. However, we have the right to ask: why Allah keeps in the Quran the obsolete verses and omits the valid ones?

References:
1. Ali Dashti, 23 years, a study of prophetic career of Mohammed.
2. Al Itqan fi ulum al Qur'an - Al Sayuti. ‘Arabic’
3. Ibn Maja,1944, Musnad Ahmed 25784 ‘Arabic’
4. Al Masahif- Sajistani ‘Arabic’
5. islam-watch.org
6. Abu Bakr al Suyuti, "al Itqan fi `ulum al Qur'an", 1935/1354, pt 2, p. 25) ‘Arabic’

Which is more authentic? I'll have ignore you but we need to set some things straight. "The prophet will not say anything unless what we ask him to". Therefore, muhammed word is Allah's word

Poster
We thank Almighty Allah that we received both the Glorious Qur'an and the hadiths through the medium of the Holy Prophet (S.A.W), The authenticity of the Gloriuos Qur'an has been attested to by both muslims and objective non muslim scholars. Not so the bible (especially the new testament) which is basically a collection of suposed stories about Jesus majority of whom were written by paul who never met Jesus (he wrote 14 out of 27 books of the new testament!)

Please read the account of how the bible came about

The most "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels got written by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, "like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John (see Against the Heresies). The four gospels then became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed, or lost." [Romer]

Elaine Pagels writes: "Although the gospels of the New Testament-- like those discovered at Nag Hammadi-- are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually wrote any of them." [Pagels, 1995]

Not only do we not know who wrote them, consider that none of the Gospels got written during the alleged life of Jesus, nor do the unknown authors make the claim to have met an earthly Jesus. Add to this that none of the original gospel manuscripts exist; we only have copies of copies.

The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after 70 C.E., and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. [Pagels, 1995; Helms]. This would make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have any Gospel writings that mention him! Elaine Pagels writes that "the first Christian gospel was probably written during the last year of the war, or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know; the work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark, " [Pagels, 1995]

The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories. Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authors as the actual disciples of Christ. Many Bibles still continue to label the stories as "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." No apostle would have announced his own sainthood before the Church's establishment of sainthood. But one need not refer to scholars to determine the lack of evidence for authorship. As an experiment, imagine the Gospels without their titles. See if you can find out from the texts who wrote them; try to find their names.

Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them, consider that the average life span of humans in the first century came to around 30, and very few people lived to 70. If the apostles births occured at about the same time as the alleged Jesus, and wrote their gospels in their old age, that would put Mark at least 70 years old, and John at over 110.

The gospel of Mark describes the first written Bible gospel. And although Mark appears deceptively after the Matthew gospel, the gospel of Mark got written at least a generation before Matthew. From its own words, we can deduce that the author of Mark had neither heard Jesus nor served as his personal follower. Whoever wrote the gospel, he simply accepted the mythology of Jesus without question and wrote a crude an ungrammatical account of the popular story at the time. Any careful reading of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) will reveal that Mark served as the common element between Matthew and Luke and gave the main source for both of them. Of Mark's 666* verses, some 600 appear in Matthew, some 300 in Luke. According to Randel Helms, the author of Mark, stands at least at a third remove from Jesus and more likely at the fourth remove. [Helms]

* Most Bibles show 678 verses for Mark, not 666, but many Biblical scholars think the last 12 verses came later from interpolation. The earliest manuscripts and other ancient sources do not have Mark 16: 9-20. Moreover the text style does not match and the transition between verse 8 and 9 appears awkward. Even some of today's Bibles such as the NIV exclude the last 12 verses.

The author of Matthew had obviously gotten his information from Mark's gospel and used them for his own needs. He fashioned his narrative to appeal to Jewish tradition and Scripture. He improved the grammar of Mark's Gospel, corrected what he felt theologically important, and heightened the miracles and magic.

The author of Luke admits himself as an interpreter of earlier material and not an eyewitness (Luke 1:1-4). Many scholars think the author of Luke lived as a gentile, or at the very least, a hellenized Jew and even possibly a woman. He (or she) wrote at a time of tension in the Roman empire along with its fever of persecution. Many modern scholars think that the Gospel of Matthew and Luke got derived from the Mark gospel and a hypothetical document called "Q" (German Quelle, which means "source". [Helms; Wilson] . However, since we have no manuscript from Q, no one could possibly determine its author or where or how he got his information or the date of its authorship. Again we get faced with unreliable methodology and obscure sources.

