Muhammad (pbuh), the Last Prophet

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For those who wish to learn the story of how Islam began and why it became so readily accepted and spread so rapidly throughout all of Arabia and eventually the lands beyond, here is a short animated movie which does a fairly decent job of explaining how the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) brought this divine Message to all of humankind.
 
From: dosdog2 (Original Message) Sent: 5/16/2007 5:09 PM
So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression—an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.

Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity—and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion—has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years

Whether we admire the Crusaders or not, it is a fact that the world we know today would not exist without their efforts. The ancient faith of Christianity, with its respect for women and antipathy toward slavery, not only survived but flourished. Without the Crusades, it might well have followed Zoroastrianism, another of Islam’s rivals, into extinction.

crisismagazine.com/april2002/cover.htm

Myth 1: The Crusades were wars of unprovoked aggression against a peaceful Muslim world.

Myth 2: The Crusaders wore crosses, but they were really only interested in capturing booty and land. Their pious platitudes were just a cover for rapacious greed.

Myth 3: When the Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099 they massacred every man, woman, and child in the city until the streets ran ankle deep with the blood

Myth 4: The Crusades were just medieval colonialism dressed up in religious finery

Myth 5: The Crusades were also waged against the Jews.

Myth 6: The Crusades were so corrupt and vile that they even had a Children’s Crusade.

Myth 7: Pope John Paul II apologized for the Crusades

Myth 8: Muslims, who remember the Crusades vividly, have good reason to hate the West

ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/print2005/tmadden_crusades_print.html

In Summary
Muhammad never finalized how the Qur’an was to be recited and allowed variation. There were real variations in the way the Qur’an was being memorized and recited after Muhammad’s death. This caused problems.

Uthman and a team of others did a certain amount of editing to produce a standard text of the Qur’an. Then Uthman ordered that all other Qur’ans be burnt and his version be made the only standard version for the Muslim world. Oral and written tradition now had to conform to Uthman’s standard version.
Some of the Companions, like Ibn Mas’ud, were not happy with Uthman’s actions and suffered for it.

Conclusion
At the beginning of this article we considered the following claims:
The text of the Qur’an is entirely reliable. It has been as it is, unaltered, unedited, not tampered with in any way, since the time of its revelation. (M. Fethullah Gulen, Questions this Modern Age Puts to Islam. London: Truestar, 1993. p.58)

It (the Qur’an) was memorised by Mohammed and then dictated to his companions, and written down by scribes, who cross-checked it during his lifetime. Not one word of its 114 chapters (suras) have ever been changed over the centuries. (Understanding Islam and the Muslims, The Australian Federation of Islamic Councils Inc. (pamphlet) Nov. 1991).

Having now read many of the hadiths and other sources it is obvious that these Muslim claims are an exaggeration and have no support at all from the authoritative hadiths. In fact the hadiths record the opposite. They say that Muhammad never standardized the Qur’an and allowed variation and that the early Muslims memorized the Qur’an slightly differently. Then Uthman and a team of others edited and standardized one version of the Qur’an and had all others burnt. I have no doubt that the collection of the Qur’an that Uthman made is one good record of what Muhammad recited. However it was not the only good collection that was made, and it was not a collection made by Muhammad.

answering-islam.org/Green/uthman.htm
answering-islam.org/Nehls/tt1/tt4.html
 
There is just no plausible way that the text of the Qur’an could have been corrupted or altered.

The following is an excerpt from an article

One of the most common myths about the Qur’an, is that Usman (r.a.), the third Caliph of Islam authenticated and compiled one Qur’an, from a large set of mutually contradicting copies. The Qur’an, revered as the Word of Allah (swt) by Muslims the world over, is the same Qur’an as the one revealed to Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). It was authenticated and written under his personal supervision. We will examine the roots of the myth which says that Usman (r.a.) had the Qur’an authenticated.:
  1. Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) himself supervised and authenticated the written texts of the Qur’an
Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was an Ummi who could not read and write. Therefore, after receiving each revelation, he would repeat it to his Companions. They would write down the revelation, and he would recheck by asking them to read what they had written. If there was any mistake, the Prophet would immediately point it out and have it corrected and rechecked. Similarly he would even recheck and authenticate the portions of the Qur’an memorized by the Companions. In this way, the complete Qur’an was written down under the personal supervision of the Prophet (pbuh).
  1. Order and sequence of Qur’an divinely inspired
The complete Qur’an was revealed over a period of 22½ years portion by portion, as and when it was required. The Qur’an was not compiled by the Prophet in the chronological order of revelation. The order and sequence of the Qur’an too was Divinely inspired and was instructed to the Prophet by Allah (swt) through archangel Jibraeel. Whenever a revelation was conveyed to his companions, the Prophet would also mention in which surah (chapter) and after which ayat (verse) this new revelation should fit.

