Historical Problems with the Qur’an

Jay Smith

October 2017

 

https://youtu.be/k4rrtCPj2gM

Historical Problems with the Qur’an

Jay Smith

October 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4rrtCPj2gM

The Qur’an: Assessing the Historical Claims (An External Critique)

Male Speaker: … I will take it.

Now I have – I do debate this material and this is part of the thesis of my doctorate that I will be introducing tonight but some of the material that we are introducing tonight is the first time it's ever been introduced.

So, you are going to be the first to hear it.

That's why we are going to film it.

This will go up on YouTube so that many people around the world who are waiting and watching to get this new material, they will get.

That's why we really wanted to do it here in Hong Kong.

We want this to be the venue to not only spring this out of a springboard but that so this can be discussed in many venues around the world not just here in Hong Kong.

And, well, the talk as you can see on the screen is we are really looking at the Qur’an today and we are asking the same questions of the Qur’an that have already been asked of the Bible.

See the Bible has gone through this test for about 150 years, back in the 1800s when in Germany at the University of Tübingen people like Wellhausen and others who asked the historical questions of the Bible, redaction criticism, source criticism, looking at the documentary hypothesis.

These are all well-known works.

These are all well-known criticisms of their team, devastating the church, decimating the church in Europe, and by 1905 the Church almost collapsed along with Darwinism and what we call historical criticism.

Historical criticism is really Biblical criticism.

The only book that has gone through this kind of criticism has been the Bible.

That's why almost everything I am going to be using tonight comes out of that practice and that's my area of expertise.

I am a historical critic.

That's what I got my Masters’ degree on; it's what I got my Doctorate on.

Now as we have done that to the Bible, we are now doing it to other books – Upanishads, Bhagvad Gita, many of the – the Book of Mormon and now finally we are doing it to the Qur’an.

This is why it's unfortunate that we couldn’t do it at Hong Kong University.

Of all places that should be the one place that this should be asked and if they are censoring us at Hong Kong University, then we are all having troubles.

The fact that we had to come to a church to ask these questions is sad today and I think it's unfortunate.

The one place that all of these questions have been asked have been on universities.

And it started with the Bible.

We are now moving to the Qur’an.

Now let's go ahead and start attacking it and start going through it.

When we look at the Bible and the Qur’an, Christians don't make the same claims about the Bible that Muslims make about the Qur’an.

For those of you who are taking notes you can have this PowerPoint afterwards.

I will give it to you, okay.

This is free.

We don't charge anything.

So, if any of you do want this PowerPoint, just come up to me afterwards.

We will slap it onto the computer here and you can take it home.

So, you don't wear out your hand because this is about 163 slides.

We are going to go …

And I don't want you to get too tired.

I would rather you concentrate and then you can go and unpack it at your own time.

So, we don't ask – we don't make the claims about the Bible that Islam or Muslims have made about the Qur’an.

Muslims will claim first and foremost that the Qur’an is eternal.

When you look at the Qur’an you have to look at Surah 85, Ayat 22.

For those who don’t know what I am talking about, Surah means book.

Ayat means verse.

So, Book 85, verse 22, which says, very clearly, that this book comes from preserved tablets.

Now that may seem nebulous to most of us but for the exegetes, for people like Al-Tawati, Ahmed Shahi, Suyuti and others, when they are talking about preserved tablets they are talking about eternal tablets.

So, this book is derived from eternal tablets that have always existed.

Therefore, it is inimitable.

It is above criticism that it was sent down to a man named Muhammad over a 23-year period from 610 to 632.

That's the other claim they are making.

Thirdly that it was compiled completely during the time of Uthman, the third caliph around 652 AD, so roughly 20 years after Muhammad's death which he died in 632.

And then fourthly, that it is unchanged so that this book we have in our hands today is exactly the same book that has always existed from the time of Uthman in 652, from the time of Muhammad when he died in 632 and has always existed in heaven.

That's the claim.

Those are the four claims that Muslims make, whether they are radical, whether they are nominal, whether they are liberal, they would all – well, maybe not the liberals but certainly the nominals and the radicals, 99% of all Muslims would make those four claims.

Would we make those four claims as Christians?

No, we wouldn't.

Our Bible is not eternal; we know it’s not eternal.

Well, was it sent down?

No, it was not sent down.

It was written by men.

We know the men who wrote it.

We give the names to many of the characters who wrote it.

Matthew wrote Matthew, Mark wrote Mark, Isaiah wrote Isaiah

We give the names to the men; we know it's written by men.

It is inspired by God, yes, but not sent down via the angel Gabriel to a man, to 33 different men.

No, we will not make that claim.

Thirdly we would claim that in its original form, yes, it was complete, yes, we would, but we don't have the originals today.

Fourthly, we would be very clear that, yes, it has changed; we know about 40 verses that are in doubt.

And we make – we are very clear.

If you look at my Bible here, you go to the last part of Mark Chapter 16, verse 19 to 22, it says very clearly.

And there is a line I have on my Bible that informs the reader that these verses are not found in the earliest Greek manuscripts.

And we are very honest about them.

We are very transparent about them.

Christians have always been transparent about them.

If you go to John Chapter 7, verse 53, to John 8:11, there is a line before that verse and a line after those group of verses that say very clearly in the Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus and the Vaticanus, all of these manuscripts that are in London, they are in Rome, these manuscripts don't have those seven of verses.

Those nine verses, we are very clear about them.

First John, Chapter 7 verse, First John, Chapter 5, verse 7 and 8, verse 7 has been taken out of most Bibles because it should not be there.

It was added in England, of all places your country, for the King James Version in about 1500s.

So, we are very clear, we are very open and we do not try to hide that.

So, we wouldn't make that fourth claim.

Yes, it’s been changed but we know exactly where it’s been changed.

And the reason why is because we have so many thousands of manuscripts to refer to.

We have 5,300 Greek manuscripts, 10,000 Latin Vulgates, 9,000 in other languages.

That's roughly around 24,000 manuscripts that we look at in order to know what our Bible is and we have compared all of them together and that's pretty much why we know exactly what belongs and what doesn’t, what has been added or what has been accredited or what has been deleted.

That has not yet been done to the Qur’an, except tonight.

We are going to do that.

We are going to ask and do the same.

The same work that has been done on the Bible we are going to do of the Qur’an.

So therefore, we need only look at the three Muslim claims – eternal, sent down, and unchanged.

We are going to look at those.

And the fact that we are going to do more of that, we are going to do in my remit tonight is this.

I don't have to prove whether the Bible or the Qur’an is the word of God.

I leave that up to you.

That's for you to decide.

I am not here to try to impose that on you.

You have got to make that decision, every one of you sitting in this room tonight:

Which truly is the word of God?

My sole purpose tonight is to prove that the Qur’an we have today, this book here, this is known as the Hafsa manuscript, this is the Hafsa copy, this is the 1924 Qur’an that this book that I have in my hand today, all we have to ask is we are going to prove today that this book does not come from Muhammad.

It does not come from the third caliph Uthman.

It was not compiled completely during the time of Uthman in 652.

In fact, I am going to prove today that this book didn't even exist in the 7th century.

All right, listen to me – Muhammad died in 632.

He started receiving revelations in 610, the early 7th century.

I am going to prove today that this book does not even exist in the 7th century in its complete form.

And I am going to prove today that this book is written not by God, does not come from God, does not come from Muhammad but it comes from men like human being, was intentionally changed throughout the last 1,300 years and is basically only 93 years old.

Let me repeat that – the Qur’an that we have in our hand today is only 93 years old, created, finalized, canonized in 1924 at Al-Azhar University in Egypt, all right.

Let's go ahead and let's see how I'm going to do that.

Now let's ask what the Muslims say.

This is what they say this is from the Hadith, Mishkat al-Masabih, page 664,

“The Qur’an is the greatest wonder among the wonders of the world.

This book is second to none in the world according to the unanimous decision of the learned men in points of diction, style, rhetoric, thoughts and soundness of laws and regulations to shape the destiny of mankind.”

Now, that's quite a bit to say in one paragraph.

They are making all kinds of claims to say that.

In other words, it is superior to every other revelation is what they are saying.

Secondly, they say that:

“Will they say, ‘Muhammad has forged it?

Answer: ‘Bring therefore a chapter like unto it, and call whom you to your assistance, besides Allah, if you speak truth.’”

That's in Surah 10, verses 37 and 38, chapter 2, verse 23, and chapter 17, verse 88.

Basically, what they're saying there is no other book that can equal this.

There is nothing that comes close to this.

It's the mother of all books, according to Surah 43, verses 3 and 4.

So, what we are going to do tonight is to investigate seven areas.

We are going to start with the compilation.

How was this book put together?

What do Muslims tell us?

What do the traditions tell us concerning how this book was put together?

We are going to look at internal anachronisms, historical anachronisms; we are going to look at source criticism.

Where did many of the stories in the Qur’an come from?

We are going to especially look at manuscript criticism and this is going to be the most damaging, the manuscript critic.

We are going to look at ancient corrections.

That will be equally damaging.

This is new material that's just coming to the fore in the last two years.

And then we are going to look at modern corrections.

This is material that has just come to the fore in the last 12 months.

And then we are going to end up with the Birmingham Folios, of the claim that that is the original Qur’an, the one that was found in Birmingham back in 2015.

All right, now problem number one, let's start with compilation:

How did this book get put together?

How was it compiled?

To do that we are going to look at:

Why was it compiled?

When was it compiled?

Who compiled it?

Where was it compiled?

What was compiled?

And how was it compiled?

So, we are going to try to get through each one of those.

So, let's move right on.

What Muslims tell us – they say that in order to understand how this book was compiled, we need to start and look and see Al-Bukhari.

Al-Bukhari is the most authoritative of the Hadith writers.

He is writing in the late 9th century.

He died in 870 and this is what he says considering how the Qur’an was compiled.

You need to go to Al-Bukhari Volume 6, Tariq, number 509 and 510.

There you can see the Arabic on the right and there is the translation on the left.

I have, rather than go through the entire translation on the left, I just summarized there on your screen.

In 650, Uthman, that's the third caliph.

You have Abu Bakr, you have Umar, and then you have Uthman, who ruled from 646 to around 661.

Uthman, I am sorry, it’s 656.

Ali then takes off from 656 to 661.

So, he is the third of the four “rightly guided Caliphs” and in 650 he did not have the entire corrected Qur’an text at hand.

So as Al-Bukhari admits,

“a large part of the Qur’an may be lost”.

This was the concern at the time of Uthman, for Uthman then orders three to help Zaid ibn Thabit.

Who is Zaid ibn Thabit?

He is the secretary of Muhammad; he is the one that wrote the first recension.

He is the one that first wrote down the first copy of the Qur’an roughly around 632 to 634.

And that's what we're talking about.

To revise the codex of Hafsa (daughter of Umar), and correct it where necessary, even recalling a verse (chapter 33, verse 23) which had been missing from the original text!

The next then goes on from 6:510.

Uthman takes Hafsa’s copy.

So here we are.

Let me just get this scenario.

You have back there in 632 and 634 and nearly after Muhammad's death you have the Battle of Yamamah.

In the Battle of Yamamah many of those who had memorized the Qur’an died in that battle and so both Abu Bakr and Umar come together and they are concerned because if all of them died, then of course the Qur’an will be lost.

It had not been written down at the time of Muhammad’s death.

Some of it had been written on stone.

Some of it had been written on bones.

Some of it had been written on leaves, stalks, but much of it had been memorized by the companions of the prophet.

But it was not in a codified form.

It was not in a codex.

It was not in a book like this at the time of Muhammad's death.

So that's why Abu Bakr and Umar had Zaid ibn Thabit, the secretary of Muhammad, to then write down that first copy between 632 and 634.

Are you following that?

That copy was given to Hafsa, one of the wives of Muhammad.

She, according to traditions she put it under her bed and left it there for about 20 years.

Now we move into 652, 20 years later.

Uthman is now caliph and at this time he is concerned because there are other copies of the Qur’an that are in existence.

And so, he has Zaid Ibn Thabit take Hafsa’s copy, bring it to the courts there, and at that point he asked them to rewrite the Qur’an along with three friends – Al-As, Zubair and Harith.

The four of them rewrite the Qur’an in the Quraish dialect.

That's what it says in 6:510.

If they disagree, Uthman says, then make sure you write it in the Quraish dialect.

So, they write it.

That's then now becomes the canonical text.

Are you following me so far?

I am seeing most say yeah, nodding, okay.

Once that Qur’an is finished, according to what we read here, Uthman then sends one copy of this Qur’an to all the provinces of that time.

We know that there were nine provinces.

