The Final Revealed Text from God the Almighty

The Quran is the backbone of Islam. On this sacred book of Allah, depends the Islamic call, the state, society and civilization of the Muslim world. It is the Last divine revelation, which was sent down to Prophet Muhammad (peace & blessings be upon him), the seal of all Prophets.

His task was to convey the message of worshipping the one God “Allah” without ascribing any partner to Him. The Holy Qur’an, which is a guidance and a source of mercy to mankind at large, is divided into 114 chapters (Surahs) of varying length. Ninety-three chapters were revealed in Makkah while the remaining twenty-one were revealed in Madina.

The first revelation, which the Holy prophet received, was Surat “Al Alaq”. That happened in Makkah where Surat “Al Najm” later became the first to be recited openly to people. In Madina, Surat “Al Mutafifin”, was the first one revealed after the Hijra (migration). The Prophet (PBUH) had to flee to Median for the safety of his own life and the lives of his followers upon the commandment of Allah.

The last verse sent down to the prophet was:
“This day have I perfected for you your religion and completed My favour to you and chosen for you Islam as religion” (Al Ma’ida 5: 3)

Some chapters in the Qur’an focus on the call for Islam as guidance to humanity. They deal with monotheism and the fight against polytheism and idolatry. Thus, stress is laid on all that is related to faith. In other chapters, attention is given to legislation, acts of worship, government and family and relationships among people along with the laws that regulate matters within the Muslim community.

A number of chapters talk about resurrection, the Hereafter and the unseen. Others relate the stories of various Prophets and their calls for faith. We see how the previous nations were severely punished when they disobeyed Allah and denied the messages of previous Prophets.

In addition, several chapters focus on the story of creation and the development of human life. In fact Makkahn revelations assured Muslims in faith in Allah. On the other hand, Madinan revelations were meant to translate the faith into action and give details of the divine law.

The Qur’an will forever be preserved against all attempts to destroy or corrupt it, being guarded by Allah, it will always remain pure. There’s no existence of a single copy with any variation from the recognized text.

Any attempt of alteration has always resulted in failure. Allah stated;
“Surely we have revealed the Reminder, and surely we are its Guardian” (Al Hijr, 9)

Upon the command of the Prophet (PBUH), the companions used to write what was revealed of the Holy Qur’an. They used for this purpose palm branches stripped of leaves, parchment, shoulder bones stone tablets, etc. About 40 people were involved in this task. Among those was Zayd Bin Thabet who showed his work to the prophet (PBUH). Thus, the Qur’an was properly arranged during the Prophet’s life but it was not compiled in one book yet. In the meantime, most of the Prophet’s companions learned the Qur’an by heart.

When Abu Bakr Assiddeeq became Caliph after the Prophet (PBUH) had died, a large number of the companions were killed during the war of the apostasy. Omar Bin Al khatab went to the caliph and discussed the idea of compiling the Qur’an in one volume. He was disturbed, as most of and those who memorized it had died. Then, Abu Bakr called for Zayd commissioned him to collect the Qur’an in one book, which became known as “ Mos’haf”.

After Zayed accomplished the tedious task and organized the Qur’an into one book, he submitted the precious collection to Abu Bakr who kept it in his possession until the end of his life. During Omar’s caliphate, it was kept with the Prophet’s wife “Hafsa”.

In Othman’s days, readers began to recite the Qur’an in different ways (dialects) as Islam reached many countries. Othman then had various copies made based the original copy with Hafsa. Thus the Qur’an was preserved and the Caliph was very much pleased with his achievement.

Today, every copy of the Qur’an has to conform to the standard copy of Othman. In fact Muslims over the ages excelled in producing the best manuscripts of the Holy Qur’an in the most wonderful handwriting. With the introduction of printing, more and more editions of Holy Qur’an were available all over the world.

