The Quran and Hadith: Which is More Authentic?
1/6/2012
(A worthy read first published in 2009)
The Quran and Hadith: Which is More Authentic?
In debates on Islam, deceptive moderm Muslim intellectuals are quick to reject those hadiths that show Islam in a bad light. Little do they know that the authenticity of the hadith, given its remarkably objective and scientific method of collection, would stand higher than the Quran, whose codification was shabby at best…
The Quran is considered like the backbone of Islam although the bulk of the religion is made from the sunna, or Mohammed’s traditions, which is based on his hadiths or sayings and considered second to the Quran in its importance. Practicing Islam is impossible without the sunna, because the Quran doesn’t explain anything about the Islamic rituals or sharia and refers Muslims to take Mohammed’s example, which only comes through his hadiths (Q.59:7).
It is frustrating that whenever ‘intellectual’ Muslims are engaged in debates on Islam, they quickly distance themselves from those hadiths that tend to implicate their religion unfavourably, no matter how authentic those hadiths are. Denying a hadith has become a defence-tactic by Muslim apologists in their effort to maintain the integrity of Islam. Their logic is that Islam doesn’t fall by the loss of one hadith or two, because Islam is kept up by the Quran. On the other hand, those Muslims are not ashamed to quote other hadiths, no matter how unauthentic they are, to boost their argument in favor of Islam. However, an overwhelming majority of Muslims remain strong believers in both the Quran and hadith, which they rightly consider to complement each other. The main stream Muslims consider those, who deny the hadith, as infidels, who would eventually deny the Quran as well. In many countries, your life will be as endangered by rejecting the hadith as by rejecting the Quran.
Behind the declared reason for denying the hadith lies the undeclared, but true, reason. The hadiths come in detailed language and with several narrations that support each other, which leaves little room for Islamists to take recourse of word-game or manipulation of meanings. On the other hand, the Quran comes in a vague, abridged and self-contradicting format that leaves room for twisting the language, as well as meanings, of its words. The Quran is covered with a thick layer of haze; some Muslims use this lack of clarity to argue and claim they can see a picture different from that of its critics.
How authentic is the hadith?
There are different collections of hadiths that Muslims consider to be the most authentic; the most well-known collections are Sahih al Bukhari and Sahih Muslim. Other collections include Al Nissaey, Al Tirmithy, Ibn Dauod and Ibn Maja. Together, these six collections are called the authentic six, the Sahih Sitta.
The ‘science of hadith’ (Ilmul Hadith) is a well-known and prestigious speciality in all Islamic university. It teaches how those scholars managed to gather their collections and how they undertook arduous journeys, travelling the Islamic world, to accomplish their objective. The methodology they used, considering its time, was exemplary. They studied each hadith in details; its text and its chain of narrations and classified them into grades according to their authenticity. Even by today’s standards, their scholarship and dedication to objectivity was amazing. Most of the two hundred thousand or so hadiths that were subjected to their thorough assessment were rejected and only a few thousands made it to their Sahih (authentic) books. Their objectivity meant that many ‘good looking’ hadiths had to be rejected while others, not so good looking ones, had to be included because of the evidence available in their support. If Muslims can be proud of anything at all, objective academic approach, adopted by those scholars in collecting the hadiths, would top the list.
Those early Muslim scholars, like Al Bukhari and Muslim, were no ordinary people; they were well-informed highly educated and intelligent, and most of all dedicated to honest research to find the true life of the prophet. In short, they were the geniuses of their time. It is laughable that some modern Muslims, with questionable knowledge and education, dare to dismiss the brilliant works of those illustrious scholars as faulty, just because they don’t go well with their biased opinions.
How authentic is the Quran?
Q.2: 106. Any verse We abrogate or cause to be forgotten, We substitute with something better or similar. Don’t you know that Allah can do anything?
The above verse is a short answer to those, who claim the Quran was preserved in a tablet in heaven. The verse is a clear admission that the Quran contains contradicting (Muslims call it abrogated) verses, as well as verses that have been completely forgotten! But one need not worry; Allah was capable of bringing similar verses or even of replacing them with better ones!
Unlike the hadith, the collection of the Quran was politically motivated and employed no methodology or high standard of scrutiny that characterized the collection of hadiths. The vulnerability of the Quran lies in the fact that the presence of only one error, say a misplaced word or letter, is a good enough proof that the entire book is a hoax.
