The Collection of Qur’anic Verses into a Book Form: Prevailing Perceptions and Reality
By Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi, New Age Islam
09 April, 2014
A thinking Muslim
should develop an intellectual curiosity as to how and when the primary
source of his religion, the holy Qur’an, was written down, collected,
compiled, and committed to the memory of Muslims. Until recently, I was
a typical believer in the Qur’an, like many Muslims, who do not have
even the faintest idea about its historic authenticity and just believe
in the book on account of the religious sanctity attached to it. But I
can say with full conviction that this is not the Qur’anic way of
believing in the Qur’an. In fact, from the Qur’anic perspective, it is
not the proper way of believing even in casual news, let alone the book
that forms the bedrock of the entire system of a universal faith. The
Qur’an has explicitly said that when any news comes to us, we have to
check, verify and authenticate it, so that we may not harm people in
ignorance. (49:6).
A thinking Muslim
should take cognizance of what propelled the holy Qur’an from being an
incomplete, distorted or a missing book to remain a completely preserved
and fully memorised religious scripture that continues to be a living
voice of the divine messages. The complete preservation of the holy
Qur’an was so vital to Islam that God had ensured it in its early phase
by making a strong divine assertion: “Indeed We have sent down the
Qur’an, and indeed We Ourselves surely are its Guardians” (15:9). This
is one of the miracles of the Qur’an that no one has been able to change
even a letter of its text, despite every possible effort by the Arab
pagans.
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