There was a province in Basra, Baghdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, Cairo, Alexandria, Aden, Herat, and Nishapur.

So that's nine different cities, nine different provinces.

That means there were nine of these books sent to nine different provinces for safekeeping and also so that these would be the official text for all of the provinces.

And then look and see what he does.

After he sent it to the nine provinces, then

Oh, it's right off the screen, can’t even see the bottom of the screen here, but it says

“all the other Qur’anic materials, whether written in fragmentary manuscripts, or whole copies must be burnt.”

They burnt all the residual manuscripts.

That's not me saying this.

This is what Al-Bukhari says in the 9th century referring to what happened back in the 7th century.

Now here are the questions that I have.

First and foremost:

Why is it that we even need a Qur’an?

And if we do need a final revelation, why didn't God choose a language which could accommodate the Qur’an?

In other words, take a look at the Qur’an.

Look and you will see when we show you all the earliest manuscripts there are no diacritical marks on any of them and there is no vowelization.

That means there is no dot above or below the line and there is no Damma, Kasra, Fatha – the ooh, the ah, the ee sound.

These don't exist on the earliest manuscripts, which means Arabic was so crude at that time in the 7th century.

It could not accommodate a revelation from God to begin with.

So why would God in his wisdom even choose Arabic?

That's the first question I have.

Did he not have other languages he could have chosen?

Yes, he had Hebrew.

He already had Greek.

That was what the New Testament was written in.

There were many languages that are much older than Arabic and could have accommodated this text.

So why didn’t God use the languages he had already used previously?

That's the second question.

Third one: Why didn't God choose a man who could read and write?

Why in the world did he choose someone who was illiterate?

For the greatest revelation in the history of mankind, you would think God would have chosen someone who could at least read and write that book.

And if Muhammad could not read and write, why didn't he learn to read and write?

He had 23 years to do it.

It doesn't take long to read or write Arabic.

I have had two years of it.

Many of you probably can read and write Arabic.

Certainly, if that was his major mission, if that was his sole mission on earth, to receive the Qur’an and give it to the world, then why in the world didn't he learn to read it and write it?

And then why didn't he write it down before he died?

That's rather negligent of him.

More than that, if he refused to read and write and he didn't want to read and write he had a secretary named Zaid ibn Thabit.

Why didn't he have Zaid ibn Thabit write it down?

What are secretaries for, if they are not to write down what the person who they are being a secretary for, requires?

23 years, Zaid ibn Thabit was sitting there doing nothing.

These questions we need to ask and I have never heard anybody ask these questions before.

Yet to me that's the perfectly natural questions to ask.

Then we get to Abu Bakr.

Why did not Abu Bakr make copies of the first recension?

Why didn't he make the copies that Uthman did later on and why didn't he send it to the nine provinces in 634?

So, this would not have been a problem.

There would not have been a multiplicity of Qur’ans.

Why in the world did that one copy that Zaid ibn Thabit then finally put together in 634 was put under the bed of Hafsa and left for 20 years?

What's the reason in that?

Now these are legitimate questions for me to ask and they are not very difficult, as you can see.

These are as simplistic as you can get.

Why did Uthman find, when he did get the second recension, the final copy put together, why did Uthman then burn all the copies?

Doesn’t that suggest that all those that were burnt disagreed?

Am I correct?

And we are not talking about diacritical marks because these didn't even exist in the 7th century.

We are not talking about vowelization.

Therefore, we are not talking about diacritical differences.

This has nothing to do with Ahruf or Qira’at as many Muslims would like to suggest.

Maybe some of you in the audience will try to come back to me on that.

If this was Qira’at and Ahruf, then you are not talking about the readings.

You are not talking about the consonantal text.

For those of you who are Arab speakers, in order to have Ahruf or Qira’at you have to have diacritical marks.

In order to have different readings you have to have vowelization.

Those were only incorporated into the Arabic text in the late 8th century and we are talking about the 7th century.

Are you following me?

I know I am being a little bit technical here, but this is being filmed.

I know thousands of Muslims are going to watch this.

So, I want to make sure that they understand where I am heading with this.

And then where are the copies?

Well, before we do that, wouldn't it have been nice if Uthman had left the Qur’ans there rather than burn them, so we could look at them today, like we do with the Bible?

Have Christians ever burnt any bibles?

Do we burn any manuscripts at all?

Have you known of any historical period where Christians have burnt their own manuscripts?

No, the Romans burned our manuscripts, we know that.

On the Edict of Diocletian in 300 AD manuscripts were burned.

But Christians have never burned any manuscripts.

We keep everything in place so that anybody can look at it.

We are as transparent as you can get.

That's why we have 24,000 that’s still existing today.

230 of them pre-exist the 6th century.

They are not all complete, but we do have complete manuscripts like the Sinaiticus in the British Library, where I spent the last 25 years, not the British Library but in Britain, London.

And if you look at that, that's a complete manuscript and it’s 400 years before the first Qur’an.

Right next to it in the British Library is the Alexandrinus, which is from the 5th century, both the Old and New Testaments.

That's 200 years.

Did I say 400 years, 300 years, before the Qur’an, and the Alexandrinus 200 years?

So, when we look at like with like, just look at the mass of manuscripts we can refer to and how wide...

You are going to see after tonight Islam has no place to stand up when it comes to manuscript evidence.

Then I ask probably the most damaging question.

Where are the copies of the Qur’an sent to the nine cities?

Where are the nine copies today?

We are only talking about 1,400 years ago.

Why can't we find one of those nine copies?

Muslims have tried to say, well, they were burned or there were floods or there were lots of violence.

Eight of those cities have always been controlled by Muslims for 1,400 years.

Only Jerusalem has been taken back.

There is no excuse not to have those nine manuscripts.

We are only talking about 1,400 years ago.

And why, if Uthman standardized the Qur’an to one copy, are there now a multiplicity of Qur’ans today?

We are going to get to that and see what I am talking about.

Let's go on.

Now, so what did early Islamic traditions tell us about the Qur’an?

This is what they tell us.

Now what I'm going to do now is I am going to go to the Islamic sources.

These are all Islamic sources.

This is coming from Al-Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, ibn Thabit.

These are the most authoritative Hadith compilers.

I'm just going to show you what they tell us about how the Qur’an was compiled.

And what they say is –

Well, let's start with ibn Thabit.

Many (of the passages) of the Qur’an that were sent down were known by those who died in the day of Yamamah… but they were not known (by those who) survived them, nor were they written down, nor had Abu Bakr, Umar, or Uthman (by that time) collected the Qur’an, nor were they found with even one (person) after them.

That is Ibn Abi Dawud.

He admitted that some of the verses were lost.

You have here.

Looks I have been too fast.

You have here as-Suyuti.

It is reported from Ismail ibn Ibrahim from Ayyub and Naafi, from ibn Umar who said:

“Let none of you say ‘I have acquired the whole of the Qur’an.’

How does he know what all of it is when much of the Qur’an has disappeared?

Rather let him say ‘I have acquired what has survived.’”

Now that's enormous admission right there from one of the largest and most authoritative scholars of Islam who makes that reference.

Now we have Sahih Muslim.

Sahih Muslim says:

We used to recite a surah which resembled in length and severity to (Surah) Bara’at.

I have, however, forgotten it with the exception of this which I remember out of it:

And he refers to what he says.

So here Sahih Muslim, the second most authoritative of the Hadith writers, admits that some of the Qur’an has been forgotten.

Others in the Qur’an have been cancelled according to Sahih Bukhari.

We used to read a verse of the Qur’an revealed in their connection, but later the verse was cancelled.

Then we have some of the verses went missing, according to again, Al-Bukhari.

And amongst what Allah revealed was the verse of the Rajam, that's the verse on stoning.

We did recite this verse and understood and memorized it.

Allah’s Apostle did carry out the punishment of stoning and so did we after him.

And here is an interesting admission –

I am afraid that after a long time has passed, somebody will say,

‘By Allah, we do not find the Verse of the Rajam in Allah’s book’.

And that's true.

When you go to Chapter 24, verse 2, you will find out there is a hundred lashes for those who commit adultery, not stoning any longer.

That's the Verse of the Rajam that has been taken out and has been replaced.

Other verses were overlooked because Khuzaimah ibn Thabit said,

“I see you have overlooked (two) verses and have not written them”.

And that's found in ibn Abi Dawud.

And others have been changed.

Here we come back to Muwatta Imam Malik.

According to Aishah, Aishah ordered – Aishah, the favorite wife of Muhammad, ordered me to transcribe the Holy Qur’an and asked me to let her know when I should arrive at this verse.

She ordered:

“Write it in this way”.

She had heard it this way from the Apostle of Allah.

So even a wife of Muhammad had a verse changed because she thought it different than what she remembered.

Altogether al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf made eleven modifications in the reading of the Uthmanic text, according to al-Ma’ida, but it was altered to so and so according to ibn Thabit.

And then we have: Some verses were substituted, according to Sahih Bukhari again.

We substitute something better or similar.

And then finally some verses were even eaten by sheep.

The verse of stoning and of breastfeeding an adult ten times was revealed, and the paper was with me under my pillow.

When the Messenger of Allah died, we were preoccupied with his death, and a tame sheep came in and ate it.

Now these are from Islamic traditions.

I am not making these up.

All of these you can find.

Every one of these you can go back and trace.

So certainly, what Muslims are saying today is not what the earliest Muslims said – lost, disappeared, forgotten, cancelled, missing, overlooked, changed, modified, substituted, eaten by sheep.

Does this sound like a book which was compiled perfectly and completely?

Does this not imply intentional human intervention all through its compilation?

And that's what I am proving tonight.

It is compilation.

It looks like much of it has been manipulated by humans and again if you have noticed I have been only using Islamic authority, Islamic text to prove my point.

Now we get to the second problem, historical anachronisms.

The claim by Muslims is that the Qur’an is perfect – does not contain any errors (as the eternal word of God) and being such and has no history and has no intentional human interventions.

Thus, historical criticism created for the Bible does not apply to the Qur’an.

So, what my Muslims have told me for the last 35 years that I have been working in Islam, this is what I have heard over and over again.

Historical criticism is not a problem for the Qur’an.

It is only a problem for the Bible.

Now let's take a look.

When we look at the Qur’an, we find it introduces a Samaritan way, way too early in Surah chapter 20, verse 85 to 87, also 95 to 97.

It says:

“But indeed, We have tried your people after you departed, and the Samiri has led them astray.

So, Moses returned to his people angry and grieved.

Moses said,

‘And what is your case for Samiri?’”

Samiri is a name for Samaritans in Arabic.

Now the problem is Samaritans did not exist at the time of Abraham, I am sorry, Moses, in 1,400 BC.

The Samaritans were created by Sargon II, the Assyrian king in 722, 700 years later.

So here is a historical anachronism that is quite common of the Qur’an.

When the Qur’an borrows stories, it borrows and puts the individuals in the wrong place.

Now let's go back.

Now we have here a mosque too early, in Surah 17, Ayat 1,

“Glorified is He who took His slave for a journey by land from al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca to al-Masjid al-Aqsa in Jerusalem”.

This is known as the Mi’raj. In 621 when Muhammad was woken up in the middle of the night and told to get on the back of Buraq, the winged horse, and he flew on the winged horse up to Jerusalem and there at the dome, where the Dome of the Rock is today, where the rock was at that time, which was known as al-Masjid al-Aqsa according to the Qur’an, even flew up to the Seven Heavens.

Now the problem with that is there was no al-Aqsa in Jerusalem at that time.

That was not built until 710 AD.

This is 621 AD.

If they want to say it's the Dome of the Rock that was built in 691 AD.

Can you see the problem?

That's 70 years later.

You cannot have a mosque in Jerusalem that early; there were no Muslims in Jerusalem that early.

There was no mosque that early in Jerusalem.

If you want to call it the temple, the temple was destroyed in 70 AD, so there was no temple there either.

So where is this Masjid al-Aqsa in Surah 17 Ayat 1?

In Surah 34, Ayat 10 to 11, it says,

“And We certainly gave David… And We made pliable for him iron,

‘Make full coats of mail and calculate [precisely] the links,’” assuming that there was chain-mail at the time of David who lived in 1,000 BC.

Coats of chain-mail were not invented till 200 BC, a full 800 years later!

You cannot have it that early.

The Qur’an assumes Crucifixion much too early, in Chapter 7, verse 120 to 124.

You have Sarah, I am sorry, Pharaoh, saying to The Sorcerers who tried to keep up with Moses.

Moses was doing all these different signs, these different plagues, and so The Sorcerers were trying to keep up with him and they could not and so Pharaoh takes The Sorcerers and crucifies them.

Well, we know that Moses was living in 1,400 BC.