John, the last appearing Bible Gospel, presents us with long theological discourses from Jesus and could not possibly have come as literal words from a historical Jesus. The Gospel of John disagrees with events described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Moreover the book got written in Greek near the end of the first century, and according to Bishop Shelby Spong, the book "carried within it a very obvious reference to the death of John Zebedee (John 21:23)." [Spong]

Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitness accounts since they came as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and not from the characters themselves. The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person. People who wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person, not in the third person. Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus could only have come from the invention of its authors. For example, many of the statements of Jesus claim to have come from him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him? It becomes even more marked when the evangelists report about what Jesus thought. To whom did Jesus confide his thoughts? Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques that fictional writers use. In any case the Gospels can only serve, at best, as hearsay, and at worst, as fictional, mythological, or falsified stories.



f
. Comp

"Bible (im)morality"
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-739876.0.html

"Where Is Jesus"?
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-739871.0.html

"Bible Verses Churches Conceal From Your Ears":
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-743341.0.html

"Killing Children Is Bible Miracle"!
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-735998.0.html

"According To The Bible:if Your Wife Saves Your Life,you Cut Off Her Hand"!
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria?topic=736626.msg8931460#msg8931460

"Jesus Never Told Anyone He Will Die For Them"!
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-735489.0.html

"Bible Scholars Admit To Bible Text Discrepancies"
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-734053.0.html

"the Christian God:blood And Human Sacrifice"
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-651811.0.html

"original Sin"-linking It To An Imperfect God!
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-551599.0.html

"False Prophecies Of The New Testament" (bible)
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-550247.0.html

"The Quran Or The Bible,which Is God's Word"?
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-729581.0.html

"The Christian Resurrection Myth"!
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-739850.0.html

"Ill-fitting/hillarious Qualities Of God In The Bible"
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-739934.0.html

"Violent Christians,"turn-the-cheek" Pretenders Burning London And Other Cities"
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-732120.0.html

"Weekly Crusaders' Report-this Thread Would Be Updated Regularly"
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-732741.0.html

"Norway Christian Terrorist Motive:"to Demand Crusade Against Spread Of Islam"
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-719777.0.html

"German Priest Burns Himself To Death To Protest Spread Of Islam"
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-551584.0.html

"Why Muslims Pray In Arabic"?
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-574141.0.html

IN THE NAME OF GOD, MOST GRACIOUS,MOST MERCIFUL

@frosbel

I think the more you do this, the more the so called muslims realize that they in fact not muslims at all by virtue of what the word really means. muslim = submitter to GOD.

as usual, my time is constrained. Just know this; true believers in GOD understand what GOD means when He said the follow in the Qur'an. these words came directly from muhammad and not the hearsay called HADITH or SUNNA.


[6:38]  All the creatures on earth, and all the birds that fly with wings, are communities like you. We did not leave anything out of this book. To their Lord, all these creatures will be summoned.

[6:115]  The word of your Lord is[b] complete[/b], in truth and justice. Nothing shall abrogate His words. He is the Hearer, the Omniscient.


without wasting much energy, pls review the following videos prepared by a fellow true submitter(muslim) to GOD alone. This shatters everything about hadith and sunnah. All evidences are from Qur'an, narrated by - prophet Muhammad himself; Not hearsay


 http://www.youtube.com watch?v=hS5DXBX5_u4 -  ORIGIN OF HADITH(1 to 25) search youtube.

i do not knw how to embed the video, but i guess the link is sufficient.

Also, regarding Quran abrogation , i have already refuted that long ago. plus the supposed contradictions in the quran as well.   PEACE!!!


www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-638130.0.html  - ABROGATION THEORY SHATTERED

www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-592540.0.html - QURAN CONTRADICTION SHATTERED


Discover the truth:

to find out if the quran is the word of GOD, review the following sites thoroughly.

www.submission.org
www.miracleof19.com
www.masjidtucson.org


Also, read the following books.(just do a google search, GOD will lead u to the links to get free copy)

1)The compute speaks GOD's message to the world - Rashad khalifa, PHD
2)Jesus : Myth and message - lisa spray (the author  now a true worshiper of GOD alone)
3)the myth of GOD incarnate
4)Quran, Hadith and Islam - Rashad khalifa, PHD.

free copies of 1, 2 and 4 can be found at the website  links 1 and 3 given above