Oaks on the Koran

[Guest guest]

History of the Koran

 

In the introduction to his book on the Koran, the author N.J. Dawood,

himself a Muslim, notes that "For Muslims it (the Koran) is the

infallible word of God, a transcript of a Tablet preserved in heaven,

revealed to the prophet Mohamad by the Angel Gabriel. Except in the

opening verses and some few passages in which the Prophet or the

Angel speaks in the first person, the speaker throughout is

God............ At the Kaba, the Meccans worshipped not only Allah,

the Supreme Semitic God, but also a number of female deities whom

they regarded as the daughter of Allah ............ According to

Muslim tradition one night in Ramadhan, about the year 610, as he was

asleep or in a trance, the Angel Gabriel came to him and

said 'Recite'. He replied 'what shall I recite ?' The order was

repeated three times, until the angel himself said 'Recite the name

of your Lord who created man from clots of blood'. (Koran means

recital). God speaks in the first person plural which often

changes to the first person singular or the 3rd person singular in

the course of the same sentence. 'Recite. 'Your Lord is the most

beautiful one, who by the pen taught man what he did not

know'? ......When he awake, these words, we are told, seemed to

be 'inscribed upon his heart'...... Mohamed, who disclaimed the

power to perform miracles, firmly believed that he was the messenger

of God sent forth to confirm previous scriptures. The Koran accused

the Jews of corrupting the scriptures, and the Christians of

worshipping Jesus as the Son of God...... The Koranic revelations

followed each other at brief intervals and were at first committed to

memory by professional remembrancers. During Mohamed's lifetime

verses were written on palm

 

leaves, stones and any material that came to hand. Their collection

was completed during the Caliphate of Omar, the 2nd Caliph, and an

authorized version was established during the Caliphate of Othman,

his successor (644-56)... the chapters were arranged generally in

order of length, the longest coming first and the shortest

last ...... The Koran contains many statements which, if not

recognized as altogether obscure, lead themselves to more than one

interpretation ...... About the cryptic Arabic letters which head

certain chapters of the Koran ...... various theories have been put

forward by Muslim and Western scholars to explain their meaning but

none of them is satisfactory ...... No one knows what they stand for.

Traditional commentators dismiss them by saying Allah alone knows

what he means by these letters".'

That in short is a general history of the Koran. Let us now

critically examine it.

(1) The statement that the Koran is the infallible word of God is

untenable since the Koran contains numerous letters, words and

statements which nobody understands.

(2) Since the Koran was ostensibly given out in Arabic it was

obviously intended only for the Arabs and not for anybody else since

Arabic was not a universal language.

(3) It is known that Mohamed could neither read nor write. If then he

used to sit alone in a dark cave meditating who used to take down the

long passages inspired in his mind ?

(4) It is said that such inspired passages were written down (by

whom ?) on brick, stone, wall, or on any surface with anything. If

that is so, Arabic scribbling scratched

Footnote- (1) Pp. 9-10. Introduction to the book-THE KORAN, by N. J.

Dawood, Penguin Classics, 4th revised edition, 1974.

 

637

on such rough and nondescript surfaces with crude devices would never

be decipherable.

(5) How was such heterogeneous material, scattered over different

places and left to the mercy of the weather and intruders, ever

collected together ? What guarantee was there that all such

written record was collected together and nothing was left out and

nothing was added ?

(6) How can such a heterogeneous record namely, tile, brick, stone

and plaster of vastly varying sizes be ever kept together for 20

years ? It will all look like junk and debris and get mixed up with

other junk and debris.

(7) Why did Allah make Mohamed a vehicle or medium for the

transmission of such a voluminous text when Allah knew that Mohamed

could neither read nor write ? Or at least why did not Allah turn

Mohamed into a great scholar-scribe overnight and provide him with

good stationery which could be properly filed ?

(8) Since the present Koran took shape at the time of the third

Caliph i e. 20 years after Mohamed's death it is apparent that the

Koran did not exist during Mohamed's own time and that therefore, the

Koran as it is now compiled isn't the one Mohamed on earth heard from

heaven.

(9) In any case since the Koran is not arranged in the order in which

it was delivered but has been manhandled and its chapters have been

serialized lengthwise from the longest to the shortest obviously the

present Koran upsets Allah's own order and therefore does not have

Allah's authority, sanction or consent in the least. Things certified

pure are invariably certified as 'untouched by hand'. In the case of

the Koran it is all mixed up by several human hands violating Allah's

own order and therefore the entire text has been messed up by

ordinary Muslim mortals. Profuse adulteration must also be presumed.

 

(10) How could the heterogeneous debris of brick, tile and stone

bearing the Koranic record be preserved in its proper order for two

or three decades ? Which was the place in which it was stored ?

If there was any such store it should have been famous as a

place of sacred pilgrimage. But there isn't any such.

(11) How could such scratched, etched and scribbled record be

readable after three decades ? The writing if there was any or

whatever it was could never be decipherable after 20 years. The

writing would absolutely vanish due to sandstorms, rain and shine or

get totally garbled. Moreover, the Arabic script is of a type which

can never withstand such weather-beating. The entire import of its

message can change if the outlines of Arabic lettering change even

slightly. Moreover, with crude scratching, scribbling and etching no

profound, lengthy, spiritual text can ever be recorded in the Arabic

or any script.

(12) And one very important and penetrating objection is that if the

Koran is the transcript of a tablet in heaven (as it is claimed to

be) and was delivered in a particular sequence what right did the

compilers, 20 years later, have to change the entire order and put

any chapter anywhere ? That was a flagrant violation of the sequence

meant for the Koran by both Allah and his messenger, Mohamed.

Once the Koran has been so mixed and messed up in violation of its

sequence in the heavenly tablet what validity, relevance and sanctity

can the present Koran have ? Obviously none. Does not the recitation

of a jumbled up and manhandled Koran constitute an insult to Allah

and Mohamed ?

Yet another facet of the sane issue is that if the wording and the

chapters of the Koran are such as to make

 

no difference to anybody even if read or recited in any sequence.

That implies that the subject-matter of the Koran does not deal with

any step by step, logical argument where every succeeding statement

proceeds from the preceding one. This indicates that the successors

to Mohamed have treated the Koran as a rubble-bubble conglomt rate of

a wording all jumbled up in a bundle. One wonders how true Muslims do

not repudiate such a Koran and brand its compilers as Kafirs !