In Surah 12, Ayat 41, the Pharaoh of that time takes the baker who was imprisoned with Joseph, takes him out of prison and crucifies him.

Now we know that Joseph lived in 1,800 BC.

Here is the problem.

There was no crucifixion that early.

Crucifixion was invented in 500 BC.

You see the difficulty.

That's over a thousand or 1,300 years later and so the Qur’an makes these kinds of historical anachronisms over and over again, which suggest to me that if you are going to get it right, at least get it right with the crucifixion of Jesus, but then denies the crucifixion of Jesus.

In chapter 4, 157:

“And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him, but another was made to resemble him to them.

And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it.

They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption.

And they did not kill him.”

Now we do know that historically almost every historian of the first and second century agreed that that was Jesus on the Cross.

Thallus, a Greek historian, was debating Phlegon in 52 AD.

That was that's within 20 years of Christ’s death.

They were having a debate about the death of Jesus Christ.

They mentioned that the day that Jesus died the earth shook and the sun went dark, supporting exactly what we see in the Mathew account.

So, there you have Greek historians that agree with the crucifixion.

They say there was a great satirist who in the 2nd century talks about crucifixion of Christ.

Mara Bar-Serapion’s Letter to the Pagan in the 73 AD refers specifically to the death of Jesus Christ.

Josephus was a Jew.

He was a Jewish historian between 37 AD and 90 AD in the late 1stcentury.

He not only talks about the death of Jesus Christ.

He mentions curiously that the Christians believe that he rose again.

It's the only non-Christian reference we have to the resurrection.

And then you have Tacitus.

Tacitus hated Christians, had nothing good to say about Christian, yet Tacitus in the beginning of 2nd century talks about the death of Jesus Christ and gives us the date for it because he says it happened during the time of Pontius Pilate under the authority of Tiberius.

That's why we know today that it happened in 33 AD.

Thank God for Tacitus.

Though he did not agree at all with what Jesus was or what he said or what he did, he did agree that he did die on the cross.

So, you have Greek historians, you have Jewish historians; you have Roman historians all from the 1st and 2nd century all agreeing that that was Jesus on the cross.

Show me any historian that disagrees until you get to the Qur’an 600 years later.

A man who couldn't even read and write in a language that couldn't even accommodate what he was saying then suddenly gets a new revelation that Christ was not on the cross.

That's in Surah 4:157 but if you go to Surah 19, Ayat 33 Jesus himself or Isa himself talks about his death and resurrection as a little child,

“Blessed be me, the day I was born, the day I die and the day I rise again”, completely confronting Surah 4, Ayat 157.

I leave that for the Muslims to deal with.

What about Mary?

In Surah 19, Ayat 28, Mary is the sister of Aaron.

In Surah 66, Ayat 12, Mary is the daughter of Imran.

In Surah 20, Ayat 30, Aaron is Moses’ brother.

But Mary all the way through is the mother of Jesus.

How can you have Jesus’ mother who could be the sister of Aaron and the daughter of Imran, who is Amran in the Old Testament in Exodus Chapter 6, verse 20?

Now we do know that both Aaron and Moses had a sister named Miriam but she lived in 1,400 BC.

And she could not be simultaneously the mother of Jesus because otherwise she was 1,400 years old.

And I don't think Miriam was that old.

It looks like the Qur’an confuses the two Mary's and confuses and assumes therefore that the Mary of the time of Moses is the same Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Some say we know, know that Mary's father is Amram.

That's not true if you look at Luke Chapter 3.

It's very clear that the father of Mary is Heli, comes from a completely different line than the father of Jacob, who is the father of Joseph.

Now it confuses the Qibla and the Kaaba, the Qibla, Surah 2, Ayat 144 to 149.

From 624 all the Qiblas should be facing towards Mecca, yet we now find 4 different Qiblas.

I am not going to unpack this tonight.

Come on Saturday.

We are going to show you how.

In fact, we are going to look at the Qiblas.

We are going to show you about 65 Qiblas that are facing the wrong way.

That we are going to introduce on Saturday.

So, come in rather than talk about it tonight.

Look and see what we now know about Muhammad and about Mecca.

We are going to show you that there was no Mecca at all.

None existed at the time of Muhammad.

Wait till you see what we have now found concerning Mecca but that's for Saturday.

So, I am not going to pack up too much today.

Including the Kaaba in Mecca, we will talk more about that on Saturday.

It confuses Pharaoh, the Tower of Babel, and Haman.

Surah 28, Ayat 38, the Pharaoh said

“Oh, so kindle for me, O Haman”.

Haman?

In Egypt?

Surah 40, Ayat 36 and 37, Pharaoh said,

"O Haman, construct for me a tower’.

Haman building a tower?

First of all, Egypt, they never did build towers.

They built pyramids and temples.

We don’t know of any reference of towers in Egypt.

That’s another problem, but in Genesis 11, 1-9, the tower is in Chaldea, in southern Iraq, hundreds of miles away.

Haman is not even an Egyptian name.

It’s a Persian name and we find it in Esther Chapter 3, verse 1, where Haman was the minister of the Persian king, Ahasuerus, who is Xerxes 1 according to the Greeks and reigned between 486 and 465.

Pharaoh was in 1,500 BC and Haman lived in 510 BC.

They therefore never met each other because they lived over a thousand years apart.

Are you seeing the problem here?

These are anachronisms that Muslims have not yet been able to answer.

Then when you get to Zul-Qarnain, who is Alexander the Great, in chapter 18, verse 96:

He goes and he... “Bring me sheets of iron.”

He says.

He builds this between two mountain walls made out of iron with molten copper put over top.

Now if you build a wall made out of iron with molten copper over top to keep the enemies from getting through that’s a pretty substantial wall.

Wouldn’t you suggest?

Why is it no one has heard about this wall?

It would be the greatest engineering achievement in the history of mankind.

Even today we can’t build walls of iron between two mountains.

Yet according to the Qur’an, this is exactly what Alexander the Great did in 300 BC.

Alexander the Great had three different biographers who talked about his life.

Nowhere in any of the three biographies is there any reference to a wall between two different mountains.

It refers to a “futuristic” coin, the Dirham, Surah 12, Ayat 20, talking about Joseph being sold for “a few dirhams counted out”.

Now Joseph lived in 1,800 BC.

Coins didn’t even exist at the time of Joseph.

They were created by the Lydians in the 7th century BC, over a thousand years later.

The Dirham ironically did not exist at the time of Muhammad.

So how could Muhammad have even talked about a Dirham?

There were no Dirhams at the time.

There were Drachmas.

There were Greek Drachmas.

There were Persian Drachmas.

Now Muslims have said, well, this is the Arabic name for Drachmas.

No, there wasn’t.

There was no Arabic name for Drachmas.

They used the word Drachma at the time but Dirhams were then introduced in 661.

But Muhammad died in 632.

This is 30 years later.

It’s as if I were to come to you, all you and British men, I say back in 1960 I would have loved to buy your coat for 20 Euros.

It would have made no sense in 1960 to talk about Euros.

Euros didn’t exist in 1960 but they do today.

Can you see the problem?

That’s why you need to look at this as another anachronism.

Interestingly the Bible gets it completely correct in Chapter 37 of Genesis.

It says that Joseph was sold for 20 Shekels.

“Shekels” is the right denomination.

It is a weighted measure.

It is 0.2 kilogram of silver, proving that not only is the Bible correct but it also we know from the Nuzi tablets and the Mari tablets that the price of a slave in 1800 BC was exactly 20 Shekels.

The Bible gets the right denomination, gets the right price of the slave, the right man at the right place doing the right thing at the right time.

And we don’t even ask the Bible to do that.

It just turns out the Bible is correct but then I am not surprised.

Conclusion: The authors of the Qur’an do not know history.

God would not make these mistakes.

Further proof these are intentional human interventions.

That’s number two.

Let’s go to number three: Source criticism.

Now, what source problems existed?

According to Muslims this is what they claim.

The Qur’an is the eternal word of God.

Its source comes from eternal tablets, “preserved” in heaven, chapter 85, verse 22.

It was revealed to correct the errors of previous revelations.

It is unfettered by human intervention.

In other words, it does not come from man!

I hope now the other Muslims don’t walk out.

We do need the Muslims to stay.

They need to listen to this.

I just saw a Muslim walk out.

We do need the Muslims to stay, because I want them to react to what I am saying tonight.

Okay, it’s important that you do.

So, what are the source problems?

When you take a look at the Qur’an, you will find that there are many stories in the Qur’an that talk about Biblical characters.

What's interesting is when you look at the Biblical characters, and you look at the stories that are there, they are not the same stories that we have in the Bible and this has always been a curiosity for those who are Christians and Jews

Why is it they don’t have the same stories?

We now know the reason.

In almost every case, 25% of the Qur’an is borrowed.

We know where they borrowed them from.

We know who they borrowed them from and we pretty well know the documents that they borrowed it from.

And I am – rather than go through all the hundreds of them that we could go on, I am not going to give you them.

I am just going to give you two or three.

In Chapter 5, verse 32,

“We ordained for the Children of Israel that if anyone slew a person – unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land – it would be as if he slew the whole people; and if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people...”

This is one of the favorite verses that is banded around by Muslims, by Ahmadis.

Am I correct?

Ahmadis love this verse because this is one verse on peace you can find in the Qur’an.

The problem is it doesn’t belong in the Qur’an.

We know exactly where it comes from.

If you were to go to the verse before it, it’s the story of Cain and Abel.

Cain kills his brother Abel, doesn’t know what to do with the body of his brother, so he watches the raven burying his partner and he follows the example of the raven and buries his brother.

Then you get this verse, which follows it –

“O Children of Israel”, which means it has nothing to do with Muslims; this is for Jews, “he who takes the blood of one, is as if he takes the blood of all but he who saves the blood of one is as if he saved the blood of all.”

This is a redemption analysis on the blood of Abel and it was written first of all, the story of Cain and Abel we have found in the Targum of Jonathan ben Uzzial, which is a 2nd century apocryphal account.

Look at the date, 2nd century AD, long after the Bible was already canonized, so it was written by Jews about the blood of Abel.

It wasn’t until the 5th century AD that this, a scribe who was copying over the Targum of Jonathan ben Uzzial wrote in the margin in his own pen,

“He who takes the blood of one is as if he takes the blood of all; he who saved the blood of one is as if he saved the blood of all.”

It was nothing more than a scribe, probably basic editorializing about the blood of Abel.

In the late 5th century when the Mishnah Sanhedrin was written by the Jews, the story of Cain and Abel along with analysis of the blood of Abel was then incorporated into the same story in chapter 4, verse 5.

We know when it was written.

We know who wrote it.

We know why it was written.

It has nothing to do with God.

It has nothing to do with really anybody other than those Jewish scribes that wrote it.

And yet then it gets incorporated into the Qur’an, somewhere in the 7th or 8th or 9th century.

What's fascinating, if you want to find out what you are supposed to do, read the very next verse that follows it, verse 33, because that verse has got to do with Jews.

It has to do with anybody who does not follow Muhammad or does not follow Allah.

We must be crucified and have our hands and feet cut off on opposite end.

That follows verse 32.

That’s to do with us, not verse 32.

That’s to do with Jews.

Are you following me?

Now let’s look at Surah 5, verse …

Sorry, take that 5 out.

That’s a misprint, chapter 27, verse 17 to 44.

In chapter 27, verse 17 to 44 you have an interesting story of Solomon and Sheba.

Solomon has birds that he, basically he keeps them and marches them every day so they can fly up in the battle and drop stones on their enemies, and the bottom of every stone is the name of the enemy they are going to kill.

The first air force ever invented was by Solomon.

I had no idea.

One day as he is marching his birds, he noticed that one of his birds is missing and it’s called hoopoe, hoopoe.

We have an Indian.

I grew up with these hoopoe birds.

And he was angry that the hoopoe bird wasn’t there marching with him.

Then he sees the bird flying in from the south and it lands at his feet, and he talks to the bird.

I had no idea Solomon could talk to birds, but this bird said that way down in the south, in the land of Sheba there is a gorgeous queen that he must go see the queen.

Well, he is busy marching his birds.

Well, he sends the bird on back down to the land of Sheba to bring her back to meet him and the bird lands at the feet of the Queen of Sheba and talks to her.

Lo and behold, the Queen of Sheba talks to birds.

I had no idea but there it is in the Qur’an.

As she is talking to the bird, the bird wants her to come up to meet Solomon.

So, she comes up with her retinue, comes up to Solomon’s temple, I am sorry, Palace, comes in the door where he is in his throne, and starts walking across towards Solomon, and she looks down and she sees the pond with a glass over it.

