The QUR'AN'S PRESERVATION is completely debunked by Chris and Jay!

In Jay's fifth and final recording with Chris from Speaker's Corner, they unpack the problem with the Qur'an's preservation. Muslims claim that the Qur'an is eternal, that it was never created, because the Qur'an makes this claim when it refers to the Qur'an in Surah 85:21-22 as the "Al-Lauh al-Mahfuz" which means 'the eternal preserved tablets' that have always existed in heaven, and from which the Qur'an was revealed to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel piecemeal over a period of 22 years. The Qur'an also claims in Surah 10:15 and 18:27 that no one can therefore change any of it, not even "one word or one letter" (according to Dr Yassir Qadhi). And the reason, because Allah will guard it, according to Surah 15:9. Chris, however, suggests that this is not what history tells us, as the historical record paints quite a different picture. Even the Islamic Traditions suggest that there were 4 different Qur'ans written by four different companions of the prophet; including: Ubay ibn Ka'bs Qur'an in Damascus, which had 116 Surahs, which is 2 more than in the Qur'an today. Ibn Masud's Qur'an in Baghdad, which had 111 or 110 Surahs, which is 3-4 less than in the Qur'an today. Ibn Musa's Qur'an in Basra, which had 114 Surahs, which is the same as the Qur'an today, but with 100s of variants from our present Qur'an. And finally the canonical Qur'an compiled by Zaid ibn Thabit, from Medina, with 114 Surahs. This shows that even within the 7th century there were at least 4 different Qur'ans which had different Surah orders, and up to 15,000 differences between them (according to Dr Arthur Jeffreys). Chris then turned to the different subsequent Codices of the Qur'an, including the Mashhad codex, which though it is the same size as today's Qur'an the Surah orders did not follow the Hafs an Assam text, but followed that of Ibn Mas'ud's from Baghdad. He also pointed to the San'a codex, which was partly made up of a Palimpsest (lower and upper layers of script). Yet, this manuscript which can be dated from the 7th and 8th centuries does not follow today's present Hafs an Assim text. Chris then turned to the research of Marijn Van Putten who refers to the "Tawatur" as his proof of Qur'anic preservation; yet he could only come to such a conclusion by claiming that the large number of agreement by scholars (i.e. Tawatur) concerning which chains of names (Isnads) were authoritative gave credibility to the Qur'an's authenticity. Chris ended with the statements by Dr Yassir Qadhi, who for years has stipulated that not one letter of even one dot has been changed in the last 1400 years, but now due to the discovery of the 30 different Qira'at and Riwayats, his claims have been completely debunked, and so has any notion of the Qur'an's "Perfect Preservation". © Pfander Centre for Apologetics & Polemics - US, February 20, 2025 (128,210)