Chris Confronts the Confounding and Confusing Qira'at Qur'ans!

Chris from Speaker's Corner (see his YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVzFT3qFUe4) was our 4th speaker on the ladder on Sunday, the 9th of June. While he has spent over 2 years arguing and debating Muslims at the Corner, he was always on the ground, and so has never been up on a ladder until this time. As Chris and Jay were getting up and settled on the ladder two Muslims to their right began to confront them with the Qur'an, so they decided to take them on employing the subject the Muslims had suggested. It didn't take long for both Chris and Jay to move into the problems with the Qira'at and the Ahruf (the readings in the Qur'an). They told the crowd and the two Muslim gentlemen that there were 30 official Qur'ans, each with a different reading, and that these readings could be traced all the way back to the 8th - 10th centuries. Yet, these readings weren't simply different translations into another languages, nor were they simply different pronunciations, or even dialectical differences. They employed different letters (using different dots and vowels), which changed the meanings of the words, which then changed the theology, leading to a change of a certain doctrine, followed by a change in practice as well. What's more, these changes weren't insignificant, as there are more than 93,000 differences between the 30 Qur'ans, which means 93,000 different letters, and thus 93,000 different words, which, as any philologist will tell you clearly suggests that each word will change the meaning of the text, as well as the doctrines, which then change the theology, and even at times change the practices. 26 of these Qira'ats were first introduced by Hatun Tash and Jay Smith at Speaker's Corner back in 2016, which caused a huge furore with the Muslim community, because they never knew about these Qira'at differences. Mohammed Hijab who was at the corner the day Hatun and Jay introduced the Qira'ats to the world had a crisis of knowledge on that day, and thus 4 years later, on June 8, 2020 he asked the leading Muslim authority on the Qira'at Dr Yasir Qadhi to explain these differences and say which of the 30 Qur'ans was the one in heaven. But after 28 minutes of dancing around the subject he couldn't explain them and so finally admitted that all 30 are the Qur'an, including the 93,000 differences. No wonder the Muslims are so angry with him, and the reason so many of the Muslims down at Speaker's Corner have never heard of this problem; but Chris and Jay have, and so it was so easy introducing and explaining this problem to the Muslims there on June 9, 2024. © Pfander Centre for Apologetics & Polemics - US, June 15, 2024 (106,920)