on her own blog, a friend of mine named mika has just written about how the quran (a book of ‘kitab’ in islam, or similarly resembles how bible is in christian) has not been changed, edited, nor forged for a long history of 14 centuries. this, however, is still less older than bible, yet it is interesting so that i will try to write about it here. special credit goes to her for the inspiration.
so that we (temporarily) come to a conclusion so that some of my muslim friends may say that unlike the bible, which is said to ‘have many versions which in some cases may have some contradiction’, quran is said to be genuine, and as some of my muslim friends would say ‘its genuineness is kept by Allah, the God Himself’. this, however, is not my opinion, and i am not trying to say that bible do contain some contradictions, since i do not possess enough knowledge to claim that, nor do i have read much enough part of the bible. yet, i am also not intending to start a debate of genuineness of both bible and quran, since i don’t possess complete-yet-thorough knowledge about either of them. however, this article is intended to view quran from the historical aspects.
the development of documentation of quran started immediately as Muhammad (the rasulullah, or can also be said as ‘messenger of Allah’) deceased. this, however was led by the thought that something were ‘has to be done’ in order to keep the spirit of genuine-and-authentic islam. the documentation process of quran was never widely spoken before the time, since the existence of ‘huffadz’ (huffadz is a plural noun of hafidz, which literally means ‘someone who memorize’. in this context, it refers to the muslims who memorize the contents of quran) and the presence of Muhammad himself as the messenger who brought the contents of quran to the people. yet, by the time, many of the huffadz were deceased during the war after the decease of Muhammad, and so it started the thought of starting a massive documentation towards quran.
the process of documentation itself was not a one-go-and-succesful. there were conflicts about dialects (Arabians have several different dialects so that would make some different interpretation), writings, and interpretations. this process of documentation were done in the period of ‘Khulafaur Rasyidin’ (which refers to the successors of Muhammad as a social leader among the community by the time). it was an extensive search and still, it has conflicts within the process. and in the end, there were only one single copy, while the other copies were destroyed, in order to ensure an only version of quran. this first copy were later to be copied and claimed as what now known as ‘the holy quran’ all over the world. however, such subject will be too long to write down in detail within an article, so that i will not write it down here.
however, the genuineness of quran is still to be considered ‘valid’ since, through centuries, there were always huffadz who memorize the contents over the time. this, apparently, has been given full support of many islamic councils in many countries, so that the effort to keep the genuineness valid is ensured. however, there were some cases of ‘attempt to forge’ or ‘some mistake on writing’, but many – if not all – of them were detected and corrected beforehand.
in the end, what made the quran only has minor change (if not to say no change) through many centuries was started by an extensive, yet thorough process of searching, investigating, and confirming the contents. and yet, for the rest, the contents has been kept to stick to the original contents: not even a letter has changed, and it is kept by muslims all over the world.
any comments, suggestions, or corrections are welcome.
special credit: mika
message: i’m using english this time =)