She doesn’t know the glass is there.

She thinks she is going to get her feet wet, so she pulls up her skirt to keep her skirt from getting wet, and that’s where the story ends in verse 44.

Have you heard this story before?

Is this story in the Bible?

I missed it at the Sunday school.

What a lovely story!

Why is it we never had this in Sunday school?

Well, for one very good reason, it’s not in the Bible, and the reason it’s not in the Bible is because it has nothing to do with the Bible.

It is an apocryphal account.

It is the II Targum of Esther written in the 2nd century by Jews in the diaspora, basically as a bed-time tale for their children, never considered to be part of scripture.

It was nothing more than entertainment and yet this story makes its way into the Qur’an in Surah 27, Ayat 17 to 44.

This is why you have to do source criticism on the Qur’an or any religious book that claims to be divine as the Qur’an does.

When you look at Surah 3, Ayat 35 to 37, Mary, Imran, Jared, Zachariah that comes from Proto-Evangelion’s James the Lesser, that’s a sectarian account written by Christians, not Christians, did I say Christians – Gnostic writers.

This is Gnostic account and yet it makes its way into the Qur’an.

The story of Jesus creating birds out of clay in Surah 3, Ayat 49: That comes from Thomas gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, again a Gnostic account written in the 2nd century.

Burying a Raven that I talked about earlier, by Targum of Jonathan ben Uzzial: That comes in the 2nd century.

Chapter 7, verse 171 of raising mountains: That comes from the Abodah Sarah, which is again a Jewish apocryphal account.

And then when Jesus talks as a baby and he tells his mother how to eat food from a tree, that is not in our Bible because that comes from the First gospel of the infancy of Jesus Christ, another Gnostic writing.

These are Gnostic writings.

These are not Christian writers.

They were always rejected by the Christian.

They were never accepted.

Interestingly the Gnostics in many of these sectarian groups which were heretical, driven out of the Byzantine world and they were sent down to Arabia.

They were sent down primarily to places like Baghdad today, which was called Ctesiphon in the old days.

It’s no wonder then that the Arabs or the Persians who put the Qur’an together, as I am going to say Tehran, they came across only these stories.

So, can you now understand why these stories are incorporated into the Qur’an and not the authoritative stories from the Bible?

The reason why the stories from the Bible are not in the Qur’an is because the Bible was not translated into Arabic until the late 8th century.

Are you hearing me?

This book was not translated into Arabic until the late 8th century.

Therefore, the Arabs never read the Bible.

They never had access to these stories.

They only had access to these sectarian accounts, these apocryphal accounts, and that’s why 25% of the Qur’an is full of these accounts.

Written in Syriac. If you look at the beautiful poetry, Muslims tell me all the time, one of the gorgeous things about the Qur’an is its poetry.

How can a man who could not read or write put together such beautiful poetry?

Two scholars, Dr. Günter Lüling and Dr. Luxemburg, two of them independent of each other who were both Syriac scholars, upon reading this poetry recognized that they read these before.

Dr. Günter Lüling went back to find out where this poetry came from and he noticed that almost every one of the poetry that you find in the Qur’an can be traced back to pre-Islamic Christian hymns written in Syriac in the 5th and 6th century, strophe by strophe, exactly the same.

Borrowed them from the Syriac, interposed into the Qur’an and interposed into Arabic.

Most of these stories do refer to Isa.

But the name for Jesus in Syriac is Yaesu.

When you take the story of Jesus in Syriac and you interpose it into Arabic, it becomes Isa.

This is not my Jesus, folks; that’s why Isa is the wrong name for Jesus.

It’s not even an Arabic name.

It’s a Syriac name.

They got the wrong Jesus.

They got the wrong name.

They got the wrong man, got the wrong place doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.

My Jesus did not make birds out of clay and blew them as baby.

He did not tell Mary how to eat and he did not speak from the cradle like the Qur’an has full of.

And my Jesus did die on the cross and he rose again.

What a Jesus we have got!

The Qur’an has got it completely wrong but then you can see why – it went to the wrong source.

Once again, we were proving these are all written by finite men and not from the God.

That’s all I am proving tonight, have you noticed?

That’s number 3.

Let’s go to number 4.

Now we get into the real material.

This is the most difficult for Muslims to deal with.

This is why lots of Muslims do not want to come tonight because of this material.

This is why they were putting out; I don’t know if you saw – they were putting out leaflets to stop people from coming for the meeting tonight because the manuscript material is by far the most devastating.

This material I introduced in 2014.

In 2014, I was given this material.

We came across it in London, and I challenged Dr. Shabir Ali, considered to be the Muslim world’s best debater, to a debate on it.

We debated in September of 2014.

He let me go first, which is his undoing; he should have never let me go first.

If you want to watch the debate, you can go up on YouTube, put:

“The Great debate, Dr. Shabir Ali versus Jay Smith”

That was before my doctorate.

Go and watch the debate.

You only need to watch the first 15 minutes.

All the damage was done in the first 15 minutes.

So, I am going to show you tonight what I shared on that night.

Now let’s remind ourselves:

What is it that we are saying?

Claims about the Qur’an:

Muslims claim it is eternal.

Muslims claim it was sent down.

Muslims claim it was complete at the time of Uthman.

And Muslims claim it is unchanged.

All you need is ask those four questions to any Muslim at any time.

Just need to remember those four words – eternal, sent down, complete, unchanged.

Well, that’s five words.

Okay, so I don’t know my math but if you can just remember those four demands – eternal, sent down, complete, unchanged.

My question is “Prove it”: prove those four, which means I know you can’t prove eternality, so I am not going to ask you to prove eternality, you Muslims sitting here tonight.

You can’t prove “sent down” because we weren’t there.

All I am asking any Muslim here tonight is: show me a complete manuscript of the Qur’an from the time of Uthman, that’s the mid-7th century, which is complete and unchanged.

That’s all I am asking.

And that’s what I asked Dr. Shabir Ali in 2014 and he still has not answered me.

He cannot.

No matter how good a debater he is, there is no way that any Muslim can answer those three questions.

A complete Qur’an, written in the 7th century that’s unchanged, I am not asking much.

I am not asking for nine manuscripts.

I am asking for one, though nine were made.

Where are those nine manuscripts?

Where is the manuscript that was sent to – I am sorry – Basra, Baghdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, Cairo, Alexandria, Aden, Harat and Nishabur?

That’s all I am asking.

If you can just give me one manuscript from those nine cities, that is complete and unchanged, I would be happy, all right.

And for those who are watching this on YouTube, this is for all Muslims all over the world; Shabir Ali has not been able to do so.

So, I am asking other Muslims to do so.

Now there are many translations.

We are not talking about the translations.

106 of these translations alone, but what are the claims that Muslims make?

So, let’s look at some of the experts, some of the most who – well, maybe not everybody may call them experts, men like Fethullah Gulen from Turkey, who says there is only one Qur’an, men like – or lady like Suzanne Haneef, who said it’s preserved in its original form, or Jamal al-Din M. Zarabozo, who said every Qur’an is the same throughout the world.

The famous translator for the Qur’an, Abdullah Yusuf Ali from Pakistan, says not a single letter has been changed.

That’s quite a statement to make: not a single letter of the Qur’an has been changed.

Zayed Bin Sultan, of Al-Nahayan Foundation, says not even a dot has been changed.

Not even a dot has been changed.

Maulvi Muhammad Ali from your area is one of your men, says not even a diacritical point has been changed.

Not even a diacritical point has been changed.

Alhaj A. D. Ajijola says not a jot or tittle.

They have put the Qur’an so high.

Can you see the claims they are making?

Yet there is not one Muslim that can support any of these claims and we will show you why.

Now my good friend, Dr. Shabir Ali, I debated him seven times, six times, excuse me.

The last time is in 2014.

I doubt he is going to debate me again because of what happened in 2014.

Over half a million people have watched that debate.

We know tens of people, Muslims, who have given the lives to Jesus Christ because of that one debate.

It is a debate that is difficult to watch if you are a Muslim.

But Dr. Shabir Ali, even at that debate, I gave these two quotes when he was debating Tony Costa a number of years ago, he put it out that

“We Muslims have the copy of the Qur’an dating for 790”, that’s 790 AD in the British Museum.

That’s called the Ma’il Codex, which is known as the MS2165 codex.

“Folks, that’s 1,300 years ago.”

Shabir said.

“And we can compare that with what we are reading today and we can find them to be exactly identical.”

So, before the debate Shabir used to say this, the Ma’il Qur’an, the 2165 manuscript is exactly the same as the Qur’an we have today.

He goes on, the text of the Qur’an because the text was known through memory work and through the written materials handed down right from the time of the Prophet Muhammad.

As I said, Shabir goes on, the two copies that were made 1,400 years ago, one which is Tashkent, so he is talking about the Sammarqand manuscript, which is in Tashkent and he is talking about the Ma’il Qur’an, which is in London at the British Library.

These are early copies from that time and we find no difference from that copy to what we are reading today.

So even the best debater in the Muslim world is willing to say that the Ma’il and the Sammarqand are exactly the same as the Qur’an we have today.

So, let's look at these manuscripts.

Now, for many years, for 35 years that I have been working in Islam I could not look at these manuscripts.

We did not have access to these manuscripts.

Muslims do not give us access to their manuscripts.

We give them access to all our Biblical manuscripts.

There is no restriction on the Biblical manuscripts and most of them are up online.

You can go look at the Sinaiticus in its entirety, Alexandrinus in its entirety.

You can look at the Vaticanus in its entirety.

You can go look at every one of the fragments that are in Chester Beatty Museum.

You can look at the Babylon papyrus.

You can look at the John Ryland's manuscript.

All of these manuscripts and fragments are all available for public scrutiny.

We do not hide a thing.

There is no reason to hide it.

We have been completely transparent.

That's why Muslims are able to confront our side because we give them everything to confront with.

Why have Muslims not allowed us to look at these manuscripts until 2002?

In 2002, 2 scholars, now before we get into this let's just look and see remind us of what the claim is.

In the Sahih al-Bukhari 6:509, Uthman collected the Qur’an, I am sorry, Abu Bakr first collected the Qur’an and then Uthman collected the second ascension in 652.

All the manuscripts that were – that disagreed, they burnt them and then sent a copy to nine different cities

Just to remind ourselves let's look at the map.

Look at the nine provinces.

Look where they are.

Basra, Baghdad, you can see them all here.

Here is Basra.

There is Baghdad.

There is Damascus, Jerusalem, Cairo, Alexandria, Aden down here.

Then you have Harat there and Nishabur up there.

Okay, so those are all the nine different provinces right there all in that round area, all in this round area.

That's the time we are looking at them again.

That's the time at the time of Uthman, those within the province that would be under his jurisdiction.

According to Arthur Jeffrey, Arthur Jeffrey has been a scholar in the last century in the 1930s, he went to all the Islamic traditions.

So, he went to Sira.

He went to the Hadith.

He went to the Tafsir.

He went to the four genres of what we know as the Islamic traditions and he looked at their claims of what they said concerning the original Qur’an.

And what he found out is that there was a multiplicity of Qur’an but there were four Metropolitan codices that were specifically attributed, one that is attributed to Ubai ibn Kaab from Damascus.

What was interesting, there were 115 chapters in his Qur’an.

Get there is only 114 in the Qur’an today.

There was another Qur’an that was attributed to Ibn Masood in Kufa.

He had 111 chapters.

He was missing three chapters in his Qur’an according to the traditions.

Another one by ibn Musa in Basra had 116 chapters and then Zaid ibn Thabit was one in Medina.

His was 114.

Now this is known back since 1930s.

We have known about this for almost 100 years.

This is not new material that I am teaching you right now.

And Muslims also know about this.

But we really want to look at the Topkapi and the Sammarqand because these are the ones that Shabir Ali specifically looked at.

But we can go one step better because we now have had access to the s ix major manuscripts, the six major Mushafs that Muslims claim were all from the time of Uthman.

Here are three of them, the Topkapi which is in Istanbul, there in Turkey, the Sammarqand which is in Tashkent in Uzbekistan, the Ma’il which is in the British Museum – British Library, excuse me, in London, the 2165, the Huseyni manuscript, which is in Cairo in Egypt, the Petropolitanus manuscript, also known as the BnF– Bibliotheque nationale de France, so it’s in the Bibliotheque nationale in Paris and then most important, probably the most exciting one, is the Sana’aa manuscript, which is just discovered in 1975, which is in Sana’aa, in Yemen.

So those are the six manuscripts – the Topkapi, the Sammarqand, the Ma’il, the Huseyni, the Petropolitanus and the Sana’aa manuscripts.

