Prof. Hamid Naseem Rafiabadi
The Cambridge Companion to the Quran has brought the subject of authenticity of the Quran to fore once again. This is published by Cambridge University Press, edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe (Scholar). She has brought together an international team of Scholars to talk about this subject and others as well. They discuss the formation of the Quranic Text.
There is description and Analysis of the content’s transmission and dissemination, Interpretations and intellectual traditions and contemporary readings. There are fourteen Chapters by the West top Scholars. They are all non-Muslims. This is definitely an academic text and is written by Scholars for students of the subject and when we read from a chapter by a very distinguished professor of the Quran from the University of Berlin Angelica Neuwirth,whose name is very well known to students of the Quran in the West.
She discusses this subject about the reliability of the Text and also, offers her comment on the traditional story that Muslims say about the origins of the Quran and about Hazrat Uthman (RA) and so on. Is that, something, we can take seriously anymore or do we have to jettison that no Muslim narrative about the reception and the origin of the Quran? We can get the sense of what she is saying, but her conclusions are really important, of course because she is among the experts of the Quranic Studies .She is among the experts and does not represent the Christian missionaries with an axe to grind to do down Muslims and do down Islam and destroy the Quran.
About the Structural, linguistic and literary features: The Pre-canonical Quran,
Angelika Neuwirth writes: The presentation of quranic [Quranic] in this chapter presupposes the reliability of the basic data of traditional accounts about the emergence of the Quran, assuming the transmitted Quranic Text to be the genuine collection of the communications of the Prophet (SAW) as pronounced during his activities at Mecca (about 610-22 C.E), and again at Medina (1/622 until his death in 11/632).
It is true that the earlier consensus of scholarly opinion on the origins of Islam has, since the publication of John Wansbrough’s Quranic studies and Patricia Crone, and Michael Cook’s, Hagarism, been shattered, and that various attempts at a new reconstruction of those origins have been put forward. As a whole, however, the theories of the so-called skeptic or revisionist scholars who, arguing historically, make a radical break with the transmitted picture of Islamic origins, shifting them in both time and place from the seventh to the eighth or ninth century and from the Arabian Peninsula to the Fertile Crescent, have by now been discarded.
The radical attacks in the 1970’s some people, Patricia Crone, Michael Cook, Jhon Wansbrough, who really criticize the traditional Muslim narrative of the origins of the Quran. This radical revisionist attack has basically been abandoned by Scholars. It is been looked up analyzed, assessed and it’s been found wanting. So, it is now been discarded. These radical theories peddled by certain well-known missionaries? Like I’ll mention one name Jay Smith, these are been discarded now by Serious Scholars.
Though many of their critical observations remain challenging and still call for investigation.
So, they raise interesting questions, but their basic theory of rejecting the traditional account of the origins of the Quran has been discarded. Otherwise, they rejected it. There been so many earlier and earlier manuscript fragments or whole manuscripts of the Quran been found over the recent years. We have a wealth of manuscript evidence. Now that goes back to the within the first century of the time of the prophet and this makes a big difference.
New findings of chronic text fragments are convinced to affirm rather than calling to question the traditional picture of the Quran as an early fixed text composed of the Sūra’s, we have.
So, these manuscripts confirm the traditional account that the Quran was fixed in the form. We know it very early on and we now know this because we have the evidence, we have empirical evidence hard facts the actual manuscripts themselves, which prove this.
Nor have scholars trying to deconstruct that image through linguistic arguments succeeded in seriously discrediting the genuineness of the Quran, as we know it. These include the work of Christoph Luxenberg, who views the Quran as an originally Syriac–Arabic melange later adapted to the rules of classical Arabic, and Gunter Luling, who reads the Quran as a collection of hymns composed in a Christian Arabic dialect and later revised to fit the grammatical rules newly established in the eighth and ninth centuries. So, these are some of the crazy ideas that have been weighed and found wanting and dismissed.
Whereas Luling’s reference to the earlier hypothesis by Karl Vollers, who had identified the original language of the Quran as broadly dialectal, points to a yet unresolved problem, Luxenberg’s assumption of a Syriac–Arabic linguistic mélange as the original language of the Qur’ān lacks a methodologically sound basis. This is a scholarly way of saying that it has no basis. There’s no evidence for it. It’s just a hypothesis and speculation. The alternative visions about the genesis of the Quran presented by Wansbrough, Crone and Cook, Luling and Luxenberg are not only mutually exclusive (they will contradict each other), but rely on textual observations that are too selective to be compatible with the comprehensive Quranic textual evidence that can be drawn only from a systematically microstructural reading.
The alternative is the revisionist scholars about the origins of the Quran, Wansbrough Crone, Crook, Luling, and Luxembourg. Not only do they contradict each other, so they can’t all be true. They rely on textual observations that are to selectively; in other words, they don’t use a comprehensive wide basis of evidence. They have very selectively picked on little things and make big theories.
