Muslims Have A Preservation Problem
The Prophetic Tradition
Muslims are notorious for harping about the Quran being “preserved”.
But how do you define preservation? If preservation is meant letter-for-letter textual integrity of the Quran, then Muslims have serious problems.
During his debate against Orthodox Christian Jay Dyer, Muslim Daniel Haqiqatjou brought up Marijn Van Putten as a non-Muslim scholarly expert who supposedly supports Quranic preservation. Little did Haqiqatjou know, given that he is not actually familiar with Van Putten’s work, Van Putten completely refutes Haqiqatjou’s claim.
For example, consider what Van Putten said during his interview with Derek on MythVision Podcast:
“Can we know whether the text as we have it in the Uthmanic text is exactly identical to how the prophet said it or had it revealed? [...] We just can’t know. [...] From a historical perspective we just can’t prove that.”
Then consider what Putten posted on Twitter:
“There are all kinds of things you can say about the transmissions and history of the Quranic text, and even sometimes with high probability. But it is not possible to have certainty that how the Quran we have today is syllable-by-syllable exactly how the prophet said it once.”
and also:
“But does this consensus among 10 famous readers, necessarily mean that it is exactly as the prophet said it? No. There are plenty of cases in history where people agree on something that evidently did not happen. It requires faith to be certain.”
The fact of the matter is, Muslims cannot provide any kind of evidence to substantiate the claim that the Quran has been preserved as it was supposedly uttered from the lips of Muhammad. If anything, evidence favours lack of textual integrity.
But not only that, Islamic scholars cannot even agree on what comprises the Quran. For example, take the ruling with regards to stoning, namely, that adulterers are to be stoned to death. You cannot find anywhere in the Quran the punishment of stoning, but it exists as a ruling in Islamic law. This problem has been well recognized by Islamic scholars.
For example, it is common to find standard textbooks on “usul al-tafsir” (principles of Quranic exegesis) teaching the following ways in which Quranic abrogation occurs:
Abrogation of both the Quranic verse and the law;
Abrogation of just the Quranic verse but not the law; and
Abrogation of just the law but not the Quranic verse.
These textbooks give stoning adulterers as an example of abrogation of the Quranic verse but not the law:
“This verse [about stoning] is not in the final form of the Qur’an which the Prophet (ﷺ) left, but the law of stoning the adulterer to death was applied by the Prophet (ﷺ) himself on a number of occasions and is well recorded in hadith. It was also the practice of all the Rightly-Guided Caliphs (may Allah be pleased with them) after him.”
Uṣool at-Tafseer. The Methodology of Qur’anic Interpretation, Dr. Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, International Islamic Publishing House, 2005, p. 230-231.
But now, let us flesh out this exact example with Imam Nawawi’s commentary on an actual hadith in Sahih Muslim with regards to stoning. What he says is very revealing:
“In this hadith, `Umar says that the Qur’anic revelations included ‘the verse mentioning stoning. We recited, understood and appreciated it’. He is referring to the verse saying: ‘If a married man or woman commit adultery, stone them totally’. This belongs to the category of abrogated text but the ruling remains applicable. There are cases where the ruling is abrogated, but the text is retained, and other cases where both the ruling and text are abrogated. When a text is abrogated, it no longer has the status of the Qur’an and the rules attached to the Qur’an, such as its prohibition to be recited by a person who is in a state of ceremonial impurity. The fact that the Prophet’s Companions did not write down this verse serves as clear evidence that what is abrogated is not written in any copy in the Qur’an. Moreover, that `Umar declared the applicability of the stoning as he was sitting on the platform with the Prophet’s Companions and other people attending, without any of them expressing disagreement, is clear evidence that the stoning punishment is confirmed. This may be cited as evidence that flogging is not added to the stoning, but this is not acceptable, because `Umar did not refer to the flogging, which is confirmed in the Qur’an and the Sunnah.
`Umar said: ‘I fear that as a long time goes by someone may say: we do not see any mention of stoning in God’s Book. They would thus abandon a duty stated by God’. What `Umar feared actually took place as al-Khawārij and others denied the stoning as we explained earlier. `Umar’s statement indicates his insight and status. It may be that he was told this by the Prophet (peace be upon him).
He then said: ‘The stoning is indeed in God’s Book, binding on any man or woman who commits adultery after having been married, if the right evidence is established, or there is a pregnancy or confession’. Scholars are unanimous that the punishment of stoning is applicable only to a married adulterer, and we mentioned earlier to whom this description applies. They also agree that if clear evidence is established, then the guilty is stoned to death.”
Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim. With the Full Commentary by Imam al-Nawawī. Volume Nine, translated and edited by Adil Salahi, The Islamic Foundation, 2023, p. 571-572.
Muslims cannot even agree what comprises the Quran, let alone establish that the Quran is preserved.
Where in the Quran is the verse concerning stoning? Absolutely nowhere. Saying it has been textually abrogated is a cope. Everyone sees that. Moreover, there are numerous abrogated rulings whose verses are still in the Quran.
Explain the logic why a Divinely-revealed book meant as guidance for all mankind removes verses meant to provide guidance but leaves in-tact the rulings, yet leaves other verse in-tact but abrogates the rulings. Where is the logic in that? The Quran confuses people more than it guides them.
Not to mention hadiths that talk about Suras being of a certain length that are no longer the case, and that Aisha’s goat ate a Quran manuscript and for that reason those portions of the Quran are lost… But remember, Muslims would have you believe that the Arabs of antiquity were such fantastic memorizers, yet forever lost portions of the Quran because Aisha’s goat ate the only existing manuscript 🤣.
Only Muslims believe that the Quran as it would have supposedly been uttered by Muhammad has been preserved in letter-for-letter textual form. Textual preservation is a claim no one except Muslims takes seriously. Now, even if the Uthmanic text has been preserved (I am not claiming that it is, only granting the position for the sake of argumentation), Muslims cannot prove that it is the original Quran. The problem of the preservation claim still remains.
And we have yet to touch on the so-called 7 “ahruf” (the multiple ways in which the Quran was revealed textually), which Muslim scholars themselves admit they do not know what they are. And no, the 7 “ahruf” are not the Quran in different dialects. Those who actually study the Islamic sources on the topic will quickly realize that saying the 7 “ahruf” are just different dialects is a lie Muslim scholars tell the gullible Muslim masses so as to not create doubts in the preservation narrative. In reality, Muslim scholars are not even certain to what the “ahruf” even refer. This is problematic for the claim that the Quran has been preserved in the sense of textual integrity as Muhammad would have recited it.
Muslims may know or speculate the function of the “ahruf”, but they do not know what the “ahruf” actually are.
Imam Nawawi states on the authority of Baqillani that the 7 “ahruf” were preserved in the Uthmanic manuscript, yet Tahawi says that over time only one “harf” was retained. So do Muslims have all 7 “ahruf” or just 1 “harf”? Is the original Uthmanic text preserved or was it lost?
Muslims boast about how well they have memorized and preserved the Quran as a community through oral transmission. In that case, it is reasonable to expect the 7 “ahruf” to have been preserved by the Muslim community irrespective of manuscript texts. Where are those 7 “ahruf”? Spoiler: They do not exist, and they never did.
If Muslims cannot preserve something as integral as the “ahruf”, or even knowledge about what the “ahruf” are beyond just vague statements and conjecture, then why believe the claim that they were able to preserve the Quran perfectly? The “ahruf” are integral to the Quran, yet Muslims talk about them using vague statements and conjectures.
This gets Muslims into two dilemmas:
Dilemma 1
If you claim the Quran is perfectly preserved, then it means you know the 7 “ahruf”. However, since you are not certain what a “harf” even is, and admit that you might not have preserved all the “ahruf”, then you cannot justify the claim that the Quran is perfectly preserved.
Dilemma 2
If preservation of a single “harf” means the Quran is perfectly preserved, i.e., it is not necessary to have all 7 “ahruf” in order to claim perfect preservation, then it is the meaning of the revelation that must be used as the determiner for the claim of perfect preservation. In that case, Muslims cannot accuse Christians of having corrupt scripture if manuscript variations do not alter the underlying meaning.
This then forces Muslims to take preservation to be that of meaning and not textual integrity, which just compounds problems for Muslims even more.
When we look at the entire corpus of hadiths, i.e., the thousands upon thousands of hadiths in Bukhari, Muslim, Tirmidhi, and so on, do you know how many are considered “mutawatir bi-lafẓ”, or mass transmitted according to exact wording, i.e., letter-for-letter? Not more than 10:
“All narration must have identical wording. This type of mutawâtir ḥadeeth is extremely rare. There is disagreement among scholars as to the exact number of verbally recurrent hadiths. It is generally suggested that it does not exceed ten.”