 

Now we only have access to the Petropolitanus and also the Ma’il because they are in London, in Paris.

The other four we had no access.

No one could get access to.

No non-Muslim could get access to.

And then in 2002, two gentlemen, two Turkish scholars, Prof. Dr. Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu and Dr. Tayyar Altıkulaç, were given access to all six of these manuscripts.

They were given it for five years.

So, from 2002 to 2007, they were able to look at all five of these manuscripts.

They were the first ones to do so.

They are considered to be the leading scholars in the Muslim world on Arabic script, on Arabic codices or codex system.

This is a codex, a book.

Especially Dr. Tayyar Altıkulaç, they were the ones that had access.

They have always had access to the Topkapi, the most important, considered to be the most important by scholars today.

What did they find?

They came up with their finds in 2009.

Their finding

was written in – translated into English in 2013.

That’s why I was given access to the material and that’s why I challenged Shabir Ali to a debate, because now we finally have access to these six manuscripts.

These are the earliest manuscripts.

These are supposedly complete manuscripts but these are Muṣḥafs.

These aren’t just fragments.

These are Muṣḥafs.

What do they say?

First and foremost, Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu said

“We have none of Uthman’s Muṣḥafs.

Nor do we have any copies from those Muṣḥafs.

These Muṣḥafs date from the later Umayyad period”.

That’s from 661 up until 749, the late Umayyad period.

That means the 8th century, not the 7th century.

Dr. Tayyar Altıkulaç, leading scholar in Qur’anic studies, ex-president of the Turkish religious affairs, Deputy in the Turkish parliament, said there has been no serious scholarly work done on any of these manuscripts.

These Muṣḥafs date from the early to mid-8th century.

Let me repeat that, early to mid-8th century.

None are from the 7th century.

They are not Uthmanic, nor even copies sent by him.

Let’s take a look at each one, one by one.

The Topkapi Muṣḥaf, from early to mid-8th century

There are different pictures of it.

We now have access to this; we have it in our library now.

You can now get the Muṣḥaf for study.

It costs 400 pounds.

It’s very expensive but you get the entire manuscript.

We now have access to every page.

The introduction is in English, you need to read it, and it’s only three pages long.

If any of you do want to get it, you can get it; it’s on my computer right over there.

I can give it to you even tonight.

Altıkulaç dates the Topkapi manuscript to “the second half of the 1st century A. H., i.e. after Hijri.

So therefore, it is the early to mid-8th century, alright?

Not the 7th century

It was neither the private Muṣḥaf of Caliph Uthman, nor one of the Muṣḥafs he sent to various centers.

There are deviations from grammatical rules and spelling mistakes in the Muṣḥaf attributed to the Caliph Uthman.

He concludes that there are 2,270 instances where there was a difference from the skeleton of the context that’s the canonical text that we read today.

It has 2,270 differences and yet it comes from the mid-8th century, that’s about 100 years after Muhammad.

Therefore, you cannot use it at all, it is not an Uthmanic text and it comes from 75 to 100 years after Uthman and yet it has 2,270 variances.

There’s difference after difference with the 1924 text in use today, like Surah 3:158, completely different when you look at the context, Surah 3:158.

I’m not going to go through all 2,270 because we’ll be here all night.

What about the Sammarqand manuscript?

This is the one that’s probably the most famous; it’s the one that was brought to London a few years ago to represent the greatest of all manuscripts for the Qur’an.

It was brought to the British Library and I went to see it.

You can see it’s a very large text; it’s what we call a monumental text.

It has been dated by both Altıkulaç and İhsanoğlu to the early to mid-8th century again.

Now what’s fascinating, Altıkulaç says it is not Uthmanic as it dates from the mid-8th century and there are six reasons that he says are problems with it.

It has undisciplined spelling, it has different writing styles, it has scribal mistakes, it has copyist mistakes, it was written by someone with little experience, with later additions and it only goes up to Surah 43.

There’s 114 Surahs in the Qur’an.

It wasn’t even complete.

Now even when you look at those 43 Surahs of what existed, take a look at them and you will see there is only one complete Surah amongst the 43.

24 of them are partial.

18 have nothing in them.

They’re completely blank.

So why haven’t Muslims told us this?

They’ve had this manuscript for 1,300 years.

Why in 1,300 years did we have to wait till 2013 finally to find out how little, how hopeless the Qur’an is?

In fact, Altıkulaç says it’s an embarrassment because of the terrible grammar that it uses.

The differences between Topkapi and Sammarqand, you can see over and over again

These are just examples.

If you want to study these more, those who may want the PowerPoint, take a look and just see how different they are.

Read just between the two – so they don’t even agree with each other.

These are two manuscripts from the 8th century that don’t even agree with each other and neither of them is complete.

The Ma’il Qur’an that we have in London, we have known about.

This 2165 Qur’an also only goes up to Surah 43.

53% of the Qur’an is missing.

It’s dated to late 8th century or early 8th century.

Now that one is full of manuscript variants – we’ve already known about that.

The Al-Huseyni Cairo – in Cairo, sorry, manuscript is early to mid-8th century, dated by Altıkulaç.

He says

“It is not Uthmanic.

It is dated from the early to mid-8th century.”

This copy is not one of the Mushafs attributed to Caliph Uthman.

In fact, François Déroche, who is the European scholar considered the roles of authority on the earliest manuscript – he dates this manuscript to the 9th century, not to the 8th century because of the fact that it used a monumental form that was borrowed from the Christian manuscripts in the late 8th century to the early 9th century.

Note if you look carefully the coverage on the text.

Can you see the coverage there?

There’s a covering there.

There’s a covering there.

We are going to talk about that.

Over and over, can you see these coverings on these texts?

There’s a covering there.

They are covering words; they are covering up things they don’t want you to read, part of the text.

Then we get to the Paris Petropolitanus, which is also known as Bibliotheque nationale de France.

This is the early 8th century.

This is the one that has been worked over by Dr. François Déroche.

He has authority over this manuscript.

He has already said very clearly that there are corrections to the texts.

It disagrees with the Caireen Muṣḥaf in 93 places.

That means, the Caireen Muṣḥaf means the Muṣḥaf that we use today, the 1924.

In five different copyists who wrote it, had later modifications with erasures and additions.

The largest section of this Petropolitanus manuscript is only 20, only includes 26% of the Qur’an.

Most of the Qur’an is missing and yet Muslims have said it’s complete and that there’s no difference between this manuscript and the Qur’an we have today.

Why haven’t they told us the truth?

When you look at the Petropolitanus and the 1924, you will see a place, an area, and verse after verse.

We don’t have time to go through all of it.

And then we get to the Sana’a Manuscript and this is probably one of the most exciting one because it’s the most recent that was discovered.

It’s also the earliest date of all the manuscripts.

It is dated to the early 8th century because of the fact that it didn’t have any diacritical marks, nor did it have any vowelization.

German scholars were flown down in 1981 to look at it and they were given access.

They took pictures of it.

Those pictures have been confiscated by the Yemeni government.

They were only released to them in 1997.

I got to know Gerd Puin, Dr. Gerd Puin, and I went to see him in Germany and he let me take a picture of some of those folios.

But what was interesting, when you look at it you will see that parts of it also have these tints.

Now you might say

“Oh, something is damaged there”

But when you look at the back side, you will find there’s no damage whatsoever.

These are intentional tapings.

You can’t probably see all these but these are all the different folios within the Sana’a manuscript and you can see only 22% of the Qur’an is in that folio.

Only this one has, this one only has about 25% of the Qur’an.

None of these are complete.

This one only goes up from one to 29 Surahs.

The 11 Surahs are changeovers.

You can see some enormous amount of manipulation of the text.

Over 1,000 manuscript variants were counted by Gerd Puin and when he let me take a picture of it, he said

“Take a look.

Here’s Surah 19 and then it jumps to Surah 22, at that yellow mark.”

What happened to Surah 20 and 21?

Surah 20 appears on the other side of the page but if you look carefully you will see these are two completely different scripts.

That is 705.

This is the late 8th century.

There’s about 60 to 70 years between those two pages.

Every time you see these orange marks, every one of those orange marks are what we call manuscript variants.

That means words or phrases in this text that are not the same as the Qur’an that we have on our hands today.

And he said there were about roughly around 1000 at that time.

Now the differences in meaning are theological in some cases but what’s fascinating is that it has an under-text.

See, when you use parchment or vellum, animal skins, many times in the old days they would write and then they would wash it off and write over top.

And that’s called a palimpsest.

That was quite common especially if it was a manuscript that was not that important, if it was a school text and things like that.

In this case, you can tell there was a lower text.

You can see it visually because it’s bled through over the years.

And what they did is they put it under ultraviolet light and they were able to separate the text.

Now just a month ago, Asma Hilali has finally come out with the under-text.

Here’s the book.

It’s only a week old.

I’ve only had it for one week.

She has finally now exposed what is in this text.

There are hundreds of differences between the lower text and the upper text.

They are not the same text.

You can see that there are so many differences.

Now what she has said, the lower text is probably 50 years older than the upper text.

The upper text would be 705.

Which would put this around to the time of Uthman.

It would be about the time of Uthman, the lower text.

The problem is it disagrees with the upper text.

It’s not the same text.

It jumps all over the place.

Much is missing.

That’s just come out in the last month.

Note what she says and she didn’t know what to do.

So, she calls it.

She says

“The lower text is nothing more than a student’s notes”, a student’s notes.

Isn’t interesting this may prove to be the oldest Qur’an in existence and yet it’s nothing more than a student’s notes?

So where is the original from which the notes were taken?

Why is it only the notes have lasted for 1,400 years and no original has been retained for 1,400 years?

Could there be a reason for that?

Is it that this is not a student’s notes but this is a nascent Qur’an, the under-text is a nascent Qur’an from which other Qur’ans have been changed and manipulated later on?

Because when you look at the two texts you can see over and over again that.

This is Australia.

I get this from Dr. Bernie Powers.

This is his material showing how in Surah 9:73 how the lower and the upper texts change with each other.

Here you have Surah 9:76 where every time you see figures in the lower text, when you see the yellow and the green, it disagrees with the upper text.

Here you can see in Surah 9:80 or continue in Surah 9, the lower text is missing almost the entire verse.

Those there in the upper text, when was that added?

Why was it added?

Why wasn’t it there in the earlier text, the lower text?

When you look at the Sana’a manuscript’s upper-text with the 1924, you can see over and over again even the upper text doesn’t agree with the Sana’s, the 1924 that we have today.

There you can see in Surah 2:201 where the differences are.

There you can see in Surah 63:7.

Because of time, I’m not going to look at the significance of how this changes the theology of the verse.

The significance of what we’ve found?

None of the six earliest manuscripts are from the 7th century.

None of them are complete.

None of them agree completely with each other.

And none of the six manuscripts agree completely with the 1924 canonical “Hafs” text that we have today.

Thus, this again proves there has been intentional human interventions even within the 1st century.

Now let’s go then to corrections and this might be more, the most devastating material.

This is a material that’s come out of a doctoral thesis done by Dr. Dan Brubaker.

Dr. Dan Brubaker did this thesis and he let me have access to his doctoral thesis in 2014 and I introduced this at the debate in 2014.

The claims: the Qur’an is eternal, sent down from heaven, untouched by human hands, thus no corrections, no corruptions.

So, the Qur’an we have now is exactly like that in heaven, sent to Muhammad, and compiled by Uthman, with no interference by man.

Are you hearing this?

Are you getting this?

This is the same repeated claim I hear from every Muslim everywhere I go.

Let’s see if that’s so.

What Dr. Dan Brubaker has found is that there were insertions, erasures, erasures that were overwritten, overwriting, tapings, selective covering, and selective covering overwritten.

He therefore went to these six manuscripts, was given access by me to these six manuscripts, being a doctoral research student and he filmed them.

He took picture of every page of the manuscripts.

Then he went to four other manuscripts that were old, that were much more recent, not the older ones but more recent like St. Petersburg, the manuscript in St. Petersburg in Russia.

And this is what he found.

Looking at the six major manuscripts, he found 390 insertions.

These are words that are inserted at certain times.

Can you see where it’s inserted here?

Here a word is inserted.

And you see where the words are inserted.

These are insertions, 390 post-production additions to the text.

These were done after the text was already finished.

You can see where the insertions in the Topkapi Muṣḥaf in Surah 66:8:

“Repent until you give by it sincerely”

Then changes to

“Turn unto Allah in sincere repentance.”

That’s quite a difference because one says to repent; the other says to go to Allah to repent.

Allah’s name is added later on.

Can you see why this is hugely significant theologically?

This is from the Topkapi, the greatest of all manuscripts.

Here’s an insertion that he found on Surah 3:47.