Every Ramadhaan all the portions of the Qur’an that had been revealed, including the order of the verses, were revised and reconfirmed by the Prophet with archangel Jibraeel. During the last Ramadhaan, before the demise of the Prophet, the Qur’an was rechecked and reconfirmed twice.

It is therefore clearly evident that the Qur’an was compiled and authenticated by the Prophet himself during his lifetime, both in the written form as well as in the memory of several of his Companions.
  1. Qur’an copied on one common material
The complete Qur’an, along with the correct sequence of the verses, was present during the time of the Prophet (pbuh). The verses however, were written on separate pieces, scrapes of leather, thin flat stones, leaflets, palm branches, shoulder blades, etc. After the demise of the prophet, Abu Bakr (r.a.), the first caliph of Islam ordered that the Qur’an be copied from the various different materials on to a common material and place, which was in the shape of sheets. These were tied with strings so that nothing of the compilation was lost.
  1. Usman (r.a.) made copies of the Qur’an from the original manuscript
Many Companions of the Prophet used to write down the revelation of the Qur’an on their own whenever they heard it from the lips of the Prophet. However what they wrote was not personally verified by the Prophet and thus could contain mistakes and there were high possibilities of different portions of the Qur’an being missed by different Companions. This gave rise to disputes among Muslims regarding the different contents of the Qur’an during the period of the third Caliph Usman (r.a.).

Usman (r.a.) borrowed the original manuscript of the Qur’an, which was authorized by the beloved Prophet (pbuh), from Hafsha (may Allah be pleased with her), the Prophet’s wife. Usman (r.a.) ordered four Companions who were among the scribes who wrote the Qur’an when the Prophet dictated it, led by Zaid bin Thabit (r.a.) to rewrite the script in several perfect copies. These were sent by Usman (r.a.) to the main centres of Muslims.

Two such copies of the copied text of the original Qur’an authenticated by the Prophet are present to this day, one at the museum in Tashkent in erstwhile Soviet Union and the other at the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul, Turkey.

And so, there is really no doubt at all that Qur’an that we see today is, word for word and syllable for syllable, exactly the same copy that was authenticated by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) himself before his demise.
 
The oldest Qur’an dates from around 790 A.D. (after Jesus), and it is in the British Library. That’s 158 years after Muhammad’s death the manuscript of the Qur’an housed in the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul, Turkey is one of the oldest sources. Muslims say it dates from around 650 A.D. There is a problem with this. This document is written in Kufic (also known as al-Khatt al-Kufi) script. Coins in the British Museum show that the first coins using the Kufic script date from the mid to end of the 8th century (750-800 A.D.). The only script used during and after Muhammad’s days was the Jazm script The Samarkand (aka: Othman Koran) manuscript in the Soviet Library in Tashkent, Uzbekistan also uses the Kufic script, indicating late 8th century. Many believe it is the oldest in existence. Only About one-third of the original survives This Samarkand codice manuscript is considerably incomplete. It only begins in the middle of verse 7 of Suratul-Baqarah (the second Surah) and from there on numerous pages are missing. The next oldest Muslim manuscripts are also from the 8th-century. One is written in al-ma’il script and the other in Kufic. Neither of these correspond precisely to today’s Qur’an. Also, scraps found in Yemen differ and contradict today’s Qur’an These Yemeni Qur’an scraps are actually the oldest found, and it is Hijazi. Hijazi (Makkan or Madinan) script, is the script in which the earliest masahif of the Qur’an were written Sura 2:140 this sura says; "…who is more unjust than those who conceal the testimony they have from Allah?..?"nowhere does this Sura state that the Jews and Christians corrupted their scriptures.

debate.org.uk/topics/history/bib-qur/qurmanu.htm
 
This article adequately explains that the origin of Kufic or the angular style of Arabic script is traced back to about one hundred years before the foundation of Kufah (17H / 638CE) to which town it owes its name because of its development there.

