Question

In my religion class we were taught Muslim believe that the Koran was preserved and that the version they had was the version their prophet had.

According to some sites, the Koran has textual differences.

Answer 1

What do Muslims say about this?

Answer 2

All scriptures have differences in text, this is due to added and deleted parts at the scriptorium, place where manuscripts are rewritten over time for the preservation. Considering printing didn't come about until the 15th century they were hand copied many time, adding marginal references to the text at times.

Answer 3

Coming from a Muslim, we always like to have a discussion, but only if it is reational and reasbonable, now when you say that some "Sites" say it has textual differences, please be aware of what sites you are looking at. There are many supports from the highest scholoars that the Qu'ran hasn't been changed known to man.

In fact we find once again that the Qur’an actually makes a claim of preservation. There are numerous verses that make this claim, the most definitive being:

"We have without doubt, send down the message; and We will assuredly guard it(from corruption)." The Holy Qur'an, Chapter 15, Verse 9

In this verse, Allah promises that He Himself has taken on the responsibility of preserving the Qur’an. Unlike the Rabbis and Priests to whom the responsibility of preserving the previous scriptures was given, Allah is of course free of faults and perfectly able to guard His Word.

Answer 4

If you read the Qu'ran, I promise that you will be more intellectual after you finish reading it, very wise words, it's the ultimate book, a very good read, even if you are not a Muslim, the book is amazing.

Answer 5

@alphadxg yeah you are right the book is amazing! But you will not understand religion "Islam" just by reading Quran,
In Islam, for understanding Quran we have Hadeeths/Sunnah
If you want to deeply understand the verses of Quran there are "Tafseer" - which basically is "meaning of verses of Quran" and Sunnah
This is the best way to understand Islam as whole :)

Answer 6

The position that the Koran is as original and that it is infallible is the same position Jews and Christian use to their religious texts. I'm not sure about the Koran but I know that Holy Bible varied before the printing press which had the sense of becoming constant. This is known by existence of different handwritten manuscripts prior to being printed. Some added marginal reference and some verse were either changed or deleted. There is a verse in Deuteronomy that states "Do not write on your body" which is greatly misunderstood. Scriptures actually became part of a religious person's body and was not to be written in/on, to do so would create a tow and that is all you or anyone else would see upon rereading.

Answer 7

@KenLJW
All religions claim their holy text is infallible, I have yet to hear any convincing argument that says the Christian holy text is anything close to what it was when it was first written. Bart Ehram's book covers a lot of the corruption to the Bible. My first step in deconversation from Christianity is finding out the three absolute truths were bogus.

I was recently having a talk with @Opcode over email about Islam and this topic came up, is the Qur'an really preserved? In which he gave a argument based on statistics and logic in how the preservation of the Qur'an is what it was when first revealed. (I am not 100% convinced the Qur'an was preserved but @Opcode 's argument is valid and is supported through empirical evidence and logic.) I think he is still writing the proof for his blog so I'll ask permission first before I copy the text over here for others to read.

Answer 8

Paraphrased from @Opcode 's blog:

We Muslims claim the Qur’an has never been altered by humans, and it is what it was when first narrated to the prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

It is quite popular for people critiquing Islam to mention that there are variations of the written Qur’an. This is true, though only a few differ in meaning most are then same, only differentiating in dialect.

First understand that:
The Mus’haf is an Arabic term that is related to Qur’an, but has a slight different meaning from it. Mus’haf is derived from the Arabic term “sahifa.”Its plural form is, “suhuf,” Suhuf means “written pages” of something. Note that “page” in modern Arabic is “safha,” which is clearly the same word as “sahifa.”

The claim popular for people critiquing Islam forget that the Qur’an is not the Mus’haf, the Mus’haf can be edited by man.

So some Mus’hafs has been edited, no big deal. You see Islam was spreading fast the Qur’anic dialect was on a whole different level than the Arabic that was in use. Some Mus’hafs tried to change the dialect in order to make it easier to understand, Mus’hafs were not where people gained their memorization they gained it in daily prayer. (Think of the Mus’hafs with changed dialects as the Qur’an translated to English, it isn’t meant for memorization but for better understanding.)

Allah (swt) devised a system of protection that is highly improbable to penetrate. (I say improbable, but if you are Muslim, switch it with impossible since Allah (swt) has given his word to protect the Qur’an.)

Why is the system of protect beautiful – if I gave you how the protection worked you would be in shock thinking the protection is equivalent to the game of Chinese Whispers or Telephone. Well first let us give the definition of the game Telephone.

Telephone works in the logical sense of:
That Person A is told ‘x’. Person A tells Person B ‘x’, but because of a mis-communication Person C understands ‘y’.

In theory ‘x’ should be told perfectly down the line, but humans are prone to error thus ‘y’.

Allah (swt) devised a better system in preservation, than the simple Hearsay logical fallacy. Before I explain the logic, I will give another example that does not relate to Islam.