You can see it’s completely above the line.

Here’s an insertion in the Petropolitanus text that’s been squeezed in between two letters there.

Obviously, it’s been put in at a later time.

There’s not even space to accommodate it on Surah 2:137.

Here’s an insertion on the Petropolitanus manuscript, BnF araba 327 on Surah 23:86.

And you can see it’s completely above the line.

That whole word up there, which is al-sab’a, has been added at Surah 23.

Here we have Surah 49 in the Sana’aa manuscript, where you have “They believe” changed to “The believers.”

They found 390 erasures, intentional removing the text from the pages.

There you can see where they erased it.

We had no idea of what used to be there.

We love to know if we could find out.

Why did they erase it?

But obviously they are trying to change the text, trying to change the manuscript.

Topkapi Muṣḥaf versus the 1924

Ayat 73, Chapter 73, verse 20: a simple word was erased between the words “two-third” and “the night”.

Unfortunately, we will never know what the word was, which was erased in the Topkapi manuscript.

Here we have the Al Huseyni Cairo manuscript in Egypt.

In Surah 49:6, something is erased after the word “fasaqa”.

While for this version, “fasaqa” is used in this manuscript, the word “fasiqu” is used instead in the 1924 Hafs text.

So not only a word that has been erased, it doesn’t even agree with the 1924 text once they have changed it.

Can you see the erasure of the Petropolitanus manuscript that’s in Paris in Surah 56:11?

And here’s another example of the Sana’aa manuscript in Surah 7:158.

I’m going very quickly because you can see if I become too tedious I’ll put you all to sleep.

But this is for you to go back and look at your own time.

I can see a few people are nodding so we’ll go a little quicker.

And here’s the St. Petersburg Hijazi manuscript for Surah 26:70.

Then he found 560 erasures overwritten.

So, what they did is they overwrote an entire sentence here.

A change was made at some time after the page was originally produced.

Here they erased and they’ve overwritten but they didn’t erase it very well so you can see what they’ve changed.

There you can see where they’ve erased and they’ve written another word at the top.

Here they’ve put in a completely different color already.

The erasures were overwritten on the BNF text in Surah 11.

Here you have an erasure that’s overwritten in Surah 3:171 in the Petropolitanus text.

Here is one from the St. Petersburg manuscript in Surah 7:181, and then 190 over-writings without erasures.

Here you can see where they didn’t even bother to erase.

They just wrote over the top, which means you can look at both the longer and the other text and you can see exactly what they’re changing.

Overwriting without erasures in the Topkapi Muṣḥaf, Surah 70.

I didn’t mean to do that, sorry about that, but that’s in my computer.

Overwriting without erasures in the Sana’aa manuscript in Surah 3:104.

Then you have selective coverings, 515 of these coverings that I mentioned earlier.

There’s a covering.

There’s a covering.

Look here.

You almost can’t even read the page because there are so many coverings.

Look at all the different coverings.

Why are they covering the scripts?

What are they trying to hide?

Here are the coverings in the Huseyni Cairo.

Here’s another covering in the Huseyni Cairo.

Look at that.

The fact that most of the page has covering after covering, another covering you can see, a whole piece of covering, one, two, three, four, five, six coverings in the Huseyni manuscript.

Then they have selective coverings overwritten, where they covered it and then they overwrote over the top.

So, there they’ve covered and they’ve written something over the top, just one letter.

Here you can see where they wrote two words.

Here’s a covering of a word but you can see over and over they’ve covered it.

And then they came to these patches.

He found these patches, which he thought maybe because the manuscript was worn or had been destroyed, but when we looked at the back there was no damage whatsoever.

There you can see there’s a patch.

There’s a patch.

There’s a patch.

Look at all these patches and with my left hand so I’m not that accurate.

So, what can we conclude?

He found over 2,200 corrections.

Now that was in 2014.

Today I was just on the phone with him.

It’s now over 3,500 that he has found.

He’s still finding hundreds of corrections, so he found over 1,000 more.

I don’t know how many more we are going to find before he finally gives up.

Now what are these corrections?

These are not diacritical marks.

This is not vowelization.

This has nothing to do with the Dagar Alifs.

These are consonantal differences.

This is the “RASM”, the letters that have been changed.

They continue up until the 9th century.

That means for 200 years they were still changing it.

So how can Muslims say that the Qur’an was complete in the 7th century when you have hundreds upon hundreds of corrections that continue up until the 9th century?

But, see, we didn’t know about this, two years ago.

We’ve now only found out it up in just the last two years.

So, what can we conclude?

Well, Western scholars like Deroche, Bowering, Conrad, Peters, Stein, Shoemaker, all conclude that the earliest Mushafs begin to appear in the 8th century.

Western scholars can now come to that conclusion.

Muslims scholars like Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu and Tayyar Altıkulaç conclude that the earliest Mushafs begin to appear in the 8th century.

“Islamic Awareness”, part of the largest website that deals with manuscript evidence, has been attacking our site for years, has finally concluded that there are no complete Uthmanic Mushafs, and that all the early Mushafs date from the late 7th to early 8th century or later.

The latest research shows that even those Mushafs have seven forms of corrections, dating up to the 9th century.

Therefore, I conclude, since Muslims cannot prove that there are any complete manuscripts in the time of Uthman, the Qur’an is not eternal.

It was not sent down.

It’s not complete in 650 AD.

It is not the same.

It has been changed.

So, my question, and I said this to Shabir Ali at the debate, if this did not come from Muhammad, if it did not come from Uthman, if the Qur’an only began to be written down and starts to appear in the 8th century, who is Muhammad and what is his purpose?

Now he got very angry when I said that, and you can see why.

Muhammad, we are going to confront him on Saturday.

I will leave Muhammad for tonight.

Come Saturday because we are going to confront him historically.

We are confronting the Qur’an tonight.

We’ll work with Muhammad on Saturday.

Significance?

All of these manuscripts have changes to them.

These changes are “Rasm” changes.

That means they are consonantal changes, not simple diacritical marks or vowelization.

They continue to be changed for hundreds of years.

There was intentional standardization of the text.

Thus, this again proves there has been intentional human intervention.

Number five, modern (late) corrections

This is the new material now.

Are there differences in the modern Arabic Qur’ans?

These are Qur’ans that you can buy today around the Arabic speaking world.

We are not talking about ancient Qur’ans.

Now we are looking at modern Qur’ans.

Now what do I mean by “Rasm”?

When I talk about “Rasm”, in the Arabic language there are 28 letters, yet amongst them when you look at the 28 letters, seven are unique letters, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, okay?

The alif, yaa, waaw, ha, miim, laam, and kaaf

Those are the unique letters.

That means they always remain the same.

You cannot change them with dots above or below the line.

Two of them, these two, sorry, three of them, you can, when you put that little smiley face, you put one dot below it becomes baa, but two dots above that smiley face it becomes taa.

If you have three dots above it becomes thaa.

If you have one dot above it becomes a nuun.

If you have two dots below it, it becomes a yaa.

Nuun, taa, thaa, baa, yaa

It can be five different letters depending on where you put the dots.

You see why it’s important that you have dots.

The dots didn’t exist in archaic manuscripts.

There are no dots in any of these manuscripts we looked at today.

Have you noticed that?

Dots were only created in the 8th century, in the 9th century because you could not read the context of the Arabic.

How do I know that?

Well, let’s take a look.

Let’s just look at these here.

Now let’s look at three smiley faces next to each other.

When you put dots on them using these three smiley faces, you get 19 different words depending on the dots.

Now actually I’m wrong.

My Arab teacher tells me you can get 22 different words.

She’s found 22.

I’m not Arabic so I give her the benefit of doubt.

Can you see why dots are needed in order for you to read the text?

So Hatun, a friend of mine, one of our colleagues on our team, has decided to go around the world.

Hatun is an Arab, she’s Turkish, used to be a Muslim her father was an imam, converted to Christianity, and she decided to ask this question about the Arabic text.

She went around the Muslim world in the last two years.

She wanted to find out how many different Arabic Qur’ans she could find.

She found 26 different Arabic Qur’ans.

Now that’s the other day, because as of two months ago, she’s up to 31 different Arabic Qur’ans.

What am I talking about?

Well, here you have about it and I’m just going through them really quickly.

Here are all the 31 that she has now found.

These are – every one of them is different.

Not one of them is the same.

These are not translations.

These are all in Arabic.

You can buy them in the Arab world today.

These are all bought in different Arab marketplaces, in Yemen, in Jordan and in Morocco, and this is where she went.

Now what she noticed is that every one of these manuscripts is attributed to students who lived in the 9th century and these are their names from five different cities in …

I just want to make sure you get them right, Mecca, Medina, Damascus, Kufa and Basra.

These are the five major cities.

These all came from scholars who then taught students but every student made their own text.

Here you have Al Bazzi.

He has over 1,094 differences between his manuscript and the Qur’an we have today.

Over here you have Warsh, which is a very famous one that’s in North Africa.

It has 312 but the Qaaluun one has 1,700.

You come down here to somebody like Khalaf, 2,400 differences.

Here you have Abu ‘Ali al-Hareeth.

He has 5,000 differences between his Qur’an and the Qur’an we have today.

But which is the Qur’an that we have today?

Which one of these 31 is this Qur’an?

Do you want to see?

It’s this one, the Hafs Qur’an, there he is.

His name is Hafs.

He died in 805, the early 9th century.

This Qur’an is only one of 31 Qur’ans, decided and chosen by a group of scholars in Al-Azhar University in Cairo, in 1924, 93 years ago.

But here’s a question.

How do we know that this is even Hafs because we don’t have a Hafs manuscript?

There is no Hafs manuscript, so what manuscript is this Qur’an from?

Don’t use the Topkapi.

That has 2,270 differences.

You better not use the Sammarqand.

That only goes up to Surah 43.

You can’t use the Petropolitanus.

That only has 26% of the Qur’an.

You cannot use the Sana’a.

That has thousands of manuscript differences.

Not one of those earliest manuscripts supports this book here.

Are you following me?

So, the Muslims are saying this all comes from Hafs in 805.

That’s 1,000 years ago, not 1,400 years, but we don’t even have Hafs.

Here are some of the differences.

Now we went up and we took this down to the Speaker’s Corner a year ago and we caused a riot at Speaker’s Corner.

If you go find Pfander Films you will see what happened.

The Muslims went berserk.

Last July we went and did it again.

We put up the 31, there 26 of them and we almost didn’t make it from the corner.

They wanted to grab it.

They tried to take it out of our hands.

You can go and look at the video.

It was – we almost didn’t get away ourselves physically.

They were so angered.

This angers Muslims because they have been told today that every Qur’an is exactly the same in every country, every Qur’an the same.

And we showed 26 different Qur’ans all in Arabic that you can buy in the market today and you can see.

We went to put it up on our film.

You can go and look at it.

Then we put just 70 slides of the differences, one after the other just like you’ve seen here.

I’m not going to go through them today because this will take all night and you will be all fast asleep.

There’s a myriad of changes.

We can find over 5,000 vowel and demarcation changes, and an average of 100 to 150 consonant differences.

But what was interesting, just Hatun Tash on her own with her Arab teacher was able to find 56,000 differences between these 31 different Qur’ans, 56,000 differences, and that’s as far as she’s gone right now.

Talk to me in a year.

It will probably be double that number.

Why have Muslims not told us this before?

Now Muslims will say this is nothing more than …

We are looking at all of them and we are finding that this is way beyond but then they make the claim about three weeks ago that the Hafs that we have today is exactly the same all over the world, that every one of this, that this book you can find here is exactly the same all over the world.

That was until last week.

Hatun came up with seven different Hafs Qur’ans.

There are seven different Hafs Qur’ans.

You are looking at the seven, right there.

They don’t even agree with each other.

So why are Muslims getting off saying that all the Qur’ans are the same?

If we can find – she just looks at Surah 27 and looked at the first five verses of Surah 27 and just compared three of the Hafs with each other and she came up with 27 differences.

She did that within a period of 30 minutes.

Folks, this is a lie that we are hearing from Islam.

There is not one Qur’an.

There is a multiplicity of Qur’ans.

Even today the Qur’ans in the market places do not, do not match.

So why in the world do Muslims keeping saying this?

We find 31 different Arabic Qur’ans.

All of them date back to the 9th century.

Yet, only one of those 31 was chosen as the official canonical text in 1924, the “Hafs” text.

Yet, we have seven different “Hafs” texts appearing today.

Thus, this again proves there have been intentional human interventions.

Now the Birmingham folios, considered to be the greatest manuscript

It is only two pages.

That’s all it is, two pages.

It’s not even a manuscript.

When you look at it you will see.