They are not looking at comprehensive, as Angelika Neuwirth calls it, Quranic Textual evidence not looking at all the evidence. The conclusion has been drawn on this top expert, who is not a Muslim at the University of Berlin, expert on the Quran is that, the traditional Muslim story of the Genesis of the Quran and other ways, it was given to Muhammad [Muhammad (PBUH)] during his own lifetime, codified into one single Text. [The Uthāmnic Script of the Qur’ān]. This has not been successfully challenged by the radical and sceptical Scholars. These radical skeptical Scholars are now pretty much not accepted as having anything valid any longer, their theories are discarded. Although some of the questions, that they raise of Interest. She assumes the genuineness of the Quranic Text that we have today, being the same Text that goes back to Muhammad [Muhammad (PBUH)]. So, that is her working hypothesis has not been successfully challenged by radical sceptical scholars.
We have two very different views. The views of Christian missionaries, who say we don’t have a reliable Text, and we have the views of the experts, the scholars, the people who are professors in this subject, who say the opposite? Recommending this book to the scholars and students of the similar field Paul says, this book is worth getting against a scholarly text. It is a very advanced text, but it provides you some real information about actual scholarly research rather than perhaps the propaganda that you will come across from Christian websites and missionaries. Thus even the non-Muslim scholars of the West have proven that the Quran is same text, which was finally compiled during Hazrat Osman’s (RA) period.
Now let us take a look what the fraudulent WaseemRizvi says with malicious intentions about the Quran.He is just a frustrated person who has no credentials to talk about the Quran and what humbug he has espoused can easily be laughed out of the court after the above discovery and even the cursory look at the history of compilation of the Quran.
To start with a PIL filed by the former chairman of the UP Shia Central Waqf Board, WaseemRizvi, to remove 26 verses of the Quran has triggered a massive outrage over the issue.Muslims across the party lines have condemned this foolish and provocative action of the so-called Shia leader who has been condemned both by Shia and Sunni clerks and leaders equally and sometimes the stand against him taken by Shia clerks is harsher even.
Even the BJP leader ShahnawazHussain has said that his party firmly condemns whoever insults any religious text.
Floating the unsubstantiated plea, whichRizvi filed in which he has said that 26 verses were not part of the original text and promoted terrorism.
The plea said, “These verses were added to the Quran, by the first three Caliphs, to aid the expansion of Islamic domain Shia cleric Maulana Kalbe Jawad, who led a protest against WaseemRizvi, said, “WaseemRizvi is an enemy of Islam and Quran and a social boycott of him is declared. He is also being declared a terrorist.”
Sunni clerics were also part of the protest along with Maulana Kalbe Jawad. More than a dozen Shia-Sunni clerics were present, including Maulana Salman Nadvi, Imam FazlurRahman of the famous Teele Wali mosque and senior Supreme Court lawyer Mehmood Pracha.
Kalbe Jawad said that a joint Shia, Sunni protest would be organised on March 19 after prayers at Delhi’s Jama Masjid. He said that the protesters would demand Rizvi’s arrest.
The All India Muslim Personal Law Board too criticisedRizvi’s plea. Times of India quoted MaulanaWaliRahmani as saying, “No Muslim believes this and Rizvi is infamous for creating rift between the Muslim communities. Rizvi’s family has also distanced itself from the incident with his brother saying on a video circulated online that the family members have nothing to do with his actions. WasimRizvi is a notorious person and has been in news for his statements on issues such as triple talaq and the Ayodhya dispute, as well as for the cases of corruption and promoting enmity against him. I wonder with such a notorious character how he was elevated to have been appointed earlier. There are already cases of corruption against him and for promoting enmity among various communities. He has been the chairman of the UP Shia Central Waqaf Board till last year and had held this post for over a decade.
Razavi is son of a Class II railways employee, and has been very poorly educated, as he “never finished college.”He was elected a Samajwadi Party (SP) corporator from Kashmiri Mohalla ward of Old City in Lucknow in 2000, and in 2008, became a member of the Shia Waqf Board.
After observing all these details it can easily be understood that a person of such dubious credentials is challenging the authenticity of the Quran and had there been any substance in his concoctions we could have responded accordingly as Islamic scholars have already authenticated the present form of theQuranic structure and contents.There have been many attempts from various unscrupulous elements down the ages who either challenged the Quran or just wanted to present their own version like it.But all have failed miserably and finally they have accepted that the present structure of the Holy Quran is the most authentic version of the divine revelation and not even an iota has been changed or altered from the original text complied during the time of Hazrat Osman (RA).
(Author is Head, Department of Religious Studies, Central University of Kashmir. Former Director, Shah-i-Hamadan Institute of Islamic Studies, University of Kashmir Srinagar. He can be reached on hamidnaseem@gmail.com)