It is essential in Islam to believe that the Quran is the preserved word of Allah. Therefore, it has an unquestionable authenticity. Indeed, Muslims never question the authenticity of the Quran, which is where their problem lies. They believe that the reason why Islam came to existence was the distortion that entered the previous Holy Scriptures. In other words, Muslims believe that Allah revealed the Quran with the determination to preserve it. With that in mind, one would expect Allah to have employed extraordinary measures to preserve what is supposed to be the most important and final divine document to mankind. But He didn’t! In fact, all the circumstances and ways the Quran was revealed, and it was handled by Allah’s beloved prophet, it was an ideal setting for the Quran to be corrupted if not lost, which it did.
1. The Quran was revealed to Mohammed, who was, as Muslims insist, illiterate and, therefore, unable to verify the accuracy of the scripts written for him by some volunteering scribes of no high standard. Trusting Mohammed with the Quran is a greater blunder than trusting an illiterate person to edit New York Times. With a document as important as the Quran, it would not be enough just to assume that the scribes were honest and trustworthy, especially that at least one of them, Abdulla Ibn Abi Al Sarh, admitted that he regularly made changes to the text of the Quran without Mohammed even noticing! [1]
2. Muslims claim that the Quran was completely written during Mohammed’s life time, but there is no acceptable evidence to support such a claim. It is logical to believe that the Quran was not properly written in the first thirteen years of Islam, while Mohammed was still in Mecca because he simply didn’t have the resources to do it. One would expect that writing down the Quran might have been Mohammed’s first priority after he assumed power in Medina, but he was too busy in wars to think of it.
After establishing his Islamic state in Medina, Mohammed could have ordered a formal recording, indexing and safe-keeping of the most important document of Islam. Even he could have stamped it because he owned a stamp. But Mohammed did nothing of that sort, which indicates that he never took the matter seriously. In fact, there are reasons to believe that Mohammed actually benefitted from that chaotic state of the Quran. An undocumented Quran gave Mohammed the freedom to change his mind or contradict himself and get away with it, claiming that the earlier memorized verses had been forgotten or faded away from memory. Recording the ‘revealed’ verses in Medina took place in a casual manner; the job was carried out by whoever was available from those volunteering scribes. Some verses were written by more than one scribe, causing confusion, while others may never had the chance to be written at all, causing even more confusion.
3. The Quran was revealed, in the seventh century, in Arabic, a language that had not yet a well-developed script. Many Arabic words with different meanings shared the same script. The Arabs solved this problem by adding different numbers of dots to the letters that share the same appearance, but that solution came years after Mohammed’s death. As an example, the Arabic word harb, which means war, has the same appearance like a dozen other words with completely different meanings, like these: حرب.خرب.حزب.جرب.حزن.جزت.حزت.خزن(The above words mean: war, damaged, party, tried, sadness, rewarded, caused pain, stored)If you strip the letters from their dots, all the words look exactly the same, and it was left to the readers’ commonsense and intelligence to work out which particular word was meant by a particular script.
Ideally, for a better preservation of the Quran, Allah should have educated Mohammed and created the dots before ‘revealing’ the Quran.
The Arabs claim that their language is a superior language, hence chosen by Allah as His official means of communication. Other Muslims agree with that claim and praise the language as the most beautiful, without even speaking or understanding the language. The truth is that Arabic is a complicated language that is difficult to develop especially that it is now attached to the Quran, which is holding it back.
Even in our time, and after the ‘invention’ of the dots, reading an Arabic text is still a guess work. Arabic books and newspapers are printed without the diacritical marks to reduce the clutter around the words. The diacritical marks were ‘invented’ over a century after the dots. Without the diacritical marks, the fourth word in the above example, Jarab, could be read as follows: Jarraba=tried, Jurriba=has been tried, Jarab=plague, Jurub= suffering of plague!
4. Writing technology in Arabia was very primitive and employed poor quality and perishable writing materials like palm leaves and bones.
Although we read the Islamic history only from it’s heavily biased Islamic sources, but we frequently stumble upon some historical facts like the following:
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Ibn Massoud was renowned among Mohammed’s companions as the most notable in his knowledge of the Quran; it is claimed that he recorded his own copy which he kept with him. Ibn Massoud’s copy of the Quran was significantly different from the official copy of Uthman, which he refused to recognize (2). Some verses were lost, even the ones kept in Mohammed’s own house! Aysha admitted that she used to keep the “stoning verse” under her bed until it was eaten by a goat! [3]
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Al-Hajaj Ibn Youssef Al-Thakafi, the ruthless ruler of Iraq during the Umayyad dynasty, made many changes to the official Quran many years after Uthman. [4]
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Political corruption, power struggle and instability characterised the period of Uthman’s rule. It was in such an unhealthy political climate when Uthman ordered the compilation of the Quran.
