revelations have been preserved exactly as revealed to Muhammad, without any change, addition, or loss whatsoever. The Koran is used as a charm on the occasions of birth, death, or marriage. In the words of Guillaume, “It is the holy of holies. It must never rest beneath other books but always on top of them; one must never drink or smoke when it is being read aloud, and it must be listened to in silence. It is a talisman against disease and disaster.” Shaykh Nefzawi, in his erotic classic
Both Hurgronje and Guillaume point to the mindless way children are forced to learn either parts of or the entire Koran (some 6,200 odd verses) by hearing at the expense of teaching children critical thought: “[The children] accomplish this prodigious feat at the expense of their reasoning faculty, for often their minds are so stretched by the effort of memory that they are little good for serious thought.”
Hurgronje observed:
This book, once a world reforming power, now serves but to be chanted by teachers and laymen according to definite rules. The rules are not difficult but not a thought is ever given to the meaning of the words; the Quran is chanted simply because its recital is believed to be a meritorious work. This disregard of the sense of the words rises to such a pitch that even pundits who have studied the commentaries—not to speak of laymen—fail to notice when the verses they recite condemn as sinful things which both they and the listeners do every day, nay even during the very common ceremony itself.
The inspired code of the universal conquerors of thirteen centuries ago has grown to be no more than a mere textbook of sacred music, in the practice of which a valuable portion of the youth of well-educated Muslims is wasted.
Suyuti, the great Muslim philologist and commentator on the Koran, was able to point to five passages whose attribution to God was disputable. Some of the words in these passages were obviously spoken by Muhammad himself and some by Gabriel. Ali Dashti also points to several passages where the speaker cannot have been God.
For example, the opening sura called the Fatihah:
In the name of the Merciful and Compassionate God. Praise belongs to God, the Lord of the Worlds, the merciful, the compassionate, the ruler of the day of judgment! Thee we serve and Thee we ask for aid. Guide us in the right path, the path of those Thou art gracious to; not of those Thou art wroth with, nor of those who err.
These words are clearly addressed
In the same sura at verse 114, Muhammad speaks the words, “Should I [Muhammad] seek other judge than God, when it is He who has sent down to you the distinguishing book [Koran]?” Yusuf Ali in his translation adds at the beginning of the sentence the word “say,” which is not there in the original Arabic, and he does so without comment or footnote. Ali Dashti also considers sura 111 as the words of Muhammad on the grounds that these words are unworthy of God: “It ill becomes the Sustainer of the Universe to curse an ignorant Arab and call his wife a firewood carrier.” The short sura refers to Abu Lahab, the Prophet’s uncle, who was one of Muhammad’s bitterest opponents: “The hands of Abu Lahab shall perish, and he shall perish. His riches shall not profit him, neither that which he has gained. He shall go down to be burned into flaming fire, and his wife also, bearing wood having on her neck a cord of twisted fibres of a palm tree.” Either these are Muhammad’s words or God is fond of rather feeble puns, since “Abu Lahab” means “father of flames.” But surely these words are not worthy of a prophet either.
As Goldziher points out, “Devout Mu’tazilites voiced similar opinions [as the Kharijites who impugned the reliability of the text of the Quran] about those parts of the Quran in which the Prophet utters curses against his enemies (such as Abu Lahab). “God could not have called such passages ‘a noble Quran on a well-guarded tablet.’” As we shall see, if we were to apply the same reasoning to all parts of the Koran, there would not be much left as the word of God, since very little of it is worthy of a Merciful and Compassionate, All-Wise God.
Ali Dashti also gives the example of sura 17.1 as an instance of confusion between two speakers. God and Muhammad: “Gloried be He Who carried His servant by night from the Inviolable Place of worship [mosque at Mecca] to the Far Distant Place of Worship [mosque at Jerusalem], the neighborhood whereof We have blessed, that We might show him of our tokens! Lo! He is the Hearer, the Seer.”
Dashti comments:
The praise of Him who carried His servant from Mecca to Palestine cannot be God’s utterance, because God does not praise Himself, and must be Mohammad’s thanksgiving to God for this favor. The next part of the sentence, describing the Furthest Mosque [whose precincts “We have blessed”], is spoken by God, and so too is the following clause [“so that We might show him of our tokens”]. The closing words [“He is the Hearer, the Seer”] seem most likely to be Mohammad’s.
Again, in the interest of dogma, translators are led to dishonesty when confronted by sura 27, 91, where the speaker is clearly Muhammad: “I have been commanded to serve the Lord of this city.” Dawood and Pickthall both interpolate “say” at the beginning of the sentence, which is lacking in the Arabic. At sura 81.15–29, one presumes it is Muhammad who is swearing: “I swear by the turning planets, and by the stars that rise and set and the close of night, and the breath of morning.” Muhammad, unable to disguise his pagan heritage, swears again at sura 84.16– 19, “I swear by the afterglow of sunset, and by the night and all that it enshrouds, and by the moon when she is at the full.” There are other instances where it is possible that it is Muhammad who is speaking, e.g.,112.14–21 and 111.1–10.
Even Bell and Watt, who can hardly be accused of being hostile to Islam, admit that
The assumption that God is himself the speaker in every passage, however leads to difficulties. Frequently God is referred to in the third person. It is no doubt allowable for a speaker to refer to himself in the third person occasionally, but the extent to which we find the Prophet apparently being addressed and told about God as a third person, is unusual. It has, in fact, been made a matter of ridicule that in the Quran God is made to swear by himself. That he uses oaths in some of the passages beginning, “1 swear (not)…” can hardly be denied [e.g., 75.1, 2: 90.1]…. “By thy Lord,” however, is difficult in the mouth of God…. Now there is one passage which everyone acknowledges to be spoken by angels, namely 19.64: “We come not down but by command of thy Lord; to him belongs what is before us and what is behind us and what is between that; nor is thy Lord forgetful. Lord of the heavens and the earth and what is between them; so serve him, and endure patiently in his service; knowest thou to him a namesake?”
In 37.161–166 it is almost equally clear that angels are the speakers. This, once admitted, may be extended to passages in which it is not so clear. In fact, difficulties in many passages are removed by interpreting the “we” of angels rather than of God himself speaking in the plural of majesty. It is not always easy to distinguish between the two, and nice questions sometimes arise in places where there is a sudden change from God being spoken of in the third person to “we” claiming to do things usually ascribed to God, e.g., 6.99; 25.45.
Although many Muslim philologists recognized that there were numerous words of foreign origin in the Koran, orthodoxy silenced them for a while. One tradition tells us that “anyone who pretends that there is in the Koran