There it is.

Dr. David Thomas, who referring to this manuscript, said

“The writer of this manuscript could well have known the Prophet Muhammad.”

He would have seen him probably.

He would maybe have heard him preach.

He may have known him personally – and that really is quite a thought to conjure with.”

This is all we are talking about, two folios, front and back, either side of Surah 18, Surah 19 and Surah 20, parts of Surah 18 – sorry Surah 19 and Surah 20.

But look at the dates.

It was dated by carbon dating at Oxford University at the carbon dating labs in Oxford and they dated between 568 and 645AD, which doesn’t correspond to Muhammad’s life.

He was in born in 570 and died in 632.

The problem is – can you see the problem immediately?

And this is why Muslim scholars have not come and supported this.

If even the latest of this carbon dating were correct, that’s seven years before Uthman even put together the Qur’an so you cannot have it that early.

More than that: take a look at what it includes.

It includes the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus in Surah 18:17-31.

It includes the Proto-Evangelium of James, the pseudo gospel of Matthew written in 145 AD, in 600 AD.

It also includes the story of Moses in Surah 20:1-40.

Every ones of these stories in these two folios are from earlier material.

It’s all borrowed material of apocryphal accounts.

If you are going to borrow them they are earlier, aren’t they?

Anything that’s borrowed has to be earlier.

Now what’s interesting, these are not the only, these are not the only labs that have been dating manuscripts.

The Sana’a manuscript has now been dated at the Lyon Lab in France.

And the dates they are getting and the carbon dating they are getting for those Quranic manuscripts are 388 to 580 AD.

Muhammad was born in 570.

These pre-dated not only Muhammad.

They pre-dated the Qur’an.

They pre-dated Islam, 443 to 599 AD.

Are you going to go with those dates, Muslims?

Because if you’re going to go with the dates for the Birmingham folios, you’ll have to go with the Lyon dates.

You’ll have to go with the Kiel dates.

You’ll have to go with the Arizona Labs.

There are many labs that are now doing carbon dating on these manuscripts and they take you right back to the 4th to the 5th century AD.

5th century AD

Muhammad was born in the 6th century AD.

These all pre-date Muhammad.

They all pre-date the Qur’an.

Be careful about jumping onto the story because this is going to destroy you if use it.

Either way, it’s a win-win for us because if it is true that those carbon dates are correct then I would suggest that these are nothing more than examples of apocryphal accounts of which, you remember, 25% of the Qur’an is.

More than likely, however, we are going to find that these carbon dates are not correct.

These are all pre-Qur’anic examples.

So, the conclusion of the Birmingham folios:

The ink has not been dated because you cannot date ink because ink is from many different dates, from many different periods.

They show that the classical account is wrong and suggest the stories of the Qur’an were borrowed from outside, usually simple stories.

These folios could be examples of those earlier sources written in Arabic, thus they’re pre-Islamic, pre-Muhammad and pre-Qur’an.

The fact that they were borrowed, suggests they came from man-made stories, proving that once again there’s intentional human interaction.

The 7 areas we’ve investigated tonight, we are going now to end this all up.

Number one, look at the compilation difficulties

When you look at the compilation difficulties you will find that Hafs was put together and was by man.

The historical anachronisms: Only man makes mistakes like that.

God does not make historical mistakes.

Source criticism: 25% of the Qur’an comes from Jewish sources and Christian, not even Christian sources, from Gnostic sources, sectarian sources, heretical sources.

Manuscript criticism: It’s obvious in the earliest six manuscripts that we have, none of them agree, none of them are from the 7th century and they don’t agree with the Qur’an we have today, again human manipulation.

The ancient corrections: You can see from them who made this material, hundreds upon hundreds of corrections that continue up until the 9th and 10th century.

The modern corrections: 31 different Qur’ans

Even the Hafs, the final one that was created, where did it come from?

Where is its origin?

Why is it that we come up with even seven of the Hafs Qur’an in just the last week?

And then the Birmingham folios

Don’t go there.

If you are going to start using carbon dating, be careful.

It will bite you because the carbon dating put the Qur’an back to the 4th century and the 5th century and you don’t want to do that because that’s long before Muhammad even existed.

So, what are the questions still standing?

Why do we not have a complete 7th century Qur’an?

I’m still asking Muslims,

“Where is that original manuscript, just one?”

Not nine, just one

Where are the nine copies of the Qur’an which were sent out to the nine provinces?

Why do all of the Qur’anic manuscripts only appear after the 8th till 9th century?

Why are there still 31 different Arabic Qur’ans in existence today?

And doesn’t this prove that the Qur’an did not come from God, nor Muhammad, nor Uthman, but by simple men?

Summation: so, what we have just done?

Revisionists set the stage.

We move it on.

The questions they asked, we expand.

We must confront Islam’s foundations.

We must challenge the Qur’an.

We do this – the same has been done to the Bible.

Both we must bring into the “public sphere”, why?

Because some of the historical questions have already been asked from the Bible and answered

Conclusion is: The Qur’an is not eternal.

It was not sent down.

It was not complete by 650.

It has been changed.

It’s nothing more than a book written and changed by man but hold on a minute.

Hold on a minute.

What about the word of God?

Who became flesh and dwelt among us?

His name is Jesus Christ.

See, we also have a word of God.

Yes, the Bible is the word of God but this is not the only word of God that we have.

We have another word of God much greater than this one, of which this Bible points to.

Who is the word of God?

His name is Jesus Christ and He came to earth.

Now let’s ask these four questions of that word of God.

Is Jesus eternal?

Any answer?

Audience: Yes.

Male Speaker: Was Jesus sent down?

Yes, He was.

Is Jesus complete?

Yes, He is.

Is Jesus unchanged?

Absolutely

The four things that Muslims need, we’ve already got.

Muslims, come on over.

We have what you’re looking for and His name is Jesus Christ.

That’s why, folks, when you want to ask these questions, if you are going to make a claim about this book then be able to source what you claim.

Make sure you can support what you claim.

You can no longer make some positions like Shabir Ali has been doing for years and years.

You can no longer say this book is eternal.

Don’t even say that.

Don’t even go there.

You can no longer say this book was sent down to Muhammad.

We don’t even know who Muhammad’s way till 700.

You’ll see why he said that.

Don’t say that this book was complete.

It was not complete.

And never say it’s not been changed.

It has change after change, after change, all the way up until 1924, which means it is only 93 years old.

Prince Philip in England is older than your Qur’an.

I said this at the debate in 2014 and I repeat it again.

Prince Philip is older than your Qur’an.

Now Jesus however is much older than Prince Philip and I thank God that I can come back to Jesus Christ as the word of God.

I don’t, we don’t have these problems with the Bible.

Yes, we admit that there are many manuscripts.

We know that there are manuscript errors and that’s why we know exactly where they are and we let the whole world know we are as transparent as we get because we know the Bible was written by men, inspired by God, written by men about one man and His name is Jess Christ and I offer him to you tonight.

What a God, what a man, what a word of God, eternal, sent down, complete and unchanged!

We got more time (we’re running out of time), sorry about that, but are there any questions you may have, especially from the Muslims who are here?

Muslims, let me ask you, are there any questions that you can throw at me from what you’ve heard tonight?

Male Speaker: There's way too many.

There’s way too many, okay.

Let’s get started.

Male Speaker: I mean I can’t even begin.

There’s just so much that I honestly have lost count of the flaws that were in your argument in your various points.

Try and

Just give one.

Male Speaker: Everything until the part where you went to the manuscript – that was mostly incorrect interpretation of history.

Or things after that I can’t comment because I don’t know and most of your pieces of authority are either the Bible or your friends like Hatun.

So, I don’t know if I can comment there …

Well let’s stick with the manuscripts since you did bring this up.

What is your problem with the manuscript evidence of it?

Male Speaker: No, I have no comment on that because I really don’t know about it.

Is it persuasive?

Male Speaker: If it’s all true, maybe.

Male Speaker: This is all going on to the internet so anybody is able to confront me on it.

These manuscripts are now open for the world to see.

This is the first time that I can say that in 35 years, that all of these manuscripts now are transparent.

What are you as a Muslim going to do when you realize that these manuscripts don’t agree?

Male Speaker: Well I won’t take your word for it.

I will acquire the manuscripts myself.

Male Speaker: Please do it.

I encourage you to do that.

Male Speaker: And that’s when I can make a …

I mean your word is not enough because … it’s not convincing enough, because most of the evidence you used in your authority that’s....

Male Speaker: What’s your name?

Male Speaker: I don’t know, to be honest.

I know a lot of other –

Male Speaker: What’s your name?

Male Speaker: Fassey.

Male Speaker: Fassey. Listen Fassey, it’s great that you are making these claims.

I will suggest now that you have seen or heard what you’ve heard tonight, go and get this PowerPoint.

Go and look it up, find out and look at these variants and then ask your Imam or anybody in authority.

I’m not expecting you to be a man of authority because you will want to go to those who are in authority.

Go and ask them what they are doing with these variants.

Shabir Ali is considered to be the world’s leading authority for debating on manuscripts.

Ask him what he’s doing.

Do you know what he’s doing?

Male Speaker: I have no idea.

Male Speaker: He says

“I don’t have to worry about them.

I only care about the 1924 manuscript.”

What an admission, admitting that the only manuscript that he will look at to find his miracle of number 19, he still talks about the miracle of the 19, he will only go to the 1924 manuscript.

He doesn’t want to be bothered by the earlier manuscripts.

To me that’s a huge admission and I hope that Muslims be aware then no longer can publicly they say that the Qur’an has never been changed.

No longer can they say that the Qur’an is the same today as its originals.

No longer can they say that there is only one Qur’an in the world today.

There are multiplicities of Qur’ans.

Male Speaker: My only comment would be that obviously even because... it’s any religion it’ll be, Christianity be or Islam, at no point can you say you can prove anything.

At some point you have to take something on your page.

That’s why because it is religion, not science.

Male Speaker: That’s a problem, sir.

Well that’s a real problem.

We can prove what the Bible is, it has manuscripts and we can prove these historical claims.

See, every scripture makes historical claims, does it not?

Not just the Qur’an or the Bible

The …, the …

The Book of Mormon

Any time it makes a historical claim, we have a responsibility to check on that claim.

Male Speaker: Yeah but like … I can give an example, the thing that you talked about carbon dating, right.

You presented all of these ranges for each one of those universities or institutes.

The earliest part of that – it was always a range but not exact number as the year it came out.

It was from this year to this year.

And as you might also know the last range of that was in the time of the Prophet or after him.

Only the earlier date was something that preceded the Prophet.

So, these are several examples of things you can’t confront ever, no matter how much …

All I’m saying is, be careful with that because now you are going to be stunned by it, because then if you are going to accept that carbon dating from the Oxford Lab, you’re going to have to accept the carbon dating from the Kiel Lab, from the Lyon Lab, from the Arizona Lab, interestingly who are coming with dates that go back to 443 AD.

And do you really want to accept that for the Qur’an?

Male Speaker: That’s the same thing.

They are going back that one part of the date of the Qur’an from …

Male Speaker: From 443 to 559

And was there any Qur’an at 559?

Male Speaker: Then you have a very good reason to deny the plausibility of that very institute.

Male Speaker: I’m sorry?

Male Speaker: Then you have a very good reason to deny the plausibility of that very institute.

Is it even doing it?

Male Speaker: I see, so you only accept what fits your paradigm.

You only accept those discoveries.

Be careful because, see how ridiculous that sounds to us listening to you?

Male Speaker: That’s what you …

Male Speaker: “My mind is already made up,” is what you are saying.

Don’t do that in front of all of us.

Please don’t, okay?

That’s why I think it’s very important that Muslims start to accept what the scientists are finding.

Male Speaker: It wasn’t the only one laboratory.

You listed about 10.

Male Speaker: There are five laboratories that are now looking at doing carbon dating.

Now my personal view I’ll tell you, I don’t think the carbon dating is exact.

Let me tell you why.

Look and see what they’ve done with the Dead Sea scrolls.

There were hundreds of years of difference depending on which part of the Dead Sea Scrolls you’re looking at.

That’s why if you even look at carbon dating, the whole deterioration of carbon has only been measured in two areas of the world, in California and in Japan.

So, these manuscripts don’t even come from that part of the world.

So, the carbon depletion is not the same in the Middle East as it is in California and Japan.

So, I would suggest all of these are inexact, so I will agree with you on that but please don’t say it fits within the prophet’s life because this one fits within your prophet’s life.

You can’t just accept one finding and not accept all the other findings.

That’s all I’m saying.

Be careful because you are going to look ridiculous.