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Uthman sent four copies of his official Quran to the various regions of the expanding Islamic state and kept one copy in Medina. None of those copies seem to have survived. There is no evidence that any of the old copies of the Quran, that we have today, dates back to Uthman’s time. The oldest copy available, which is the manuscripts of Sana’a (Yemen), dates back to many decades after the time of Uthman and contains significant differences from the current Othmanic version of the Quran. [5]
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Many Muslim scholars are aware of the weakness of the argument that the Quran was documented during Mohammed’s time. They claim that the Quran was preserved mainly in Muslims’ chests, the written documentation was only a backup! Unfortunately for them, making such a claim is like digging the grave for the Quran, because the main reason behind writing a formal copy of the Quran, and burning all the others, was to stop the disagreements between Muslims. The Quranic verses that were preserved in the Muslims’ chests were so different that they accused each other with kufr (unbelieving)!
The Quran is probably the least authentic document in Islam as evidenced from the state of confusion and disagreements that prevailed amongst early Muslims. The early Muslims disagreed on what constituted part of the Quran and what didn’t. Ibn Massoud’s copy of the Quran included two chapters less than Uthman’s copy, because he did not believe the last two chapters were actually Quranic chapters.[2] Others reported that Surat Tauba (Chapter Nine, which contains 129 verses) used to be as long as Surat Bakara (Chapter Two, which contains 286 verses) before the verses went missing [2]. Abdullah Ibn Umar reportedly said, ‘Let none of you say, “I have got the whole of the Qur’an.” How does he know what all of it is? Much of the Quran has gone’. Let him say instead, I have got what has survived (6). The enormous amounts of repetitions and contradictions could be an indication of some degree of duplication and manipulation of the original text.
According to the existing Quran, the penalty for adultery is only described in verses Q. 24:2 (flogging hundred lashes) and Q4: 15 (house detention), and nowhere in the Quran is stoning mentioned. However, Muslims agreed for fourteen hundreds years that the penalty of adultery is stoning to death, because the verse, which abrogated the above two verses, was there and remains effective in its orders, hukman, even though its words were cancelled, kawlan. We can add this logic to the pile of other bizarre justifications, used by Muslims, to understand the Quran. However, we have the right to ask: why Allah keeps in the Quran the obsolete verses and omits the valid ones?
References
1. Ali Dashti, 23 years, a study of prophetic career of Mohammed.
2. Al Itqan fi ulum al Qur’an – Al Suyuti. ‘Arabic’
3. Ibn Maja,1944, Musnad Ahmed 25784 ‘Arabic’
4. Al Masahif- Sajistani ‘Arabic’
6. Abu Bakr al Suyuti, “al Itqan fi `ulum al Qur’an”, 1935/1354, pt 2, p. 25) ‘Arabic’
Posted by Mumin. Salih
on January 7 2012. Filed under Quran (Koran).
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Authentic: Entitled to acceptance or belief because of agreement with known facts or experience; reliable; trustworthy:
By that definition very little of the Quran ascends to the level of agreement with known facts. The Quran mostly relies on unquestioned belief, supposition and faith with no verifiable sensible proofs needed or readily available. The Ahadith speaks to known facts, in other words things that actually occurred or were said to have happened. Muslims learn how and when to prayer specifically, not from Quran, but from traditions and Sahih (authentic) Hadith.
The Ahadith were generally and mostly collected by Islamic scholars, who were men of learning and consummate conscientious investigators and data gatherers. The fragmentary Quran was cobbled together after the passing of Muhammad by the close personal gang members of Muhammad, most being semi-literate. Such being the case the Ahadith would tend to be more authentic, while the Quran is more esoteric and spiritual.
Islam can exist without Quran, without Sahih (authentic) Ahadith, Muslims and Islam would make no sense and would be at a loss..
I always enjoyed reading Mumin Saleh's articles.
Muhammad was NOT illiterate, this is just part of the muslim propaganda in order to corroborate the alleged "divinity of the quran":
http://radicaltruth.net/index.php?option=com_cont…
http://www.bible.ca/islam/islam-myths-muhammad-no…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1fzKd_q5AQ
Good article. At this stage also nobody knows the real history of Muhammad & koran. There are still possibilities that the real koran & hadith may differ what we have today.? But one serious question to my mind is that, If we get authentic copy of koran & hadith in 7th century then does it indicate that Islam is good & Muhammad was really a prophet? Can anybody answer my question.