In this Book, the Holy Prophet's life, the history of the Arabs and the events which occurred during the period of the revelation of the Quran have not been mingled with the Divine Verses, as is the case with the Bible. The Quran is the pure word of God. Every word therein is divine. Not a single word has been deleted from its text. The Book has been handed down to our age in its complete and original form since the time of Prophet Muhammad. From the time the Book began to be revealed, the Holy Prophet had dictated its text to the scribes. Whenever some Divine Message was revealed, the Holy Prophet would call a scribe and dictate its words to him. The written text was then read out to the Holy Prophet, who, having satisfied himself that the scribe has committed no error of recording, would put the manuscript in safe custody.

The Holy Prophet used to instruct the scribe about the sequence in which a revealed message was to be placed in a particular Surah (chapter). In this manner, the Holy Prophet continued to arrange the text of the Quran in systematic order till the end of the chain of revelations. Again, it was ordained from the beginning of Islam that a recitation of the Holy Quran must be an integral part of worship. Hence the illustrious companions would commit the divine verses to memory as soon as they were revealed. Many of them learned the whole text and a far larger number had memorized different portions of it.

Method of preservations of the Quran after the demise of the Prophet, peace be upon him.
It is an incontrovertible historical truth that the text of the Holy Qur'an extant today is, syllable for syllable, exactly the same as the Holy Prophet (PBUH) had offered to the world as the Word of God. After the demise of the Holy Prophet, the first Caliph Hadhrat Abu Bakr (PBUH) assembled all the Huffaz and the written records of the Holy Qur'an and with their help had the whole text written in Book form. In the time of Hadhrat 'Uthman (PBUH) copies of this original version were made and officially dispatched to the Capitals of the Islamic World. Two of these copies exist in the world today, one in Istanbul and the other in Tashkent. Whosoever is so inclined may compare any printed text of the Holy Qur'an with those two copies, he shall find no variation.

And how can one expect any discrepancy, when there have existed several million Huffaz in every generation since the time of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and in our own time? Should anyone alter a syllable of the original text of the Qur'an, these Huffaz would at once expose the mistake.

In the last century, an Institute of Munich University in Germany collected FORTY-TWO THOUSAND copies of the Holy Qur'an including manuscripts and printed texts produced in each period in the various parts of the Islamic World. Research work was carried out on these texts for half a century, at the end of which the researchers concluded that apart from copying mistakes, there was no discrepancy in the text of these forty-two thousand copies, even though they belonged to the period between the 1st Century Hijra to 14th Century Hijra and had been procured from all parts of the world. This Institute, alas, perished in the bombing attacks on Germany during World War II, but the findings of its research project survived.

Another point that must be kept in view is that the word in which the Qur'an was revealed is a living language in our own time. It is still current as the mother tongue of about a hundred million people from Iraq to Morocco. In the non-Arab world too, hundreds of thousands of people study and teach this language.

The grammar of the Arabic language, its lexicon, its phonetic system and its phraseology, have remained intact for fourteen hundred years.

A modern Arabic-speaking person can comprehend the Holy Qur'an with as much proficiency as did the Arabs of fourteen centuries ago. This, then, is an important attribute of Muhammad (PBUH), which is shared by no other Prophet or Leader of Religion. The Book which God revealed to Him for the guidance of mankind is today's in its original language without the slightest alteration in its vocabulary.

In order to gain a proper understanding of many verses in the Holy Quran, it is important to understand and know the historic context of the revelations. So many revelations in the Holy Quran came down to provide guidance to Prophet Muhammad SAW and the fellow Muslims based on what they were confronting at that time.

"Alif, Lam, Meem. This is the Scripture whereof there is no doubt, a guidance unto those who ward off (evil). Who believe in the Unseen, and establish worship, and spend of that we have bestowed upon them; And who believe in that which is revealed unto thee (Muhammad) and that which was revealed before thee, and are certain of the Hereafter. These depend on guidance from their Lord. These are the successful. As for the Disbelievers, Whether thou warn them or thou warn them not it is all one for them; they believe not. Allah has sealed their hearing and their hearts, and on their eyes there is a covering. Theirs will be an awful doom." (Surah Al-Baqarah, Chapter 2)

Amazing book of God the Holy Quran
Calling the Qur'an amazing is not something done only by Muslims, who have an appreciation for the book and who are pleased with it; it has been labeled amazing by non-Muslims as well. In fact, even people who dislike Islam very much have still called it amazing.

