Textual History of the Qur'an: Difference between revisions

Jump to navigation Jump to search
[checked revision][checked revision]
(→‎Status of Qira'at in Islamic Scripture: The two valleys already appears in another section of the article)
Line 396: Line 396:
A more extensive study of differences between the Hafs and Warsh transmissions and comparisons with Qur'an manuscripts can be read online<ref>[http://www.free-minds.org/sites/default/files/WhichQuran.pdf Which Qur'an? by Layth Al-Shaiban]</ref>.
A more extensive study of differences between the Hafs and Warsh transmissions and comparisons with Qur'an manuscripts can be read online<ref>[http://www.free-minds.org/sites/default/files/WhichQuran.pdf Which Qur'an? by Layth Al-Shaiban]</ref>.


The most common apologetic defence of the preservation doctrine claims that all of the 7 canonical qira'at (readings) were recited by Muhammad. They claim that even when the variants are completely different words or when words are added or ommitted, that these are all divinely revealed alternatives. This doesn't address variants that contradict each other, nor explain the suspicious fact that the variants words generally either sound similar to each other or look identical in the early consonantal text without dots. In any case, such obviously contrived attempts to salvage the preservation doctrine in such a way as to make it almost meaningless and unfalsifiable are incredible, even by the standards of Islam, a religion built full of contrivances to escape difficult questions.
The standard Islamic view is that every variant within the canonical qira'at (readings) were recited by Muhammad, and the canonical readers made choices from among the authentic variants passed down to them. They claim that even when the variants are completely different words or when words are added or omitted, that these are all divinely revealed alternatives. This doesn't address variants that contradict each other, nor explain why there would be so many authentic variants that just so happened to be accomodated by the Uthmanic orthography or sound similar.


===Origin of the Qira'at Variants===
===Origin of the Qira'at Variants===
Editors, em-bypass-2, Reviewers, rollback, Administrators
2,743

edits

Navigation menu