Bullshit still continues to baffle brains even centuries later …
It has been said that some of the rulings in the Qur'an have been
abrogated (Mansukh). What is meant by this abrogation?
The Arabic term Naskh implies setting aside, copying and the
like. By Naskh is also meant the transcribing of a book and the moving
aside of the sunlight by the shade. Technically, however, Naskh implies
the abrogation of one religious law by another. The abrogated law is
then called Mansukh and the law that replaces it is known as Nasikh.
In contradiction from the other animals man continues to grow
intellectually, mentally and culturally with the passage of time. His
surroundings and environment, too, continue to change. In all probability
then, the moral laws which he must accept would also change with his
environment.
The moral laws of the first family of humans is a case in point.
There it was morally correct for brothers and sisters to be committed
in marriage with each other. For the continuation of the human species such a moral code was indispensable. However, the conditions changed
as time went by. Numerous families came into being. Then the law
that brothers and sisters were not to marry each other came into effect.
It was at a particular stage of the development of the human species
that this law came into force. With the revelation of this law, that
which was permitted previously was now prohibited. The new law
thus became the very cornerstone of the institution of the family and,
thereby, of the very existence of human society.
The old law had been given unto the children of Adam by the
Lord Creator Himself. The new law, too, had been given by Him. For
it is, indeed, He who is best aware of the intricacies of human society.
Who besides He Himself can alter the laws required by humanity as
the society evolved with time ?
There are various examples from the religious scriptures that
show how amendments were made in the laws. Such amendments
might have been intended for a particular region or society. It may
also have been a wholly general amendment as well.
For instance, consider the ruling concerning the issue of divorce.
It is clear from the Old Testament of the Bible (Deuteronomy 24:1-4,
Jeremiah 3:12) that divorce had been very common among the Israelites.
Jesus had to face a society wherein the permission for divorce was
misused and in which the women were, thereby, put to undue hardships.
It is now known that in the laws that were revealed to Jesus, there
were legislations that sought to strictly curtail the very provision of
divorce. The varying manner in which Jesus made his extreme
statments against divorce notwithstanding, they have all been quoted
faithfully in the collection of the gospels. This ruling against divorce
was revealed, perhaps, to bring down the rate of divorce among the
Israelites and to restrict that freedom considerably. Jesus himself had
made it clear that his mission was confined to the Israelites alone (See
Mathew 5:17, 10:5, 15:24). This would then imply that the strict ruling
which had prohibited, albeit, in a temporary way, the procedure of
divorce, revealed as it was through Jesus Christ, had sought to change
the condition of the Israelites whereby the institution of divorce was
employed with reckless impunity.
Pathetic attempt to protect Quran. First, Adam is a myth, The evolution of man has been proven 100 times over. The argument that the God of the Bible changed his mind a lot is not a good argument for the Quran. Allah is claimed to be the God of the Bible to say he changes his mind many time over again just shows that all of it was created by humans. So God allows divorce in Israel, then bans it with Jesus, then allows it again with Mohamed. Also if God is meant to change laws all the time why is Mohamed the last prophet? Wouldn't the laws need to be updated or is 7th century Arabia the climax of human civilization? One verse in Quran in Baqarah when God says it is OK to have sex in Ramadan night, while it was forbidden before. The reason he allowed it now was because he found it too hard for the Arabs. Wouldn't God know they would fail before he given it to them, so why give them a law, then say, oops too hard for you, I'll make it easier. Your God is fake, Mohamed is your God.
It was the permission for divorce which was, in fact, conceded
by the ruling in the Old Testament that was now abrogated by the
ruling issued through Jesus. Similarly, many of the rulings in the Old
Testament can be seen to have undergone abrogation by other rulings
within the Old Testament itself.
In similar fashion, too, many of the rulings in the ancient religious
scriptures have been abrogated by the Qur'an. Indeed, some of the
earlier rulings in the Qur'an itself have been abrogated by the rulings
that were revealed at a later date. Factually, of course, such changes
were an indispensable necessity in the due course of societal
transformation.
Will it not affect the status of the Qur'an’s divinity if it is said that
it became necessary to change some of the earlier injunctions of
the Qur'an at a later period in time ? If the Qur'an is, indeed,
from the Omniscient God would such changes have been
necessary ?