The theory of quantity:

I create billions copies of a single master pamphlet each the same, and distribute them throughout the world. Due to sheer quantity if one of them becomes corrupt or damaged or somehow gets modified, there are so many copies that easily point out the discrepancy. It is near impossible to track down even a majority of these copies and alter all of them identically. So the principle here is that it is extremely difficult to alter enough copies so as to cause confusion.

The mechanism the Qur’an uses to protect itself is nearly identical as the system above, but is more realistic. Tens of millions of people have memorized the Qur’an everywhere around the world. That is how it is preserved. Sure, there are also hundreds of millions of printed copies as well, but they are not the standard. Even today, when someone memorizes the Qur’an, they recite it orally from memory to their teacher in order to receive certification.

Wait – wait! The system described above is still acceptable to fall to the Hearsay logical fallacy or the game of Telephone!

The simple response to that is there are multiple chains most are identical. This tells us that either the individual accumulation of errors were the same for all chains (statistically insane) or that there was no accumulation of error (more probable).

So to summarize whether or not the Qur’an is preserved: It is.

System mechanics of my proof:

My above talk only talks a little about how Qur’anic preservation works. There is more than the quantity chain system the Qur’an uses to protect against corruption.

The below talks will be pure logic and very little chitchat:

Mechanic #1:
The Qur’ans preservation uses a tree of narration where the master narrator is the first node (programming metaphor). So for any accumulation of errors occurring in any of these chains (a la Chinese whispers), the possibility of all of them saying the same thing (as they do today) is statistically improbable or impossible depending on how you do your probability.

Mechanic #2:
Passing the Qur’an to another hafiz (a certified person who has memorized the Qur’an) is an extremely meticulous process that most Muslims can’t even begin to pass. (Though a lot of Muslims know certain parts by heart.) Thanks to hafiz people, corrupting the Qur’an is hard. They are able to correct people reciting the Qur’an based on their memory alone and do not need a Mus’haf to verify anything. Today there are estimated to be around tens of millions of people that are hafiz. If you go to any hafiz from Malaysia to America, you will see that they recite the same Qur’an. This is the same for the two major denominations of Islam. When the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) received revelation, he would himself learn it by heart become hafiz and teach his companions. He would later keep checking them to make sure all of them knew it properly.

Mechanic #3:
Daily prayers are mandatory for every Muslim, upon these daily prayers Muslims consistently fact check themselves in verification that they are reciting the Qur’an untainted.

Submechanic of mechanic #3:
Every Ramadan most Mosques have a full Qur’an recitation to make sure that those who know the full Qur’an by heart get a fact checked, while those listening too get a revision and fact checked. These prayers are called as “taraweeh”.

Extra information of submechanic of mechanic #3:
Taraweeh is 21 raakets or a 2 hours prayer on each evening for 30 days. The whole Qur’an is usually finished by the 27th day. As the Imam recites people in the rows are free to correct the recitation if there is a mistake.

Conclusion:
So I think we can reasonable deem the Qur’an is verily in its original form. The system of mechanics that protect the Qur’an are stronger than the system used to protect the units of measurement in my logical opinion.

NOT MY WORDS OR VIEW. Just sharin' the knowledge. Credits to @Opcode

Answer 9

As a Muslim I'd like to think that yes, the Koran has been reserved throughout the years. However humans humans have flaws. They make mistakes, they lie, they alter things in their own favor. I read the book, and I believe in it as well. As much as I want to believe it's the same as it was from the beginning, I'm not entirely sure, and neither are most of my friends. (this is a good conversation to have in person, if you get the chance you should go ahead and confront a Muslim you know or maybe an expert in religion.)

As to you possibly reading the book, I highly recommend it, BUT I ask that you read the book first. Without any help from the other scripts. After that if you feel like you need more, go ahead, but as for me I strongly oppose to follow the 'additional scripts'. Most of the time they're so far from reason they're not suitable for for the world we live in today.

Answer 10

I met a Jew a number of years ago and he told me he had to memorize Leviticus, in Hebrew, for his bar mitzvah, usually given to boy's at 14 years old for transition to adulthood. I'm sure he was familiar with the entire Jewish scriptures but this is what he memorized. I'm sure Rabbi's actually memorize the entire text as they work with the Talmud. Memorization it not specific to just any religion, Pythagoras and his students didn't write any of their mathematics down to protect their secrets. This is not an exception, in England in 1967 a mathematician working for the secret service developed the code using two prime numbers entirely in his head. The U.S. university actually came up with it in the late 70's and is used around the world today for digital encryption. Theirs an idiot savant that memorized the entire encyclopedia, page numbers and even the index, but he really doesn't have the capability to use the information. The only apparent reason to writing thing down is for the next generation and that assuming they have the exact same definitions of the words. My father, in his 60's, said to me, in my 30's, that his father was a mean man. I went home a looked up mean and there were a lot of definitions. The next time I saw my father I asked him what he meant by mean, he threw his hands in the air and said the best was possible, so I took it that he meant humble.