One thing which surprises non-Muslims who are examining the book very closely is that the Qur'an does not appear to them to be what they expected. What they assume is that they have an old book which came fourteen centuries ago from the Arabian desert; and they expect that the book should look something like that - an old book from the desert. And then they find out that it does not resemble what they expected at all. Additionally, one of the first things that some people assume is that because it is an old book which comes from the desert, it should talk about the desert. Well the Qur'an does talk about the desert - some of its imagery describes the desert; but it also talks about the sea - what it's like to be in a storm on the sea.

Some years ago, the story came to Muslims in Toronto about a man who was in the merchant marine and made his living on the sea. A Muslim gave him a translation of the Qur'an to read. The merchant marine knew nothing about the history of Islam but was interested in reading the Qur'an. When he finished reading it, he brought it back to the Muslim and asked, "This Muhammad was he a sailor?" He was impressed at how accurately the Qur'an describes a storm on a sea. When he was told, "No as a matter of fact, Muhammad lived in the desert," that was enough for him. He embraced Islam on the spot. He was so impressed with the Qur'an's description because he had been in a storm on the sea, and he knew that whoever had written that description had also been in a storm on the sea. The description of "a wave, over it a wave, over it clouds" was not what someone imagining a storm on a sea to be like would have written; rather, it was written by someone who knew what a storm on the sea was like. This is one example of how the Qur'an is not tied to a certain place and time. Certainly, the scientific ideas expressed in it also do not seem to originate from the desert fourteen centuries ago.

Many centuries before the onset of Muhammad’s Prophet Hood, there was a well-known theory of atomism advanced by the Greek philosopher, Democritus. He and the people who came after him assumed that matter consists of tiny, indestructible, indivisible particles called atoms. The Arabs too, used to deal in the same concept; in fact, the Arabic word dharrah commonly referred to the smallest particle known to man. Now, modern science has discovered that this smallest unit of matter (i.e., the atom, which has all of the same properties as its element) can be split into its component parts. This is a new idea, a development of the last century; yet, interestingly enough, this information had already been documented in the Qur'an which states:
"He [i.e., Allah] is aware of an atom's weight in the heavens and on the earth and even anything smaller than that..."

Undoubtedly, fourteen centuries ago that statement would have looked unusual, even to an Arab. For him, the dharrah was the smallest thing there was. Indeed, this is proof, that the Qur'an is not outdated. May God (Allah) guide everyone close to the truth.

Supplement
An engineer at the University of Toronto who was interested in psychology and who had read something on it, conducted researched wrote a thesis on Efficiency of Group Discussions. The purpose of his research was to find out how much people accomplish when they get together to talk in groups of two, three, ten, etc. The graph of his findings: people accomplish most when they talk in groups of two. Of course, this discovery was entirely beyond his expectations, but it is very old advice given in the Qur'an:

Additionally, the 89th chapter of the Qur'an mentions a certain city by the name of 'Iram (a city of pillars), which was not known in ancient history and which was non-existent as far as historians were concerned. However, the December 1978 edition of National Geographic introduced interesting information which mentioned that in 1973, the city of Elba was excavated in Syria. The city was discovered to be 43 centuries old, but that is not the most amazing part. Researchers found in the library of Elba a record of all of the cities with which Elba had done business. Believe or not, there on the list was the name of the city of 'Iram. The people of Elba had done business with the people of 'Iram

"Say, 'I exhort you to one thing - that you stand for Allah, [assessing the truth] by twos and singly, and then reflect.....' In conclusion I ask you to consider with care the following:

"And they say, 'Why are not signs sent down to him from his Lord?' Say, 'Indeed, the signs are with Allah, and I am but a clear warner.' But is sufficient for them that We have sent down to you the Book [i.e. Qur'an] which is rehearsed to them? Verily, in that is mercy and a reminder to people who believe."