In truth, the fact that some of the rulings in the Qur'an have
been abrogated actually represents one of the evidences to prove its
divinity. The Qur'an is the last book that has been revealed by God for
the guidance of humanity. It is a book that puts forward wholly
practicable methods in the moulding of an ideal society on the basis of
a moral code which it, in itself, dictates. It is, in addition, a book that
seeks to show how, in the process of creating an exemplary and ideal
society out of nothing but the most primitive human conditions, the
divine law had influenced the making of such a society in the various
stages of its evolution. The Qur'an does not contain certain numbered
injunctions like the Ten Commandments that were revealed by God. It
is, in fact, the compendium of laws that grew with the beat and rhythm
of an evolving society that would eventually result in the fruitful
transformation of an entire people. In that chain of legislation, it is but
natural that the rulings that came at a time of total decadence will
become irrelevant when the society has gone past that stage in its
evolution. It is this loss of relevance that is, in fact, implied in the term
‘abrogation.’
Consider, for instance, the verses related to the consumption of
intoxicants. It must be remembered that the Qur'an was revealed to a
society that virtually bathed in wine. It was not about wine, which
turned man into beast, that the Qur'an first talked to them about. The
Qur'an firstly impressed upon their minds the purest conception about
God and of the unflinching awareness of the Hereafter. Indeed, the
Qur'an had, as the first step, sought to create a readiness in submitting
one’s entire life before the Creator. It was after having created a
mind-set to which the acceptance of all legislations that were confirmed
to have been issued from God had become easy that the Qur'an
declared: “They ask thee concerning wine and gambling. Say:
‘In them is great sin, and some profit, for men; but the sin is
greater than the profit.’” (Qur'an 2:219)
This was the first stage. The Qur'an’s approach here has been
to first seek to show the benefits, or otherwise, of a thing and to make
it clear that the sin in it would be greater than any benefit that may
accrue thereof.
With this verse, the society, now trained in alienating itself from
sin and in moving along the path of virtue, soon begins to free itself
from the vice-like grip of intoxicants and gambling. It was then that
the second verse was revealed: “O ye who believe! Approach not
prayers in a state of intoxication, until ye can understand all
that say …” (Qur'an 4:43)
The prayer constitutes a conservation with the Lord Creator.
However, many a man approached prayer in a state of intoxication.
Indeed, the degree of their slavery to intoxicants can be seen from this
single fact. The Qur'an had then made the second step towards
achieving the goal of a society that was free of intoxicants. Prayer
must be made only with the acute awareness of that which is being
said in the conservation with God; with the mind and heart solemnly
influenced by that which is being uttered therein. Briefly put, therefore,
prayer must never be in a state of intoxication.
With the arrival of the second ruling a good section of those
conscious of God were freed of their slavery to intoxicating drinks.
They resolved, thenceforth, that they would, at least, abstain from
intoxicants during the times of the five daily prayers. It was then that
the third ruling, which sought to fully abolish all intoxicants, was finally
revealed.
“O ye who believe! Intoxicants and gambling, sacrificing
to stones, and (divination by) arrows, are an abomination – of
Satan’s handiwork: Eschew such (abomination), that ye may
prosper. Satan’s plan is (but) to excite enmity and hatred
between you, with intoxicants and gambling, and hinder you
from the remembrance of Allah, and from prayer: will ye not
then abstain?” (Qur'an 5:90,91)
With the revelation of this verse, the other verses that were
revealed earlier had now become irrelevant. They were, in fact, verses
that had been revealed for the creation of an intoxicant-free society
which were revealed in the two stages of the society’s evolution. It
can, therefore, be said that with the coming of this verse, the other
two verses had, for all practical purposes, become abrogated.
It was mentioned earlier that even this abrogation serves only
to stress the divine nature of the Qur'an. Prophet Muhammad (e)
was, himself, never one to take intoxicating drinks even before his
attainment of prophethood. Even if he were to put forward a law
against intoxicants which was of his own making, it would have been
in a fashion that straightaway prohibited all intoxicants forthwith.
However, it is the Creator who is best aware of the intricacies as well
as of the methodology of variation of the human mind. It is for that
same reason that He brought a law into effect stage by stage. When
such is the implementative process, therefore, it is only natural that the
laws issued in the earlier stage tend to be abrogated at a later stage.
This is why it has been said that the Qur'an makes it clear that these
abrogations are, indeed, from Allah, the Omniscient.
The verses which contain the abrogated rulings are, to this very
day, found to exist within the Qur'an. Why is this so ?