Uṣool al-Ḥadeeth. The Methodology of Hadith Evaluation. Revised New English Edition 2, Dr. Abu Ameenah Bilal Philips, International Islamic Publishing House, 2007, p. 132.
So of all the thousands upon thousands of hadiths that Muslims have, the scholars have identified not more than 10 to be considered as transmitted according to exact wording. That means that basically the entirety of the hadith corpus is transmitted according to meaning.
In other words, hadiths, which give you all the details how to practice Islam and that constitute one of the primary sources of Islamic law, rely on preservation according to meaning.
The point here is that if we take the position that preservation can only encompass letter-for-letter transmission, or textual integrity, as Haqiqatjou needs to do in order to attempt a critique at Christianity, then Muslims have a serious problem with hadiths, because then that narrow understanding of preservation excludes hadiths. At that point, the Muslim position quite literally reduces to being a Quranist, or Quran-only.
To get out of such an absurdity, Haqiqatjou, along with all Muslims making his argument, have to recognize preservation to fundamentally also encompass transmission in meaning and not just textual integrity. This then naturally leads to asking questions like: Who transmitted the meanings? How do we know?
When you start asking these questions with regards to the hadiths, then you come to find out that hadiths are wholly unreliable. The idea of checking “isnads”, or chains of transmission, and grading hadiths as “sahih” (authentic) or “daif” (weak), is absurdly unreliable. No one takes hadith methodology seriously, except Muslims.
As the non-Muslim hadith scholar Dr Joshua Little says, academia takes the default position that you have to assume a hadith is unreliable until proven otherwise. Proving that a hadith is reliable is an uphill battle likely to end in failure. He uses the analogy of turning a dial of more problems or less problems when it comes to hadiths and emphasizes that basically all the dials are turned to max for the various problems you can possibly encounter with hadiths.
But of course, Muslims will dismiss scholars like Dr Joshua Little because what he says is quite devastating to the preservation argument that the Muslim position relies on.
And this next point is going to get lost on a lot of Muslims: The surface-level argument uses Islam’s own self-proclaimed authentic sources to demonstrate that the Muslim position is inconsistent, while the deeper-level argument demonstrates via the Muslim’s own responses to problematic hadiths how flawed hadith methodology really is.
This then puts into question the Muslim claim of being able to preserve something. The point is not so much in what hadith such-and-such says. Rather, the point is to demonstrate that Muslims are not capable of preserving what is most fundamental and integral to Islam.
You have to ask yourself: Why would hadith giants like Bukhari and Muslim exert the effort to preserve as authentic (“sahih”) something they knew to be inauthentic? They would not, because they did not consider what they were preserving to be inauthentic. Bukhari and Muslim believed that every single hadith they preserved was truly authentic. This means that they did not have the capability to distinguish between something that really is authentic vs something that, in actuality, is inauthentic, as later scholars would come to argue.
So then what exactly were Bukhari and Muslim preserving? Is the idea to just preserve everything and relegate to later generations to sort out the details? You have to keep in mind that authentic (“sahih”) hadiths are used to formulate binding rulings in Islamic law. So are people going to use inauthentic hadiths thinking they are authentic to formulate legal rulings for hundreds of years before someone comes along and says hadith such-and-such is not actually reliable? That is an absolutely absurd position, yet it is essentially the position of later generations of Muslims right up to the present day.
So not only were Muslims historically not able to ascertain with absolute certainty the authenticity of what it was they were preserving, but Islam as a living faith reflects that which has actually been preserved. And if living Islam reflects inauthentic hadiths, then you do not have the religion of the “prophets”.
Now, we do not need to go through every single hadith because the overarching argument is getting at the fundamental point of epistemology. By its very nature, the hadith system cannot guarantee you that Islam has been preserved. In a nutshell, uncertainty is inherently built into hadith methodology. And this is not something Muslims can overcome. Uncertainty is inherently built into hadith methodology, meaning that Muslims cannot justify with 100% certainty to have preserved Islam, let alone the religion of prior prophets.
We now consider the specific example of Ibn Mas`ud.
Haqiqatjou relied on the various “qira’at”, or manners of recitation, to explain away objections to preservation. Basically, that you can have multiple different readings of the Quran that are all acceptable without admitting to textual corruption. For example, malik (king) and mālik (owner). Is there really a difference? The king technically owns everything in the kingdom, so whichever word you use to recite the Quran you are essentially saying the same thing without changing the textual integrity of the Quran, since both words are textually written as m-l-k.
The problem Haqiqatjou has with appealing to the “qira’at” as an argument for preservation is that he is not able to account for traditions like Ibn Mas`ud.