Male Speaker: My point is that if all of them fit in his lifetime and one of them does not fit, then that’s a good reason to say that this one might be wrong.

Male Speaker: Didn’t you notice that none of them fit the prophet’s life?

The only one was the one in Oxford.

Male Speaker: The ones that you showed on the list, each one of them had two dates that would fit in the life.

Male Speaker: Should we go back to it?

I’ll show you.

They’re from 443 –

Male Speaker: Yeah, go ahead.

Oh, what I just do

Male Speaker: And then in the meantime while you’re getting them, let me tell everybody about the compilation of the Qur’an.

I’m no expert.

Let me tell you guys what I’ve learned from the books of history.

Basically, the compilation was not that people did not write this down.

He had a secretary.

He was a scribe; and his task was to memorize everything the Prophet said, everything, not just what he said in the Qur’an, everything, and he was one of them, I think six or seven of them.

And what happened in his lifetime was, nobody, nobody used to write at that time but –

Male Speaker: No one used to write at that time?

Are you suggesting that libraries and Alexandria didn’t exist?

Are you suggesting that all the way from Spain to India, no one could read or write?

Male Speaker: I’m going there.

They did not write the Qur’an in part because they had the Qur’an in front of them.

They could ask about the Qur’an anytime they wanted from the Prophet himself.

The authority already was right there.

They had no reason to write.

They could go next door.

You could walk up to him and ask him

“What did you say the other day about them?”

And it would be exactly that.

The problem came about writing was in the first caliphate by Abu Bakr.

So, it was not compiled in the third caliphate by Uthman.

It was first compiled by Abu Bakr.

He had that –

Male Speaker: I’ve said that tonight, did you not hear me?

Yes, it was Abu Bakr.

Why is it that they had to wait for Abu Bakr to write the first recension?

Male Speaker: I’m going to that.

There was a battle at Yamamah as you said, right?

So, at that time everybody had memorized the Qur’an.

Everybody knew it by heart.

Male Speaker: What did they memorize?

What did they memorize?

Male Speaker: Everything the Prophet said, that was including.... in the Qur’an.

Male Speaker: What did they memorize again?

What manuscript did they memorize?

What codified canonical text did they memorize?

Let me tell you something.

If I wrote everything I said tonight, if I would ask every one of you to then write down what I’ve said tonight off the top of your memory, how many different renditions would you have of what I said tonight, just from memory?

Quite a few, right?

Male Speaker: Quite a few.

Male Speaker: Not only that, what happened when it’s said orally, what happens with oral tradition?

Now you’ve played that birthday party game where I say something to his ear and he says it to her, he talks to her and him.

By the time it gets over to here, what I’ve told him and what he tells me are two different things.

The problem with oral tradition is it gets manipulated, it gets created; it gets deleted.

That can happen within a period of 15 minutes.

To say “Everybody memorizes it”, prove it to me.

You can’t even prove it.

You’re making syllogism.

You’re just talking off the top of your head because there’s no way in the world that we can prove it was memorized correctly since there’s no manuscript to support what you just said.

And when it was finally written down at that time of Abu Bakr, which you do admit, why did it have to be written again 20 years later?

What was wrong with the first manuscript and then why did all the other manuscripts have to be burnt?

Obviously, there were differences and then when that manuscript was written down at the time of Uthman, sent to nine different cities, where are they today?

Why can’t you – why is there not one manuscript for us to look at today?

It’s not the fact that people couldn’t memorize.

I’m sure they could.

I would suggest that when you memorize anything you have different memories.

We know that even in the 21st century how different our memories are.

I know that with my wife.

We see the same thing when we get home and we tell our sons.

She tells a totally different story than I tell and it just happened maybe half an hour ago.

Now that is quite typical of human memory, so don’t tell me everybody memorized it perfectly.

114 surahs, everybody memorized it perfectly.

That’s easy to say but you can have no proof of that especially when we do know that according to traditions it was written down in 632.

Why was there a need to write it down unless of course there’s difference in memory?

Male Speaker: I can’t answer that.

Male Speaker: OK.

Male Speaker: My name is …

I belong to …

I’m working here with the Imam.

I want to tell you that you belong to Christian community and you have your faith and you want to prove Christian beliefs.

If you listened to a Muslim scholar, he will prove that Jesus is not God and they have their education for Christianity.

So, this is the debate we cannot satisfy.

We should expect our thinking, that how you discuss so if you will listen only – if you are one speaker then you are one side, so we should listen to our opponents, how they explain.

Today you have this discussion, the historical problems with Qur’an.

There’s historical problem with Injil, with the New Testament.

So, I am a Muslim.

So, I came here.

I want to listen to how you think about my religion.

So, our Christian brothers, they should also attend the Muslim programs.

They make them friends and they ask them the questions.

How do they respond to this?

So only – we should understand how they explain their question.

Now I tell you about the tradition of the Holy Qur’an. It was complete in the life of the Holy Prophet.

It was revealed in 43 years and it was not written in one shape in one volume because it was revealing things that of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.

So, it was written after the death of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.

So, in his life, it is impossible that you compile it in one volume but it was completed in a written shape in different people.

In different people they happen – it is someone has written something, and someone has written something”.

And people have learned it by their heart.

Male Speaker: What’s your question?

Can we get to the question?

Male Speaker: No, I’m telling you that you are telling that this was not compiled but –

Male Speaker: I think I repeated that, did I not already tonight?

What’s your question, sir?

Male Speaker: No, my question – I don’t have any question.

I’m not agreeing with your thinking so I’m saying that it was completed in the life and people learned by heart.

Then there was …

Male Speaker: When was it written down?

Male Speaker: It was our people – there was a system.

He has appointed some persons to serve.

Male Speaker: And where is that manuscript?

Male Speaker: He told them to memorize.

They recite this holy Qur’an in their prayers and in Ramadan, the whole Qur’an.

Male Speaker: So, I’m asking you a question.

Since you’re not asking me a question let me ask you.

Where is that manuscript that you just said was written down?

Where is it?

Male Speaker: It was written later in the time of the …

There were 500 martyrs.

Male Speaker: Sir, let me ask you again.

I’m going to ask you the third time.

Where is that manuscript that you say was written down?

Male Speaker: In the time of the Prophet?

Male Speaker: Where is it today?

Male Speaker: I said it is the same as that one.

Male Speaker: Where is it today?

Do you know where it is?

Can you show me that manuscript that you are talking about?

Male Speaker: I cannot show.

Male Speaker: Does it exist today?

Male Speaker: But this is after the … and you can study this one.

Male Speaker: Can you tell me where there is a manuscript today?

Male Speaker: So, it was totally, completely memorized by the Muslims.

[Crosstalk]

Male Speaker: It is impossible.

Can you see why this is a problem with Muslims?

Male Speaker: That one can’t satisfy you?

Male Speaker: Does this satisfy you, what he’s saying?

Are you convinced that the memorized text is sufficient for you?

Male Speaker: This is your program so you cannot satisfy.

If you go to a Muslim program, they also have argument, so if you invite some people –

Male Speaker: We did invite you.

We wanted this to be a debate.

Male Speaker: You are right, we should learn from each other.

Male Speaker: So, this question –

Male Speaker: There should not be a debate.

Male Speaker: I understand the frustration.

I can see the problem but can you see why we are asking these questions?

It’s very important that all of us in every religion who have a text that is historical, that if we are going to make a claim, support it with manuscript evidence like this, what we have just asked you.

The manuscript evidence does not exist for the Qur’an, not from the 7th century.

The manuscript evidence for the Qur’an only begins to appear in the 8th century.

Those manuscripts, like the Topkapi, the Sammarqand, the Ma’il, the Huseyni, the Petropolitanus and the Sana’aa manuscripts, these six major manuscripts that are the oldest manuscripts, not one of them is from the 7th century.

They are all from the 8th and 9th century.

They are not the same.

They are not complete and they do not compare with the Qur’an we have today.

Now that is a historical fact.

So, when you say that they memorized it, I don’t care because I have no idea what they memorized.

If I were to ask you today to tell me what Surah 2:145 is and you repeat it word for word, how do I know you are correct unless I have a Qur’an next to me to follow you to know that that is correct?

You need to have a written text to be able to measure everyone around the world, to know that they have the same memory.

All we are asking, we are asking a very simple question, please stop claiming that it was complete.

Please stop claiming that it comes from Muhammad.

Please stop even claiming it comes from Uthman unless you can support that.

And I’ve asked now three times, where is one manuscript that is complete and unchanged from the time of Uthman, sir?

Male Speaker: I just want to ask you this PowerPoint.

You are the one who designed this one?

Male Speaker: This is my PowerPoint, yeah.

Male Speaker: You designed this one, right.

Everything you designed in there, right, is it that every page or every design, you are the one who made this PowerPoint, right?

Male Speaker: The PowerPoint, but I did none of the research.

Male Speaker: I’m just asking if you are the one who designed this PowerPoint.

Male Speaker: I did it, this is my PowerPoint and you can have it, yes.

Male Speaker: You made this one, right?

Male Speaker: Yes.

Male Speaker: I don’t know – I’m very poor in – of course I’m Muslim but I don’t have much knowledge of ….

I just want to – I’m wondering just – I hear from you all these things and maybe this is true but you lie in front of all these people that I don’t know these people what went on.

Well you just showed some Qur’an verse you … to show you in this PowerPoint that – you said,

“I don’t know what’s happening here,”

Male Speaker: I see, animated.

That was not my animation.

I think this meant this is –

Male Speaker: No, just you – who designed?

It’s on you.

Accept this one you designed, right?

Male Speaker: You are talking about the crunching up?

Male Speaker: Yeah, listen to me.

You accept that you designed this one, right?

Of course, you designed it and you are the one who made this one.

Male Speaker: Yeah.

Male Speaker: And you are lying in front of all people?

I don’t know what happened to this one.

Male Speaker: I have lied?

What have I lied tonight?

Male Speaker: No, you said

“This is --”

Male Speaker: You said that you do not know what’s happening.

Male Speaker: You said “I don’t know what’s happening to this one.

[Crosstalk]

Male Speaker: And this is not –

Male Speaker: That was not –

Male Speaker: That is not the mistake of …

That is the mistake of... Who made this one?

Male Speaker: Then you should respect us.

Male Speaker: Absolutely and that’s why –

Male Speaker: The problem is saying something without respecting.

Male Speaker: I don’t know about anything what you speak but I know you lied one thing in front of all people.

So, I cannot believe you.

I don’t have knowledge about this.

Male Speaker: Okay, thank you.

Are there any other questions, folks?

Male Speaker: One question, you asked that the Qur’an claimed that Miriam is the sister of Aaron.

It’s claimed there that this Aaron is the brother of Musa?

Male Speaker: Absolutely because then –

Male Speaker: … there are so many Aaron, not exactly that this.

The Qur’an is claiming that Miriam is the sister of Aaron but it is not claiming that this Aaron is the brother of Moses.

Male Speaker: Does Mary have a brother named Aaron, sir?

Male Speaker: ... please, it is your misinterpretation that this Qur’an is claiming that this is Aaron the brother of Moses –

Male Speaker: That’s great that you have that opinion, sir, but it’s not just Aaron.

It’s also Imran, Amram, who is the father of Mary and Aaron and Moses.

So, all three are there that’s why obviously there’s a mistake.

[Crosstalk]

Male Speaker: If Aaron is the brother of Moses, maybe – is there any other Aaron?

Male Speaker: Because we know Mary didn’t have a brother named Aaron.

Okay, folks, I think we have completed our questioning for tonight.

I want to thank you for coming here.

This is going up on YouTube.

We are going to make sure that Muslims around the world see this.

Hundreds of thousands or almost half a million have watched the debate that we did in 2014.

Tomorrow we are going to unpack Islamic slavery.

This is the big elephant that no one has talked about.

We are going to look at the statistics of what Islam has done with slavery.

We are going to look at some of the original texts.

We are going to look at the quotes of some of the great men of Islam, what they said about black people, and it’s not pleasant hearing.

And then we are going to look at the numbers.

We are going to look at how many slaves were enslaved by Islam versus how many salves were enslaved by the Europeans.

And then we are going to ask,

“Which were the people that abolished slavery?

Has there ever been an abolition movement within Islam?”

These are hard-hitting questions.

We are doing this purposely because no one has dared to yet ask the historical questions on slavery.

That’s tomorrow night.

And I’ll ask you where that’s going to be, what church but you can say what is tomorrow night and the time.

Male Speaker: Is that the IECC, the Island Evangelical Community Church?

Male Speaker: Yes.

Male Speaker: Yeah, you can say where that was.

Male Speaker: Yeah, it’s the Island Evangelical Community Church.

[Audio Ends]

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