When we set about to study the nature of abrogation in the Qur'an, there is an important fact that we must first consider. By
abrogation is not meant the abrogation of the verses per se, rather, it
has only been the legal decrees in these verses that were abrogated.
The verses in the Qur'an which contain the abrogated laws serve to
show how it was that the divine revelation influenced the evolutionary
history of a community as a whole. The Qur'an has never been a book
of morality alone; it is also a book of guidance for societal change.
In having retained verses, the rulings enshrined in which were
themselves abrogated, it was, perhaps, the purpose of God to show
the reformers of every age how it was that a society which was
culturally and civilizationally a non-entity, was positively transformed
on the firm foundations of divine guidance; this was in addition to
showing how the Qur'anic directives were to be implemented under
such circumstances.
As far as the community of Muslims is, concerned, such verses
are of educative value and so they are of of prime relevance. The
basic sources of Islam are the Qur'an and the practices of the Prophet.
It is the duty of the scholars in every age to find the solutions to the
problems that present themselves continually before the society at
large; solutions that are formulated in the light of these most basic of
sources. When confronted with every new problem, the scholars must
provide for solutions that are based on an acute understanding of the
stands taken by the Qur'an and the Prophet whenever the resolution
of a similar problem comes up before them. This would not be possible
in the absence of a sound knowledge in the positions adopted by the
Qur'an and the Prophet in varying, circumstances.
In the cases of abrogation, although the law has been replaced,
if the verses which were revealed in varying circumstances had not
been preserved the Muslim community could have faced the bleak
prospect of groping in the dark when faced with such situations. Here,
too, it becomes clear to us that these verses have served only to prove
the truth of the Qur'an being revealed by the Creator Who has the
knowledge ebout everything.
SCIENCE OF HADEETH:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explor…
AUTHORITY OF QURAN: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explor…
Allah is a pimp.Allah is evil and allah is stupid cretin. Any number of reasons to declare allah as all the things.Mohammad the rapist pedophile, mass murderer and child rapist, demented cretin with mental condition.Moslem cretins who follow allah and mohammad are evil to the core, stupid to the hilt and an be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Pus.piss,puke and putrid pork chops be upon mohammad and allah
Dear shabeer,
You have done a great job of presenting your analysis in a civil and scholarly fashion. While your discourse might "justify" some specific abrogations, many others await explanation. For example:
MANSUKH: (ABROGATED LAW) 2:62 Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve.
NASIKH (CURRENT LAW) 3:85 And whoever desires a religion other than Islam, it shall not be accepted from him, and in the hereafter he shall be one of the losers.
Since Allah would have known all along that he was about to present the final and perfect religion shortly (Islam), why go to the trouble of revealing verses that seemingly justified, if only for a time, Jews, Christians and Sabians? Why did Allah not just stay silent on this topic and then announce "The Truth" when it was time? Could it be that it was Mohammad not Allah who was doing the "revealing", and who first tried pandering to Jews and Christians (and even Sabians) but when these folks did not buy into his divinity, the abrogation arrived? This view is further supported by the fact that Mohammad uniquely lumped Sabians into the same group as Jews and Christians. The Sabian faith was unrelated to Judaism or Christianlty but from a political perspective, the these were three powerful monotheistic blocks in 7th century Hijaz and it made political sense to pander to these three.
May I suggest this web site for your kind perusal at your leisure:
http://www.wikiislam.net/wiki/List_of_Abrogations…
IN THE FIRST PLACE, HAVING THE QUR’AN AS A BOOK IS BID’A – said Abu Bakr
Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 6, Book 60, N 201
Narrated Zaid bin Thabit Al-Ansari: who was one of those who used to write the Divine Revelation: Abu Bakr sent for me after the (heavy) casualties among the warriors (of the battle) of Yamama (where a great number of Qurra' were killed). 'Umar was present with Abu Bakr who said, 'Umar has come to me and said, The people have suffered heavy casualties on the day of (the battle of) Yamama, and I am afraid that there will be more casualties among the Qurra' (those who know the Qur'an by heart) at other battle-fields, whereby a large part of the Qur'an MAY BE LOST, unless you collect it. And I am of the opinion that you should collect the Qur'an." Abu Bakr added, "I said to 'Umar, 'How can I do something WHICH ALLAH’S APOSTLE HAS NOT DONE?'..
The quran was devised and fabricated by Muhammad himself. Period. Full stop.
I am shocked at some of the contributors and their comments. I am shocked that they put the Quran behind their backs and raise the hadiths above it. The Hadiths were not sanctioned by God and are an innovation created by the hands and minds of men.