Now, why is Ibn Mas`ud important?
Consider what is stated about him in Reliance of the Traveller:
“...the consensus of scholars is that the Companions of the Prophet were at various levels of knowledge in religion; not all of them were capable of giving formal legal opinions, nor was the religion taken from all of them. Rather, there were those of them capable of legal opinion and ijtihad, and these were a small minority in relation to the rest, and there were those of them who sought legal opinion and followed others therein, and these were the vast majority of them. ... most of the Companions’ legal opinions came from only seven of them: `Umar, `Ali, Ibn Mas`ud, Ibn `Umar, Ibn `Abbas, Zayd ibn Thabit, and `Aisha; and this was from thousands of the Companions.”
Reliance of the Traveller. A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law. Revised Edition, tr. Nuh Ha Mim Keller, Amana Publications, 1994, p. 17-18.
So Ibn Mas`ud is an absolute heavyweight in Islamic law, being one of 7 “mujtahids” (capable of independently formulating judgments in jurisprudence) universally recognized among the Companions as being an authority on the Quran. You cannot have such a stature without knowing the Quran.
Moreover, he accepted Islam very early on, well-before Muhammad’s “hijra” (migration from Mecca to Medina), and was a personal servant to Muhammad.
His widely-known Quran version, which he kept despite Uthman’s standardization, was readily used in Kufa, and contained significant differences to the Uthmanic text.
For a complete reference of Ibn Mas`ud’s differences to the Uthmanic text, see: Materials for the History of the Text of the Qur’an. The Old Codices. The Kitab Al-Masahif of Ibn Abi Dawud together with a collection of the variant readings from the codices of Ibn Ma`sud, Ubai, `Ali, Ibn `Abbas, Anas, Abu Musa and other early quranic authorities which present a type of text anterior to that of the canonical text of `Uthman, edited by Arthur Jeffery, Leiden E. J. Brill, 1937.
Muslim sources minimize, explain away, remain silent, or outright deny the well-known serious discrepancies that existed between Ibn Mas`ud’s copy of the Quran and Uthman’s, as well as the historical conflict between the two personally.
As an example of a difference in Ibn Mas`ud’s copy of the Quran that Haqiqatjou cannot explain away by invoking the “qira’at” is found right in the first Sura of the Quran. There are actually several variants in this Sura, but I’ll give just one as an example. In all of the 10 accepted ways of reciting the Quran, the first Sura is to be recited: …iḥdinā ssirāṭal mustaqīm…
But Ibn Mas`ud recited irshidnā (ارشدنا) instead of iḥdinā (اهدنا).
This is a manner of reciting the Quran that cannot be explained by appealing to “qira’at” because none of the accepted “qira’at” have this variant:
https://www.nquran.com/ar/ayacompare/مقارنة-الآيات-بالروايات?sora=1&aya=6
This is a perfect example to demonstrate that the Quran has not been preserved if by preservation you mean letter-for-letter transmission. If you want to claim that Quranic preservation is letter-for-letter, then Ibn Mas`ud completely refutes you.
The only way you can get out of the problem is to accept that preservation has to encompass preservation in meaning. But once you do this, then the argument against Christianity falls apart because now you open the door to recognizing the Church as a legitimate means of preservation because it is the Church that preserves the meaning of the textual tradition. And any variants within the text can be reconciled using the preserved meaning entrusted to the Church body.
Muslims cannot demonstrate that they as a community are capable of preserving something, or at least preserve something so as to be granted a privileged position in comparison to Christians.
The only wiggle room Muslims have with bringing up preservation is preservation of meaning, at which point this opens the door to Orthodox Christians to recourse to the Church body in demonstrating a superior method of preserving the teachings of Christ and the prophets. In this case, Orthodox Christians have a direct link to Christ Himself, who is the ultimate source of our epistemology and whose teachings have been preserved by the Apostles and their heirs.
Muslims through Muhammad have no prophetic link to anyone. Just an empty claim.
All this comes full circle to a most damning dilemma Muslims face: If they accept that the Church is able to preserve the meaning of the prophets, then Islam is false by default because Islam conflicts with the teachings of the Church.
And though Muslims reject the Church body as a valid mechanism of preservation, they cannot do so without jeopardizing their own position.
Muslims are dead in the water with any form of a preservation argument. So with preservation off the table, Muslims are back to square one with needing to prove Muhammad a prophet of the true God, which they most certainly cannot do because he was not.