And this article reports on the Qur’anic manuscript at the al-Hussein mosque in Cairo, written in large Arabic script, which is perhaps the oldest of all the manuscripts, and is either `Uthmanic or an exact copy from the original with similarity to the Madinan script.

And so, there is indeed ample evidence to show that the Qur’an that we have today is the word for word and syllable for syllable, exact copy from the original that was authenticated by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) himself before he died.
 
It is important to note that the city of Kufa, which is in present day Iraq, was a city which would have been Sassanid or Persian before that time (637-8 A.D.). Thus, while Arabic would have been known there, it would not have been the predominant language, let alone the predominant script until much later.

We know in fact, that the Kufic script reached its perfection during the late eighth century (up to one hundred and fifty years after Muhammad’s death) and thereafter it became widely used throughout the Muslim world (Lings & Safadi 1976:12,17; Gilchrist 1989:145-146). This makes sense, since after 750 A.D. the Abbasids controlled Islam, and due to their Persian background were headquartered in the Kufa and Baghdad areas. They would thus have wanted their script to dominate. Having been themselves dominated by the Umayyads (who were based in Damascus) for around 100 years, it would now be quite understandable that an Arabic script which originated in their area of influence, such as the Kufic script would evolve into that which we find in these two documents mentioned here.

Therefore, it stands to reason that both the Topkapi and Samarkand Manuscripts, because they are written in the Kufic script, could not have been written earlier than 150 years after the Uthmanic Recension was supposedly compiled; at the earliest the late 700s or early 800s (Gilchrist 1989:144-147).

We do know that there were two earlier Arabic scripts which most modern Muslims are not familiar with. These are the al-Ma’il Script, developed in the Hijaz, particularly in Mecca and Medina, and the Mashq Script, also developed in Medina (Lings & Safadi 1976:11; Gilchrist 1989:144-145). The al-Ma’il Script came into use in the seventh century and is easily identified, as it was written at a slight angle (see the example on page 16 of Gilchrist’s Jam’ al-Qur’an, 1989). In fact the word al-Ma’il means “slanting.” This script survived for about two centuries before falling into disuse.

The Mashq Script also began in the seventh century, but continued to be used for many centuries. It is more horizontal in form and can be distinguished by its somewhat cursive and leisurely style (Gilchrist 1989:144). There are those who believe that the Mashq script was a forerunner to the later Kufic script, as there are similarities between the two.

If the Qur’an had been compiled at this time in the seventh century, then one would expect it to have been written in either the Ma’il or Mashq script.

Interestingly, we do have a Qur’an written in the Ma’il script, and considered to be the earliest Qur’an in our possession today. Yet it is not found in either Istanbul or Tashkent, but, ironically, it resides in the British Museum in London (Lings & Safadi 1976:17,20; Gilchrist 1989:16,144). It has been dated towards the end of the eighth century (790 A.D.) by Martin Lings, the former curator for the manuscripts of the British Museum, who is himself, a practising Muslim.

Therefore, with the help of script analysis, we are quite certain that there is no known manuscript of the Qur’an which we possess today which can be dated from the seventh century (Gilchrist 1989:147-148,153).

I smell a case of Reformed Egyptian here
geocities.com/elf_sopron2005/jay/quran-js.pdf
 
hamba2han said:
For those who wish to learn the story of how Islam began and why it became so readily accepted and spread so rapidly throughout all of Arabia and eventually the lands beyond, here is a short animated movie which does a fairly decent job of explaining how the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) brought this divine Message to all of humankind.
Click to expand...
I’ll watch that one when I have some time, thanks. Here is another movie worth watching and is much shorter and to the point.
 
