After Jesus, there is a long gap before the arrival of Muhammad. He was sent as the last prophet to deliver the guidance from Allah. The guidance Muhammad brought for Mankind is given in the Quran. The Quran was written down and compiled as a book during the lifetime of the Prophet. It was also memorised by many during the lifetime of the Prophet. Thus it is the only Book of Revelation which has remained totally intact, whereas the Scriptures brought by the previous prophets were not written down during their lifetime and were manifestly corrupted by human interference. Moreover, the Quran was sent as a guidance for all mankind and not for one section of people. The Quran is the last Revelation of Allah to mankind, a Book which has remained intact, untainted by human interference, and the Prophet Muhammad was the last messenger to receive revelation from Allah. The Quran describes him as the seal of the prophets. (33:40) Muhammad is not the father of any man among you, but he is the messenger of Allah and the Seal of the Prophets; and Allah is aware of all things. The Hadith literature creates doubt about the authenticity of the Quran by stating that the Quran, as a book, was compiled during the time of Caliph Othman by collecting all the Quranic sheets which were with different people. Yet, when Allah constantly refers to the Quran as a book (Al-Kitab) which was set down in writing as it was revealed, it is impossible to believe that the Prophet did not manage to compile the Quran as a book, over the time period of 23 years it took for the Quran to be fully revealed. Such thinking is a reflection of the total inability of a large number of Muslims to think beyond what is written in the Hadith literature i.e. in this instance, that the Quran was compiled during the time of Othman. Leaving aside the claims which the Quran itself makes of itself as a book we can turn to the purely historical perspective. We know for certain that at the time of Jesus the Mediterranean world already had great libraries, bookshops, and many professional writers (scribes). As Arabia was a trading route, and the Arabs were a trading nation, there is a compelling body of evidence to draw one to the view that the Arabs had literate members of their society just like other countries in the region, for good, sound economic reasons if nothing else, and that the Quran was written down and compiled as a book (kitab) during the life time of the Prophet just as it – the Quran – claims. This argument becomes unassailable when one recalls that this Messenger, sent as he was some 600 years after Jesus, was a man renowned for his fear of God and faithfulness to his duty. Is it feasible that he would have omitted to take basic measures for the preservation of the text! How much more plausible than the hearsay assertion (through many tellers) that it took Othman to collate the text out of a motley collection of pages from here and there, as the Hadith literature would have it!
Posted on: Fri, 26 Dec 2014 19:33:25 +0000
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