5. Islam (6)

The Writings, the Qur'an (or Koran)

Muslims believe that they have one life, after which they are judged. Muslims are guided to follow Allah's will by:

• The holy book, the Qur'an (or Koran), which Muslims regard as the unaltered word of Allah.
• The example set by Mohammad's life (recorded in the Sunnah and Hadith).

The Qur'an (“recitation”) contains the words of Allah. Muslims believe that it was revealed to Muhammad by the archangel Gabriel. This was originally in oral and written form; they were later assembled together into a single book, the Qur'an (often spelled "Koran" in English). Muslims believe that, because of its divine origin, the Qur'an has not been altered in any way since it was first compiled. Copies of the Qur'an are always treated with the greatest respect.

The only authoritative text of the Qur'an is the original Arabic text. Muslims regard translations of the Qur'an into other languages as paraphrases or inadequate versions of the original. The Qur'an consists of 114 chapters (called Surahs and 6616 verses, called ayas), which have names as well as numbers.  Its size is about two thirds of the New Testament.

Muslims believe the text of the Qur’an, at the time Mohammed received it from Gabriel, was written on pieces of paper, stones, palm-leaves, shoulder-blades, ribs, and bits of leather; basically anything on hand, and it was memorized.[13] Most scholars estimate the initial group of believers with Mohammed was in the order of 75 to no more than 150 people. These people memorized the texts. However, history also records that during the flight to Medina and the subsequent battles, many of this group’s original believers were killed. So the valid question arises, even if part of the text was written down, how much of the memorized text was correctly retained by this small group of surviving Muslims? Records even indicate that until the year 25-30 AH (around 650 AD, that is about 40 years after Mohammed received the majority of the texts), the transmission of the Qur’an was almost completely oral, until the first official version was composed under Uthman (or Othman), the third Muslim caliph.[14] Since there were wide divergences between the Qur’ans of Medina , Mecca , Basra , Kufa, and Damascus , “Othman’s solution was to canonize the Medinan Codex and order all others to be destroyed.” Therefore, “there can be little doubt that the text canonized by Othman was only one among several types of text in existence at the time.” [15] It is this version that has remained uniform and intact, not the original version that came directly from Muhammad.

As Winfried Corduan summarizes about the texts of the Qur’an: “There is good reason to believe that the Qur’an as it exists today is for the most part what Muhammad taught. Unfortunately, there is little opportunity to evaluate the textual integrity of the Qur’an any further since Caliph Uthman, third in line as successor to Muhammad, destroyed all manuscripts he did not consider correct. Muslims generally claim that the present Qur’an is pure, but even with Uthman’s heavy-handed treatment, there are a few known variants.”[16]

Which was written first, the Koran of the Bible? Well obviously the Bible was written many centuries earlier. The Bible has had an important influence on Islam (or actually Mohammed). For instance, the Muslim proudly traces his ancestry to Ishmael (the son of Abraham with Hagar, Sarah’s maid). Muslim beliefs about the nature of God, and the resurrection of the body and judgment bear a similarity to what is taught in the Bible. The Qur’an even describes the virgin birth of Jesus, but denies the resurrection (they claim that He did not die on the cross, but somebody else was crucified on his behalf). For Muslims, Jesus is a prophet superior to Abraham and Moses, but far below Mohammed.

Secondary to the Qur’an, the Sunnah and the Hadith are additional instruction to the Muslim. The Sunnah records events of the life of Mohammed and offers examples for ethics and living. As such, it is the basis of the legal code and authoritative in ruling among Islamic states.  The Hadith are collections of the sayings of Mohammed. Each Hadith is a narration of the life of the prophet and what he said, as opposed to a biographical sketch.