Verisimilitude said:
I’ll watch that one when I have some time, thanks. Here is another movie worth watching and is much shorter and to the point.
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Just saw the little movie:bigyikes:

:eek: For disbelievers there is a lot of hell and fire to look forward too. Very bleak exsitence. I am glad I am Catholic.
 
QuietTimes said:
Just saw the little movie:bigyikes:

:eek: For disbelievers there is a lot of hell and fire to look forward too. Very bleak exsitence. I am glad I am Catholic.
Click to expand...
According to Islam you are a disbeliever.
 
BelFarfalla said:
According to Islam you are a disbeliever.
Click to expand...
I think they meant something along the lines of, since they are Catholic (and not Muslim) then Muslim beliefs don’t apply to him/her in the afterlife? 🤷 Sorry if I got it wrong. IMO it doesn’t matter as Islam has no bearing on reality either way…
 
exoflare said:
I think they meant something along the lines of, since they are Catholic (and not Muslim) then Muslim beliefs don’t apply to him/her in the afterlife? 🤷 Sorry if I got it wrong. IMO it doesn’t matter as Islam has no bearing on reality either way…
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You may be right about what was meant. But it could be taken either way.
For a long time I believed it when Muslims told me that we are all ‘people of the book’ and that they see us as believers so in their eyes Catholics are believers. After digging deeper and questioning more it became evident that this is not the case. They see all Christians as basically being pagan because we believe in the Holy Trinity. They consider this ‘disbelief’ and to Muslims disbelief is worse then death. Further, Islam states that Jews and Christian do not live by the laws of God, that the bible is a forgery and so the covenant was taken away from Jews and Christians and given to Muslims. So according to them we have no hope.
But I agree with you… it doesn’t matter as Islam has no bearing on reality either way
 
hamba2han said:
There is just no plausible way that the text of the Qur’an could have been corrupted or altered.
Click to expand...
I have little to no opinion whether or not the Koran has been corrupted. It matters little, because it came from the mind of an man who had no authority to speak as he did. What is plausible is that the spirit who visited Muhammad in that cave was not an angelic spirit, and that he was deceived.

But by the same traditions that preserved the Qur’an, misguided as it is, shares a history, though much older and more venerated that preserved the OT & NT which Muhammad denies as accurate. How can you argue the process proves correct for Islam and not for the others?

If you are using reason to determine the correctness of one over the other, the former texts carry much more weight in both authority and proven accuracy over the centuries. Muhammed was neither the last, or a prophet of God.
 
dosdog said:
Therefore, with the help of script analysis, we are quite certain that there is no known manuscript of the Qur’an which we possess today which can be dated from the seventh century (Gilchrist 1989:147-148,153).

I smell a case of Reformed Egyptian here
geocities.com/elf_sopron2005/jay/quran-js.pdf
Click to expand...
Refer to my link regarding the restoration of what is believed to be the oldest Qur’an manuscript in existence which is kept at the al-Hussein mosque in Cairo and the following is an excerpt from the article:

The restoration project is the brainchild of Dr. Souad Maher, the former dean of Cairo University archeology department, who is renowned for being the first female to attain a doctorate in Islamic history in the Arab world. She has long been involved in the renovations of the relics in the mosque and during the 1960s she verified the authentidty of the relics, using the scientific carbon-testing method to determine that the relics and the Qur’an dated back to the time of the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh).
 
Verisimilitude said:
But by the same traditions that preserved the Qur’an, misguided as it is, shares a history, though much older and more venerated that preserved the OT & NT which Muhammad denies as accurate. How can you argue the process proves correct for Islam and not for the others?
Click to expand...
Is there a copy of the Gospel in existence which has been authenticated by Jesus (pbuh) himself?.. Or even Paul for that matter??

Who wrote the Bible?

Muslims have no such issues whatsoever with regard to authentication of the Qur’an.
 
BelFarfalla said:
According to Islam you are a disbeliever.
Click to expand...
👍 I know I am, I am a catholic and proud of it.
It was just shocking to read all the verses that had the words disbeliever, hell, fire, and punishment, thats what we have to look forward to if that religion was true. But it is NOT so thats that.
 
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